Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		4.0

Archer: The Complete Season Five Blu-ray Movie Review

This is your Archer on drugs.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 8, 2015

It’s not that unusual for television series to undergo tinkering of one form or another, especially if they manage to last for more than a season or two. Sometimes the changes are necessitated by the death of an actor (a surprisingly long list which includes everyone from Jon- Erik Hexum of the short lived Cover Up to the relatively recent Cory Monteith of Glee: The Complete Fourth Season). Other changes have occurred when an actor either left or was outright fired from a show (a notable example was when Valerie Harper was jettisoned from her own sitcom, initially entitled Valerie and then Valerie’s Family, before becoming The Hogan Family after her departure). At other times, a change of scenery was offered in a probably desperate gambit to keep a long running series fresh for viewers (the last season of McHale’s Navy saw the ragtag troupe plop down in Italy, a strategy that failed to attract big enough ratings to keep the show alive). There has rarely been such a whole scale change of emphasis as that seen in Archer’s fifth season, however, with this ragtag troupe leaving behind their international espionage careers to stumble over to “the dark side” (so to speak), becoming master criminals, or at least criminals, considering the characters’ general inability to master much of anything. While there’s not much information online commenting on the ultimate decision for this change, I personally wonder if perhaps it has something to do with the spy agency’s name, ISIS, an acronym that obviously has come to mean something entirely different from the comedic take within the context of the series itself. There’s probably no real connection, given the lead time that most animated series require to get their episodes from pre-production to air, but it’s a perhaps felicitous change that manages to sidestep what could be a problematic element going forward. The first episode of the (slightly) retitled Archer Vice sees ISIS being disbanded by the FBI when it’s discovered that hard drinking matriarch Malory Archer (voiced by the wonderful Jessica Walter) had never gotten the appropriate “permission” from the United States government to even engage in international espionage (one needs a permit for such activity?). That sets the characters loose in a manner of speaking to pursue new career paths, and a serendipitously discovered cache of cocaine seems to point the way. If international espionage is now no longer a viable lifestyle, why not drug running?

Those wanting a recap of what's gone before or a quick reminder tour of the Archer universe can check out our reviews of previous seasons here:

Archer: The Complete Season One Blu-ray review

Archer: The Complete Season Two Blu-ray review

Archer: The Complete Season Three Blu-ray review

Archer: The Complete Season Four Blu-ray review.

In a way, it really wouldn’t matter if Sterling Archer (H. Jon Benjamin), Lana Kane (Aisha Tyler), Pam Poovey (Amber Nash), Cheryl Tunt (Judy Greer), Ray Gillette (Adam Reed), Woodhouse (George Coe), Dr. Krieger (Lucky Yates) and the rest (by which I mean mostly Malory) were transported to some alien universe and put in a zoo, for what drives this farce more than its context is the hilarious characters. The focal crew on Archer typically takes self-absorption beyond even Seinfeldian levels to ludicrously hyperbolic strata where everyone seems to be lost in their own interior worlds which of course revolve solely around them. Externally, almost all of the characters have monkeys on their back of one sort or another, and all tend to be efficient at their jobs only when events absolutely demand it. Part of the humor that Archer continues to mine stems from this disconnect, namely characters who think they’re the only person who matters who nonetheless are forced to work together as something akin to a team.

That said, the change in focus does offer some fantastic new opportunities for Archer’s typically acerbic sense of humor. Two standouts from this season involve supporting characters Pam Poovey and Cheryl Tunt. Virtually within seconds of Archer offering a huge pile of cocaine to the group to fund their future lives together, Pam becomes instantly addicted to the stuff, literally eating it out of bags like popcorn. She of course becomes even perkier than usual, and is frequently seen just zinging through the background of any given scene, obviously higher than a kite. Cheryl, on the other hand, has decided that a future in country music is her best career option now that ISIS has bitten the dust. Cheryl is apparently completely tone deaf, at least as evidenced by her voice lessons (courtesy of Gillette, evidently a closet conductor and voice coach). But when a closed circuit home security setup reveals Cheryl singing beautifully with no one around, Malory comes to the conclusion she’s a marketable property.

The banter between Sterling, Lana and Malory continues to be as sardonically amusing as ever, with Lana’s pregnancy playing into several barbs both thrown at her and by her. The longstanding mystery of the paternity of the baby is a running gag, but fans do get some ostensible answers late in the season. Through it all, Archer continues to be consistently hilarious, with throwaway gags coming so quickly and furiously that some crowded scenes virtually demand playback to catch everything.

As trite as it may sound, we’re living through a new Golden Age of animation for television series, especially those with a more adult edge. Archer has consistently provided some of the smartest character driven humor in the increasingly varied animation landscape. This latest gambit may seem risky, or even desperate, but it turns out to be a completely reinvigorating enterprise for the show. Maybe that alien zoo idea can be set aside for another season or two.

Archer: The Complete Season Five Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Archer: The Complete Season Five is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. Archer continues to be one of the most distinctively animated shows on television, with a quasi-realistic pseudo-rotoscoped (yes, that is a lot of hyphens) appearance that instantly sets it apart from every other animated outing currently on the airwaves or cable. Detail continues to shine throughout this season, with no encoding errors or compression issues blighting the image. There are a number of cool little animation details in this season that ironically combine near photorealism with a more surreal or even hallucinogenic angle, starting with the massive explosion that precipitates the end of ISIS, where huge clouds of smoke billow from the office tower (see screenshot 5). Later, Pam's adventures with cocaine offer several great sight gags that depend on the fine powdery substance resolving correctly. Through it all, line detail is strong and precise, and the show's palette continues to offer a wide array of hues. Archer is simply one of the coolest looking shows on television, and this latest Blu-ray set lets it shine admirably.

Archer: The Complete Season Five Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Archer: The Complete Season Five offers an extremely boisterous lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that starts the season off with a literal bang (certain to rattle the floorboards) and which then continues to offer virtually nonstop surround activity, courtesy of both manic shootouts and more basic, Howard Hawks-ian overlapping dialogue scenes. The sound design of this show is remarkably varied, with good directionality even in apparently simple sequences. Fidelity remains excellent and dynamic range is extremely wide on this problem free track.

Archer: The Complete Season Five Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• "Midnight Blues" Music Video by Cherlene Tunt (1080p; 3:54)


• Cherlene Tunt Interview on Wake Up Country (1080p; 1:54)


• Old Pam Poovey (1080p; 3:17) is given the more explanatory title Old MacDonald Pam Poovey Had a Farm, the Musical on the back cover.

Archer: The Complete Season Five Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Archer adroitly exploits a pitch black sense of humor within a surprisingly ebullient overall presentation that ruthlessly mocks each and every character in the show. The writing continues to be very smart and consistently funny, even hilarious, with zingers coming along breathlessly no matter what's actually going on in any given scene. While this latest season is (once again) pretty light on supplementary material, technical merits are top notch and Archer: The Complete Season Five comes Highly recommended.