anahata

This season, along with the last, have been disappointing. I started watching Archer for the character development rather than for the mostly throwaway plots. The writing has changed from seeing what happens when crazy characters are put in normal / bizarre situations to putting characters in bizarre situations and seeing what happens. There's a subtle difference there, but it's like the difference between Star Trek DS9 and Star Trek TNG.

Beyond that, there are far fewer callbacks to old, classic jokes (like "classic foo" itself) which gave the series a lot of its charm. They were never overdone to the point of absurdity, to the point of ruining the joke (looking at you, Family Guy), but I could rely on seeing a "are we still doing phrasing?" or cool, obscure bit of culture / history every episode. Now, we barely get any kind of callback to old jokes (nary a single "phrasing?", nor any "if you want foo, that's how you get foo", nor even a "Danger Zone!", which are used to be series hallmarks), and the two cultural references weren't explained like they used to be. This isn't the Archer I started watching for, and while I like the scifi genre, the writing within the genre is what matters. I echo some other comments here in that I wish things return to the way they used to be for the next season.