Entertainment

Before 'Archer' Season 7 Begins, Here's 5 Vintage Archer Fuck-Ups

In preparation for the show's new season, we revisit the bumbling spy's least competent moments.

FX

Sterling Archer returns to FX on March 31, when he and the the ex-ISIS, ex-CIA crew head to L.A. to go full Magnum P.I. in the show’s seventh season. As a private investigator at Cyril’s new detective agency, Archer will hopefully flex his muscle for idiocy; the animated world’s favorite ex-spy is, after all, hilariously incompetent. And isn’t that’s why he’s still on the air after the divisive Archer: Vice experiment? In the new season, which has been teased as a “refresh,” we can only hope we’ll see a return to classic fuckups like these moments from the show’s early days:

Breaches Age of Consent With German Teen, Injures Genitals

In “Swiss Miss,” the ISIS crew is tasked with preventing the kidnapping of Anke, a German billionaire’s hot underage daughter. But Archer’s raging sex drive endangers the seemingly simple mission and his own genitalia in the process: his charge, the “slutty little ninja,” is a raging nymphomaniac with the hots for her new bodyguard. In a vaguely noble attempt to not hook up with the “Countess von Fingerbang” he drops a razor on his junk, failing to realize she’s been the threat all along.

Fishes With Bow and Arrow, Shoots Alligator

On his trip to the New Orleans swamplands in “Pipeline Fever,” Archer’s more preoccupied with channeling his inner Burt Reynolds and mixing Hurricanes than finding Gandalf, the terrorist at large. In an attempt to catch trout with a bow and arrow, he shoots an alligator in the head instead; warding it off with gunshots, he ends up shooting a hole in the airboat, sinking all of his equipment. But not the cooler full of beer. “Thank God for small miracles,” right?

Specifies “Mancy,” Not “Nancy,” Blows Up Blimp

Trying to disarm the bomb on-board the Excelsior airship in “Skytanic,” Archer puts in an emergency call to the ISIS help desk; poor Ray, trying to decipher the sequence of letters in the bomb’s serial number, expects professional radio speak — “Roger,” not “O.K.” — which Archer, ever the paradigm of gender positivity, interprets as “M” as in mancy,” not “Nancy.”

Plants Grenade in Mobster’s Ass, Loses Hearing

Archer’s diagnosis of breast cancer led to his expensive chemotherapy regimen in Placebo Effect,” which happened to consist of nothing more than sugar, Zima, and medical-grade weed. Puffing on “joints the size of tampons,” he goes on a revenge “RAMPAAAAAAGE,” mistakenly shoving a real grenade, not a smoke grenade, up an enemy’s rectum, which inevitably explodes — and blows out his hearing for the second time in the season.

Picks a Fight With Stranger, Realizes It’s Burt Reynolds

There are two things worse than discovering someone is sleeping with your mother: Realizing that person is your personal hero, Gator McKlusky himself, or Burt Reynolds. In “The Man from Jupiter” (Reynolds’s real-life Florida hometown), Archer’s attempt to take on the Operation C.I.A. star himself ends with his head smashed against a countertop and going full fanboy on Malory’s new piece.

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