Archer Dreamland Proves Adam Reed Just Don’t Give A Fuck

What The Simpsons have proven exponentially and a lot of other subsequent shows have in its wake demonstrated, that an animated show, with the right amount of popularity, can run forever. There are plenty of animated shows that you can jump into season 6, episode 14 of and enjoy if it’s your particular brand of whiskey without needing the continuity of the previous five seasons. You might miss some inside jokes from time to time or an obscure reference for the day one folk, but these shows are built for the viewer to jump in and jump out. This is why I’m so enthralled with Archer, a show that has plenty of standalone episodes but has spent the previous seven seasons training its audience to know each person’s history and tendencies, the jokes, comedic beats, its special brand of language and literary devices. If someone says, “I will literally XYZ…,” I can expect someone to step up and make the clarification, “well, not literally, but…” along with a new follow-up joke. I know that each season Pam is going to have a more vulgar but somehow completely appropriate catch phrase than the previous year. Archer has taught us how to speak its language and expects us to be fluent at this point. It’s the reason they can do something like Dreamland for an entire season.

I imagine that the last few seasons of Archer have come from Adam Reed being very happy to work on Archer but also trying to stay ahead of his own impending boredom that might come from working on a show for this many …