a5c7b9f00b Archer is an animated, half-hour comedy that revolves around an international spy agency and the lives of its employees. Although their work of espionage, reconnaissance missions, wiretapping and undercover surveillance is daunting and dangerous, every covert operation and global crisis is actually just another excuse for the staff to undermine, sabotage and betray each other for personal gain. The series features the voices of H. Jon Benjamin as the highly skilled and incredibly vain master spy "Sterling Archer;" Aisha Tyler as Archer's fellow agent and ex-girlfriend, "Lana Kane;" Jessica Walter as Archer's domineering mother and spy agency director, "Malory Archer;" Chris Parnell as the easily intimidated comptroller-turned secret agent "Cyril Figgis;" Judy Greer as Malory's loquacious, dingbat secretary, "Cheryl;" Amber Nash as the discordant director of human resources, "Pam Poovey;" Adam Reed as the gay voice of reason, "Ray Gillette;" and Lucky Yates as the spy agency's possibly mad scientist/ possibly clone of himself, "Krieger." At an international spy agency, global crises are merely opportunities for its highly trained employees to confuse, undermine, betray and royally screw each other. At the center of it all is suave master spy Sterling Archer, whose less-than-masculine code name is "Duchess." Archer works with his domineering mother Malory, who also is his boss. He also has to deal with his ex-girlfriend, Agent Lana Kane and her new boyfriend, comptroller Cyril Figgis, as well as Malory's lovesick secretary, Cheryl. The seventh season of this hilarious cartoon comedy began and ended with a mystery and image. Archer, voiced by iconic voice actor H. Jon Benjamin, floats in a pool with gunshot wounds bleeding out. The entire season is a flashback to how the group of bumbling spies now turned private detectives got into this situation. <br/><br/>Archer and the gang had lost out of their secret spy agency once called ISIS, for obvious reasons, in the sixth season when they were dissolved and forced to work for the CIA. This introduced the character Slater voiced by Christian Slater who reappears in this season for a cameo episode. For the most part, the Figgis Agency lead by Cyril Figgis, voiced by Chris Parnell, because he is the only one with a detective license. They mostly work for Veronica Deane and her agent or lawyer Alan Shapiro, voiced by Patton Oswalt. <br/><br/>Archer with his immeasurable charm and machismo woos Deane much to the chagrin of his baby's mother Lana Kane, voiced by the very funny Aisha Tyler. Lana gets jealous and flirts with the director, which makes Archer jealous. There are plenty of fun moments throughout this season like many of the previous ones where their arguments go on while they are in a shootout, high-speed chase, or hostage situation.<br/><br/>After season 8: The comedic cartoon series about the hard-drinking and wild shooting secret agent jumps back into a different era for its eighth season of FXX. Archer (H. Jon Benjamin) is in a coma and experiences a strong dream that transports him back to 1949. He's a hard-drinking private detective who is still coping with PTSD after the World War II. The investigation of his partner Woodhouse's murder brings him to the nightclub dreamland owned by Mother (Jessica Walter). He falls for the singer Lana Kane (Aisha Tyler) and is unaware of the secret experiments going on beneath conducted by Doctor Krieger (Lucky Yates). <br/><br/>Archer become ensnared in a strange circumstance where a wealthy heiress Cheryl Tunt (Judy Greer) wants to fake her kidnapping and it is investigated by two detectives Pam Poovey (Amber Nash) and Cyril Figgis (Chris Parnell). With the gang all in different roles, they maneuver around Los Angeles scheming and stealing from one another. Krieger's experiment on Dutch (Dave Willis) get out of control and the cyborg becomes a wild killing machine after being injured by Archer. Lana's band including Ray Gillette (Adam Reed), Cliff (Wyatt Cenac), Floyd (Keegan Michael-Key) and Verl (Wendell Pierce) are constantly getting into to trouble and wind up in prison.<br/><br/>Check out more of this review and others at swilliky.com On paper, the premise "James Bond meets Arrested Development" sounds a bit obscure, doesn't it? Having said that, this show proves it has its own unique sense of humour with its bizarre and borderline insane characters.<br/><br/>From the self-obsessed Sterling Archer, to the headstrong Lana, to the desperate and pathetic Cyril, to the gormless and insane Cheryl, and so on, these characters have easily definable traits that make them stand out.<br/><br/>The series follows our eccentric and inept characters running a spy agency, led by Archer's cold and corrupt mother, Malory. Under her command, our team must carry out espionage missions, albeit disastrously, which adds to the chaotic comedy.<br/><br/>The humour is borderline dark, vulgar and filled with innuendoes. Numerous running jokes and obscure references take up most of the series. The animation is very well done and has improved with every successive season. The writing is done well too with people finishing each others sentences and the most random lines being a setup to a joke.<br/><br/>Overall, it's a crazy series but it has laughs guaranteed. The universe of Archer uses fashion and hairstyles from the early 1960s with a mix of 1980s architecture. Present-day technology such as smartphones and the internet as well as current social values such as the general acceptance of LGBT people and women in positions of power can also be seen in Archer. Countries that no longer exists today such as the Soviet Union still clearly exists in the Archer universe. "The Cold War never ended" is the most accepted theory put forward by the show's creator which mean's that Archer is set in the present day but in an alternate timeline from our own.<br/><br/>