DrBAMF_PhD_MMT

I wanted to like this show, really I did. It's filled with generic psuedo-alien technobabble that the show somehow seems to think is a joke all on its own. Every character that isn't blatantly telegraphed to be an antagonist talks non-stop about their petty insecurities that feel more and more tacked on for the sake of sympathetic relatability each time they do it. They even manage to make jokes that really SHOULD be funny (like an advertisement playing during surgery) but somehow aren't. I don't even know how they manage that, perhaps it's simply because the rest of it is so boring that the rare above-mediocrity moments end up being desperately low-key. Someone on the internet recommended this for people who like Rick and Morty, but I'd actually say the exact opposite. This is Rick and Morty for people who don't like Rick and Morty. This is humor for people who don't like comedy. This is Sci-Fi for people who only understand it through stereotypes. If this show has an audience, I have no idea who they are.

Wow. This is easily the worst, and in fact, only genuinely bad season of Archer. I might be a bit biased, as I love spy shows and HATE drug shows/movies/games or really media about drugs of any kind, but It seems so obviously inferior to all the seasons before and after it that I had to write a review. For one, its not funny, at all, and when on the rare occasion that it does approach humor, its only when they abandon the drug premise to focus on cheryl's inexplicable country music career. The drug side of things is painfully shoehorned into their world and completely rejects not only the basic premise of the show but all the built-up character arc and continuity from the entire show, dumping all the secondary side characters and turning the main characters into stupid caricatures of themselves that aren't funny, interesting or even sensible. Despite reviewing this years after it's release, I actually did see it when it was new. I was a fan of Archer from season 1 and it just got better and better until season 5. Despite the stupid ending of 4 (which did not bode well for 5) I watched it when it was new. It was SO BAD that I quit the show entirely and didn't come back to it until just now, which is a shame because the seasons that come AFTER 5 are amazing, and almost as good as the first 4. This makes me hate season 5 even more, knowing that its decrepit stupidity denied me the goodness of the rest of the show for 8 years! To anyone enjoying Archer for the first time who sees this review, do **** favor, ignore the nonsensical positive reviews (probably people who can't admit how awful this season is because they love the rest) and just skip this awful waste of time. It does actually get slightly better near the end, but in no way is it at all worth the boredom and annoyance needed to get to that point. Besides, season 6 immediately retcons season 5 out of existence in the first episode, so you are literally not missing anything by skipping directly from 4 to 6

This show seems to go completely out of its way to defy expectations, past the point of it becoming pathological. Sometimes this is good, yielding a few unique and interesting moments, but most of the time (especially in the last few episodes) it just cheapens the narrative, abandoning all sense and rationality. As others have said, this is one of those new streaming service shows that puts a huge priority on having non-white, non-heterosexual characters. Unlike some others that leave reviews on the internet, this trend doesn't really bother me when its done well. But this is 1800s, VICTORIAN london. The original Sherlock Holmes stories were set in the 1880s i believe, and while the Holmes and Watson characters have been borrowed for different periods before with great results, this show is very deliberately set in the original era, they even specifically state that the current Queen is Victoria. At this point in time, slavery and the triangle trade were still in living memory, and people of african descent in london were a tiny minority. Showing the difficulties of Victorian-era black people could have been an interesting journey in its own right, yet here the racism and sexism of the time arent just sidestepped, they are deliberately RETCONNED out of existence. They have a black lord as a character, with a white wife, something that doesn't even exist NOW, as well as a huge population of affluent upper-crust black social climbers, many of whom wear makeup and earrings that would seem a bit much in a modern nightclub. If they wanted to show the diversity of the real world, they would have been better off making these characters Indian instead, as there is a historical basis for affluent (and poor) Indians being present in Victorian London. So what are we to make of this? Racism and sexism, indeed prejudice of any kind seems essentially non-existent in this world, so is it intended to be some kind of alternative history fiction, set in a world where international, institutional, race-based slavery never existed? Ok, I can accept that. After all, the entire point of the show is the investigation of supernatural, magical nonsense that clearly didn't happen in Victorian London anyway, so why not? Because the show tries to have it both ways. It spends all this time painting a world where racism, sexism, and anti-gay prejudice doesn't seem to exist, then also stirs in this **** early-industrial poverty meat-grinder which isn't even slightly explained, then it tries to make these points about prejudice in the last few episodes that dont make an IOTA of sense to the world they've tried to portray. And thats the real problem with this show, it doesnt know what its doing or what it wants to say. It seems to know that it wants to say SOMETHING, it just can't figure out what that is. The fact that Watson and Sherlock Holmes are part of this show is almost incidental, there is very little Holmsian investigation, and the focus is almost entirely, not just on the supposed irregulars but the Beatrice character specifically. She's smart, but not enough to figure things out for herself, brave, but not enough to do anything without having her hand held, and cares, but not enough to see past her own personal problems. Though in fairness to her character, that's pretty much the same for all of them. The world is under threat, and London is about to run down the tubes due to supernatural McGuffins running wild, and all anyone seems to care about, Holmes and Watson included, are their own stupid personal subplots. The whole story proliferates with ignominious personal problems, some of which are lifted DIRECTLY from **** books, none of which feel even slightly natural, and most of them don't even make any sense. Its infuriating how unfocused the entire narrative is, it makes you think "Well, if the characters who LIVE HERE don't care about the world, why the hell should I care about their pathetic ham-strung engineered dramas?"