ENJOY THE RIDE
Clever animated series is back and better than ever, one star says Archer Wednesdays, Teletoon
The day was as gloomy as a $5 call girl with a rip in her $10 hose. A group of mourners in a cemetery, silent and stone-faced, rain cold and hard against the sky. Arthur Henry Woodhouse, the gravestone said, and a piano plodded along, daring viewers not to care.
So begins Archer’s eighth season, a stylish alternative-reality trip into a noir mystery that airs Wednesdays in the Teletoon at Night programming block. The series now airs on FXX in the U.S.
The animated comedy calls itself Archer: Dreamland this time around, winking at the titular spy voiced by H. Jon Benjamin who’s now caught in a coma. It’s a playground for his psyche to figure out who knocked off his valet Woodhouse in his waking life. (George Coe, who voiced Woodhouse, died in 2015. Tom Kane later replaced him.)
The setting is 1947 Los Angeles, the tone brooding. The characters are familiar but take on new identities — a crime boss, a bartender, a cop, a femme fatale.
“They’re the same people, but different. And a lot of them are meeting for the first time again this season. I think you’ll recognize everybody, but the Venn diagram is completely rearranged,” says Aisha Tyler, who voices field agent Lana Kane, Archer’s love interest and now a torch singer in Dreamland.
“I think the main reason we’re doing it is that Adam Reed, who created the show and writes the scripts, wanted to amuse himself. I think he’s always looking to change the dynamic and stay entertained and keep the show fresh.”
For instance, not five minutes into the season première, our gumshoe was negotiating with a woman who eerily resembles his mother. He was neat, clean, shaved and sober, as Raymond Chandler would say, and he didn’t care who knew it. He was looking for the straight dope on his partner’s killer.
But first, a drink of bourbon. Old Buncombe if she has it.
“How do you take it?” she asked. “Usually alone,” he quipped. Lana, she was making like a canary on the stage downstairs. She was cool, elegant and in a dress that made the curves on a Triumph Roadster look like pickup sticks. The dame’s chops come authentically, says Tyler, who surprised the show’s producers with her ability to sing.
“My mom is a jazz singer and I sang in high school, and in college I was in one of those infernal collegiate a cappella groups,” she says. “I think (the producers) were so thrilled because maybe they had a contingency plan in place where they were going to hire someone from outside to come in and do it.”
As slick and smart as Archer’s treatment is this season, Tyler admits mixed feelings about the era the show’s immersed in.
“I think that creatively and artistically, that was a really incredible time for music and American jazz. But it wasn’t really a great time for women or people of colour, so no, I’m not a fan of the ’40s in general,” she says, laughing.
“But what’s great about the Lana character this season is how much she’s defied the restraints that would’ve been placed against her at that time. She’s a tough and self-defined and unafraid and relentless as she’s been in previous seasons.”
Last summer, Archer was renewed for three more years, which would bring the series through season 10. That will be the final go-round, show creator Reed has said, though FXX hasn’t officially confirmed it.
“What’s been thrilling about Archer is how different it is from any other animated show on television and how different it’s remained. It’s such a smart and literate and thoughtful and mature show that still has so many ridiculous and hilarious sophomoric jokes in it,” says Tyler, who also stars on Criminal Minds, co-hosts The Talk and fronts Whose Line is it Anyway?
“People will be taken on a ride (in season 8). It’s just a new context — new conditions, new challenges — and we don’t know if Archer is dead of alive.
“Some of fans’ questions will be answered and some new questions will be asked. People just have to let go and enjoy the ride.”
(Archer is) such a smart and literate and thoughtful and mature show that still has so many ridiculous and hilarious sophomoric jokes in it.