Sterling vs. The End

No one likes to see a show they love come to an end. While Archer had its highs and lows (including three incredibly weird middle seasons while the lead character was in a coma), there’s no doubt that the creative team behind the series (creator Adam Reed, the crew of writers, and the talented cast) managed to find new and creative ways to reinvent the series season to season. The show went from a secret agent espionage comedy for its first four seasons, to a Miami Vice meets The Dukes of Hazard parody for season five (aka Archer: Vice), working for the CIA in season six, working as private detectives in season seven, three years in a coma (with strange results), and then back to being secret agents, in one for or another, for the last four seasons, all while still changing up the formula season to season. This was a show that thrived in never being the same thing twice.

That’s what was so great about the series, but I have a feeling audiences also struggled with keeping up because the show was never the same way twice. Many like predictability, for the show they started watching in season one to be the same at the time of its finale. For all of Archer’s great qualities, it was not a predictable show, at least not in its overarching story. You never knew, season-to-season, what variety of show you were going to get or what, exactly, the main story was going to be. The creators quite obviously enjoyed defying expectations, which made for a thrilling ride for the diehard fans, but maybe lost other, casual viewers along the way. It’s easy to see someone tuning in after a couple of seasons away, seeing Archer as a Noir private eye (Archer: Dreamland) and thinking, “is this the same show I remember?” all before tuning out again.

While the stories on the show shifted season-to-season, though, what remained the same (and rock solid) was the writing. You could always rely on the show to find ways to make Sterling Archer an asshole that you had to love. You could rely on Pam to bring out her awesomeness and go on a Pampage. You rely on Cyril to be a weak-willed doormat, for Cheryl to be insane, for Kreiger to be way into the worst kinds of science (in the best possible ways). And you knew that someone was going to say something hilariously offensive right before the show hard-cut to a different scene with that throw-away line leading into a new conversation. The show had its style and patter down to an art, and its characters were so good at carrying on all the weirdness of the series with delightfully fast banter. I loved it.

As we touched upon in the review of the fourteenth season, the show wasn’t meant to end when it did. Reed stated that the team had plans for at least two more seasons, with a larger arc intended for new agent Zara Khan, but FXX handed down the order to end the series and that was all she wrote for Archer. Thankfully the network did at least give the creatives a chance to tie things up, extending the season fourteen order from eight to eleven episodes, with the last three being, as far as the team was concerned, a different season. The finale. One last made-for-TV movie to tie it all up. Titled “Into the Cold” it takes the plotline that was started in fourteen, and planned as a cliffhanger for the future, and wraps it all up as neatly as it can considering this wasn’t originally meant to be the finale.

Not every show gets to tie up its loose ends after it's canceled. While it sucks to see Archer end before the creative team was ready to let it go, at least they got to send the show off with something of a finale, originally planned or not.

As we resume the plot from season fourteen, Lana is desperate to prove to the UN that private spy agencies, including The Agency, are needed for the protection of the world. The UN disagrees, and a motion to make all private spy agencies illegal, under international law, is ready for a vote. Finding out that there’s a bunker-buster bomb, stolen from the Chinese and out for sale on the black market, which will be used by nefarious forces to possibly start a new Cold War, Lana sends her team to Brazil to stop the sale, get the bomb, and pass it off to the right hands. So Sterling, Zara, Pam, and Kreiger head to Rio to do just that, but things, naturally, go sideways.

For starters, as this is likely their last mission, Archer really isn’t focused on being a good agent. Instead he parties harder than he has before, causes all kinds of chaos, and generally acts like a man with nothing to lose. When the bomb, successfully collected under the most extravagant of circumstances, is passed off to CIA handler Slater (Christian Slater), Archer suspects not everything is on the up and up. Lana quickly finds out that Slater wasn’t with the agency anymore and is likely the free agent trying to bring about a new Cold War. So Archer goes off after Slater, naked and with a jetpack, crashing Slater’s helicopter, breaking the head off Christ the Redeemer, and still not actually collecting the bomb. Instead he’s captured, taken to Slater’s compound, and tortured. His antics ruins the case for the UN, and The Agency still has to save him. Hell, they still have to save the world as a bunker-buster is out there and the looming Cold War is still likely. Can the team save the world even if what they do is made illegal?

The UN voting against private spy agencies, leading to the complete shutdown of The Agency, feels like it was inevitable. The reality of Archer was straining against the fact that there was no way these kinds of agencies could actually operate in the real world and get away with the kinds of carnage Archer and his crew caused on a regular basis. The amount of damages that happened around them, and the total dollar amount of destruction, was staggering. The show acknowledged this more than once, saying that contracts were canceled and The Agency had to pay out of pocket to fix the damages, but even then, the situation was untenable.

Perhaps the UN vote was always going to go against The Agency. Perhaps the show was always going to end private spy agencies and set it up that the show would have to reinvent itself again for the future seasons. I like to think that the creative team was ready to remake the series once more, as they had every couple of years, so that the last two seasons could be something new. Archer as a lone-wolf agent, out there doing his thing with Pam at his side. Two buds taking on impossible missions way, way, way off the books. That’s what’s hinted at as a possible ending for the character in this finale, and it works well when you think about it. It certainly makes for a solid launch point for two more seasons of the show, and it also works as a viable ending here for Archer. He can’t change, but he also can’t stop being the world’s greatest secret agent. That’s just who he is.

At the same time, the show is able to tie up everything it had going on well enough that you actually feel like, planned or not, this finale really does work as a solid conclusion for the show. Sure, a few minor things never really get the final conclusion we might have wanted. Zara doesn’t get a larger storyline, since she was added in late and has to be set aside so other characters can get their endings. Cheryl doesn’t find any kind of ending, continuing to be crazy Cheryl until the end. Krieger doesn’t die in some horrific science experiment which, frankly, was the only way Kreiger’s story could end. These kinds of moments would have been inevitable in a longer run of episodes for the show, but they don’t happen here because they can’t. There’s just no time.

We do get some conclusions, though, and not just for The Agency. Slater, of course, comes back for one last run as the villain and considering the teases of him as a bad guy since his introduction many seasons ago, this feels like a fitting last finale for him. Katya, Archer’s one-time finance who was then killed by his rival, Barry, turned into a cyborg, fell for the cyborg version of Barry, and then left Archer to go run the reformed KGB, is back and we get a solid conclusion to their story. Hell, Barry even gets one last run, going from Good Barry in a fridge, to a resurrected cyborg Barry (who still doesn’t quite get to be the real boy he always wanted). The show does right by many of its characters, trying to finish up as much as it can with a three-episode final run. The effort is absolutely appreciated.

And despite it being the finale the show doesn’t feel sad. It’s bittersweet to see the series end, but the three episodes here continue the show’s hallmark blend of raunchy, sarcasm, and absurdity. It wears its comedy like a badge of honor and, even at the end, makes no bones about who it is. It goes out like it came in, absolutely wrong on every level and loving life as it can. Archer knew the show it wanted to be and it didn’t compromise. It even got in one last amusing little dig at The Agency’s former name, ISIS, in a blink or you missed it joke. That’s the kind of fun the show could have in every moment, and even at the end the show knew how to do it right.

So yes, it’s sad to see the series end. Archer, even in its lesser seasons, was still a fantastic series, and this last season managed to bring the show back up to its excellent standards. These last three episodes tie it off with a bow (even if it dangles the possibility that maybe, one day, Sterling Archer could return) and it sends the show out on the highest note it could. It was wrong, it was funny, and it parodied everything it could every chance that it got. This was Archer and the fans will miss it even as we have 14 seasons and 145 episodes that we can watch again and again.