We’ll go ahead and post the Spoiler Alert right here. Before you go any further; if you’re not current on your seasons, this is going to wreck the show for you like Pam wrecks a company Christmas party or a tub of ice cream. If you are less familiar with the show, or new and you didn’t get that reference, you should catch up first and then read this review. Wherever there are two people there will inevitably be a difference of opinions. Classic Archer fans are necessarily divided on the Dreamland season of the show. For those who are familiar with the incredible early era of film and it’s many noir private investigators this is a fairly natural extension of the Archer concept. It’s precisely the sort of thing a later day secret agent might have read or dreamed about.
The Show So Far
The Archer fandom wiki page claims that Adam Reeds pitch for this show was “What if James Bond was played by Charlie Sheen as Charlie Sheen?” We can neither confirm nor deny the truth of that statement, but it’s apt either way. The adult cartoon Archer is a spy story, but in a universe that someone like Deadpool would frankly feel right at home inside. Sterling Archer, AKA “Duchess,” is a spy with an exorbitant expense account, an on and off relationship with a bombastic virago of a woman who is frankly more capable than he is, or would be if everyone around her didn’t screw things up so often and completely. His butler is someone he occasionally literally walks all over, and his personal habits are as abhorrent as the original James Bond was cheekily sexist.
Archer works for his actual mother, who is herself a cross between an entirely creepy female silver fox and an overbearing mommy-dearest, upper-crusty, alcoholic workaholic type in a power suit. His co-workers run the gamut from the obese hypersexual Pam, and his sometimes girlfriend’s nerdy accountant ex-boyfriend to the work bimbo, nerdy doctor, and resident flamboyant gay man. Each of these characters manages to be both a trope and a fantastic modern reimagining of their persona.
Dreamland
After getting shot three times in the chest during the two-part finale of season seven, Archer ends up in a very daytime soap opera-like coma in the hospital. The Dreamland season centers mostly around his dreaming mind as he conjures up a more classic existence for himself. In Dreamland Archer is not a modern spy, he’s a classic 1930s-1940s Film Noir Private Investigator. He is trapped in an idealized yet dark version of the movie set he’d just been working undercover at in the previous season.
His mother isn’t his everyday boss in the coma-world. She’s just another in a long series of employers, albeit one who gets her hooks in him hard and fast. She appears to be working with criminals openly herself. His usual love interest Lana comes in as a sexy nightclub singer who works for his mother and even in his dreams can think and talk circles around him. His co-workers play roles like regular police, and a bartender who works at the nightclub.
Archer himself is an actual hero in his own mind. This should be no surprise to anyone familiar with the show. Within the first episode, he almost single-handedly frees a whole shipment of enslaved women and keeps them from being forced into prostitution. His deeper motive involves trying to solve the murder of his butler, who has, in fact, died in the real world. Lana and his mother discuss this fact beside his hospital bed early on.
Cons
The downside to running an ingeniously apropos season that is part soap opera, part throwback to the silver screen era, and part typical Archer is that it won’t read for everyone. Plenty of modern adults don’t have a background in classic film to draw from. Though it may be hard to believe for those of us who, for example, review TV and movies regularly, many people haven’t seen any James Bond, or none before Pierce Brosnan at best. With all the advances there have been in films during the 1990s-2010s we sometimes forget that not everyone is going to see what older viewers would process thoughtlessly. Many viewers are too young to have even seen something like Austin Powers when it came out in 1997. It’s like the old joke about the person who doesn’t understand the joke about a horse in a bar. The more you have to explain the less entertaining it gets.
Pros
Despite the problem, which is lack of reference material to grasp the intricacies of the season eight plotline, there is a ray of sunshine here. Not only do older generations love it, which helps to bring older viewers and younger together in a shared amusement, but the glaring lack of perspective is genuinely helping lead more youthful viewers back to a bygone era of film. There are never enough ways to bring the best parts of our past into the light. Just as hologram technology is showing a new generation of children what it was like to see Elvis or Tupac on stage, shows like Archer making these sorts of leaps helps integrate people from different generations in ways we never imagined.
Adam Reed and Matt Thompson aren’t getting enough credit. Whatever they are being paid, it’s nowhere near what they are worth, and someone needs to give them both a raise. The pithy nod to the film world after Sterling Archer is shot by an actress who is filming a 1940s era film is brilliant. The whole show is so much better than casual fans realize. There is an art to making a fart joke work with cyborg/robots and a classic tuxedoed international man of mystery style spy.
Conclusion
Sadly, if you don’t appreciate or know much about the black and white film era, then a lot of the poignant and incredibly well thought out aspects of the Dreamland season may go over your head. It’s almost like an inside joke. Except, fortunately, anyone can be in on it if they want to watch some classic films. We loved this season so much we wish the writer would take that concept and run with it to create a whole new show. Was it the right choice? Time will tell, but we sure think so, and we clearly aren’t alone.
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