I Still Mourn the Fall of ISIS and the End of Archer

A transformation is underway in the world of entertainment. You can feel it. It's slow, almost reluctant, but studios are finally flirting with the idea of keeping audiences instead of alienating them. Apple's new sci-fi thriller Plur1bus features Vince Gilligan's fantastic writing chops that headline a gay protagonist, yet they haven't made an attempt to shove her sexuality in my face. Paramount's oilfield drama Landman does the exact opposite in the form of Ali Larter while it proudly sermonizes the futility of green energy. It's a welcome, refreshing change that calls back to the last golden age of television, but it also reminds me of the painful journey that brought us here in the first place, and no series charts that downward spiral better than Archer.

Maybe it's just the timing. We're coming up on the second anniversary of the world's greatest spy neatly folding his tactleneck for the last time, but the withdrawal still hits as hard as Woodhouse without a needle and spoon. Although the disastrous latter-half of the series helped soften the blow of FX's long-running animated spy parody coming to an end, the world is worse off without Archer insulting Lana's giant hands, Krieger's van with illegal tint that screams rolling probable cause, or Cyril's miserable existence mocked at every turn.

Archer's blend of absurd James Bond-like antics and the day-to-day anarchy of a catastrophically mismanaged office was a hit from the start. I enjoyed its whip-smart dialogue, brutal insults, and an ensemble cast of unforgettable characters. The show's best years were largely piloted by creator Adam Reed, whose sharp writing and unmistakable wit crossed into the danger zone long before anyone thought to call Kenny Loggins.

The show felt like a character study as much as it was a spoof of the spy genre, examining Archer's self-destructive impulses with the absurdities that festered inside the walls of the International Secret Intelligence Service. In the field, Archer squared off against everything from a Cold War dictator with suspicious paternal instincts to a cyborg hellbent on revenge, a quadruple agent who kept losing his own limbs, and if not the alligators of Florida, the cobras of Zimbabwe. However, none of these threats were nearly as dangerous as those back at the office, whether it was Pam ignoring claims forms, Cheryl armed with a lighter, or Krieger trying to convince everyone that Pigly was a breakthrough in applied science.

The chaos of its catastrophically mismatched staff was the true strength of the show. Lana, the only competent field agent in the building, contributed to the dysfunction by dealing with Archer's emotional crises more than international ones. Cyril oscillated between neurotic insecurities and baffling bursts of competence, usually undone by Archer's bullying or his own self-sabotage, all while endlessly juggling the books that were a mess of embezzlement and blown budgets. Ray's demand for professionalism was admirable, but fervently ignored, costing him a steadily escalating list of injuries patched up with ridiculous cybernetic upgrades.

Even Malory Archer's ruthless leadership, soaked in gin and contempt, kept things moving with equal parts manipulation and sheer force of will. Individually, everyone at ISIS was a walking disaster; collectively, they were something close to a functional team, a chaotic found family that gave the show's most unhinged moments surprising amounts of depth.

But no one embodied this spirit more than Pam. She was the rampage-fueled beating heart of ISIS, a human wrecking ball wrapped in a tattooed package of unearned confidence and unstoppable enthusiasm. She could outdrink the entire office, fight half the planet, and drop a deuce more savage than a KO at an underground fight club. It didn't matter if she was willingly choking to death on a shellfish platter, snorting enough cocaine to tear through a brick wall, or suffered from a cooch wet enough to drown a baby; Pam operated on a level that nobody could ever come up against. Phrasing, boom!

She was even better when teamed alongside Carol — I mean Cheryl — whose deranged impulses made getting strangled to climax by a robot arm or crowning herself Martian royalty on a hijacked space station just another Tuesday. Their comradery wasn't only funny, it was magnetic.

This is what I miss about Archer the most. The psychological warfare, the unchecked narcissism, and that glorious, unfiltered lack of empathy that held it all together better than the glue bottle parked underneath Cheryl's nose. Society felt stronger and more confident when Archer unapologetically nicknamed the office's weakest link Cyril Faggis or wandered a Monaco hotel calling his French concierge Benoit Balls. These moments were a reminder that writers once trusted audiences to laugh, cringe, and suck it up without crying about a hate crime.

The show had no reservations doubling down on moral bankruptcy. Your poison could be Krieger bickering with his anime hologram wife whose cherry was blossoming or Malory committing war crimes to finance a condo remodel. Detours only added fuel to the fire: the feds hijacking the agency, ISIS getting erased from the stationery, and the entire crew becoming the least competent drug cartel in history. It was deranged, reckless, and unmistakably Archer. But lightning rarely strikes twice, and once they reinvented themselves a second time as private investigators in California, a bullet punched through Archer's chest and the series bled out right beside him.

Archer began to fall into the same trap that was a death sentence for so many modern shows. A three-year coma became a trio of self-contained dream worlds, each set in a different era with familiar faces assuming unfamiliar roles. There were flashes of brilliance in the noir alleys of 1940s Los Angeles, French Polynesia on the eve of World War II, and the far reaches of space, but none of it had any meaningful cohesion to matter. It was a bold experiment, but dragged on far too long, and despite Archer eventually waking up, the show's signature charm never did.

By the time Archer was on his own two feet again, tactical cane notwithstanding, the show had lost me. The nuanced quips, the fantastic historical references, and the equal rights and lefts that gave the series its punch just didn't quite land anymore. Adam Reed had stepped away by then, and it showed, as his creative replacements began undercutting its titular character. The spy business was booming again, but the man who once had the balls to go undercover donning roller skates, a lollipop, and a t-shirt that read "Got Dick?" remained handicapped.

The final seasons made things worse. New management took over the agency after the retirement of Malory Archer, led by a man whose severe speech impediment practically begged to be a running joke, yet somehow remained completely untouched. Then came Zara, the incredibly grating British-Indian superspy whose only purpose was to knock Archer down a peg, a job that had already been mastered by far superior antagonists multiple seasons before. Many argued these changes were to counter the series decline with Jessica Walter's passing prior to the penultimate season, but the show had already flatlined once Adam Reed stepped away.

As the world around him expanded, Archer kept shrinking, outnumbered by villains and side characters who felt painfully generic compared to the eccentric sociopaths the show once excelled at producing. It became clear the writers were trying to teach him some grand lesson in humility, aging gracefully, and adapting to a changing world, but that was never Archer. He had no interest in touching moments of self-reflection; he thrived on refusing to acclimate, and the show forgot that the only thing he was ever really meant to learn was nothing at all.

Archer became another victim of the same cultural shift that made movies and TV shows terrified of themselves. The change was so noticeable that even Archer himself seemed frustrated by it, repeatedly demanding that phrasing be brought back after its long, inexplicable absence. The irony was hard to miss: a show built entirely on equal-opportunity insults was now afraid of its own shadow, airing on a network branded as fearless that once gave us Dennis Leary sitting in a room full of firefighters arguing which ethnicities had the best racial slurs. It was tonal whiplash and the later seasons felt like they were distancing themselves from the very thing that made Archer special.

Still, despite its flaws, Archer is a reminder of what television used to be, when writers and networks actually were fearless. Its best moments still outshine its worst, and there isn't another animated comedy that could pull off turning a counterfeit drug ring and a batch of breast cancer meds swapped out for Zima into the third matinee of Terms of Enrampagement. The series finale left the door behind it cracked open, and while a return to better days of entertainment may still be far on the horizon, there is a tiny glimmer of hope we can get a second coming after it's been properly rinsed off in the sink.