"Brokedown Merry-Go-Round" Show of the Week: Archer, "Arrival/Departure"

Every Friday in "'Brokedown Merry-Go-Round' Show of the Week," I discuss the week's best first-run animated series episode I saw. "Brokedown Merry-Go-Round," a two-hour block of original score tracks from animated shows or movies, airs weekdays at 2pm Pacific on AFOS.

Earlier this week, in a nice little audio essay by NPR TV critic Eric Deggans ("TV's roster of late-night talk show hosts is whiter than a bobsledding team from Scandinavia."), he recommended to CBS that they should consider handing over the Late Late Show time slot to Archer cast member Aisha Tyler if the enjoyably off-kilter Craig Ferguson quits The Late Late Show. In addition to being a funny stand-up and a decent interviewer during her own podcast Girl on Guy, the current Whose Line Is It Anyway? host has plenty of TV interviewing experience (she's one of the 80 jillion hosts of The Talk on CBS and was even once a frontrunner to replace Craig Kilborn, Ferguson's predecessor), so she'd be the perfect replacement for Ferguson.

Plus a nightly show wouldn't interfere with Tyler's voice work on Archer (according to another Archer cast member, Judy Greer, it takes about only 30 minutes to record lines for the show). Her role as Lana Kane, the seemingly level-headed and continually frustrated ISIS agent, closet Republican and now, new mother, easily outstrips all her previous acting roles, much like how Mark Hamill's voice work as the Joker for Batman: The Animated Series, the B:TAS spinoff movies and the Batman: Arkham Asylum video game franchise is the best thing Hamill ever did, even more so than his on-camera work in the Star Wars movies (or his campy guest shots as the Trickster on the '90s Flash TV series).

In Archer's satisfying fifth-season finale, which finds the gang still stuck in the fictional dictatorship of San Marcos, Tyler continues to demonstrate why she's a tremendous voice actor, whether it's when her character's experiencing what has to be the first sitcom childbirth scene in TV history where the mom gets slapped and punched around by other women (I particularly love how the animators gave Lana such bloodshot eyes while she's in labor) or when Lana's quietly introducing Archer to their baby daughter Abbijean. There are times during Archer's run when I've felt like Lana is on the underwritten side in her role as the straight man to the likes of Archer, Malory, Cheryl/Carol/Cherlene and Pam, despite how much life and nuance Tyler brings to her character. But when Lana reveals to a suddenly tinnitus-stricken Archer in "Arrival/Departure" that she stole his sperm in order to procreate, it's a great reminder that Lana isn't always as level-headed as she thinks she is and that she's capable of being as batshit twisted as the rest of the gang.

"So I guess it maybe wasn't the most ethical thing I've ever done in my entire life," muses Lana to an adrift and distracted Archer. It's not the only example of unethical behavior in "Arrival/Departure." There's also the whole convoluted deal that had the former ISIS employees (unsuccessfully) slinging cocaine for the CIA, an arrangement that turns out to have been masterminded by Archer and Malory, while everyone else in the gang was kept in the dark about Archer and Malory's involvement in the CIA-ISIS deal. Archer's bold, season-long experiment as "Archer Vice," which is brought to an end in this episode by Malory successfully blackmailing CIA operative Holly (Gary Cole) to restore ISIS to her, was fun while it lasted. It proved that the show could still be enjoyable without the spy agency backdrop and that Archer creator Adam Reed could handle much more ambitious storytelling as capably and effectively as he did with the mission-of-the-week structure during the show's previous seasons (particularly the second and third ones).

The fiasco that was the gang's cocaine mission also gave a new sense of purpose to secondary characters who have always been funny but whose subplots were starting to feel repetitive late last season, particularly Cyril and to a lesser extent, Cherlene. Her new career as a country singer spawned perhaps the show's cleverest piece of tie-in merchandise, an actual country album featuring musician Jessy Lynn Martens as Cherlene (one of its tracks, "Cherlene's Broken Hearts & Auto Parts," a cover of album producer Kevn Kinney's "Broken Hearts and Auto Parts," is briefly used in this episode as source music while the gang attempts to flee San Marcos).

So now that ISIS is back in the picture, I hope Reed doesn't revert next season to the mission-of-the-week structure that he admitted was starting to bore him last year. "Archer Vice" was as close as Archer got to the Wiseguy approach of storytelling (as in one long undercover mission lasting for seven to 12 episodes), which I've always wanted to see more spy shows experiment with (missions-of-the-week are more their jam). Earlier this year, Reed said he was considering sending the gang to prison for Archer's sixth season, but I like to think he remembered the tedium of My Name Is Earl's season behind bars and then dumped the idea.

Maybe Reed should send the ISIS agents to go undercover as execs from Cherlene's record label for the entire season, a la Wiseguy's Dead Dog Records arc. But whatever Reed decides to do with ISIS next season, let's hope it continues to result in funny bits of business like Cyril delivering Rambo's climactic monologue from First Blood after Juliana Calderon (Lauren Cohan) dumps him, Cherlene referring to Lana's vagina as mauve or Abbijean being her father's daughter when she does Archer's "Hold up, I'm drinking" gesture while being breastfed. And now that Lana's the mom she always wanted to be, hopefully, the addition of a baby won't ruin Archer (like it has with too many other sitcoms) and put a damper on how much of a great role Lana has been for Tyler, whether or not she becomes, outside of the show, the late-night host she deserves to be and a sea of mauveness in the way-too-lily-white desert that is the late-night landscape.

Stray observations/memorable quotes:
* Remember all those clips in the montage that concluded "White Elephant" at the start of the season, which I said was a "season 5 trailer that's badly disguised as Sterling's fantasy sequence about his new life"? Most of those clips turned out to be fake. As Reed said, "almost none of the things in the original trailer as written wound up in the season. So we went back--and I guess how they make real trailers--watched seven episodes and used footage to put in the trailer." Shit. I was really looking forward to seeing more of Cherlene fending off adversaries with a rocket launcher.

* "Aww... All the gardeners are running away."

* "Psh! You know how many times I've helped a cow give birth in the barn? Plus one time, my sister Edie? Well, she couldn't have it in the house. Long story. A long, racist story."

* Malory: "Lana Kane, you have known me for a long, long time. When have I ever been honest with Sterling?" Lana: "Huh." Malory: "Exactly."

The people who run Sleuth have no Cloo

When NBCUniversal (now one word instead of two) added Sleuth to its stable of cable channels in 2006, it was an alright idea for a channel: Nick at Nite with guns. For its first couple of years, Sleuth's 24-hour lineup was comprised of reruns of NBCUniversal-owned cop or detective shows like Dragnet, Magnum, P.I., Miami Vice and the always-worth-revisiting Homicide: Life on the Street.

But like so many other channels, of course, Sleuth has strayed from its original purpose. These days, DirecTV channel 308 is an ill-defined dumping ground for reruns of current original shows from its sister station USA (Royal Pains, In Plain Sight)--and Walker, Texas Ranger. With content like a doctor show (Royal Pains), a cop show with very little detective work because of its focus on witness protection (In Plain Sight) and a cop show with no detective work that's only watchable when Conan O'Brien's around to butt in with snarky and appalled commentary (Walker), the name Sleuth doesn't make much sense anymore. Cloo--the new name that Sleuth will assume on a yet-to-be-confirmed future date a la the still-inane 2009 conversion of its other sister station Sci Fi to Syfy--makes even less sense. What's next? NBCUniversal rebranding USA as YouSA? (They also own Telemundo. Maybe they should rename it YouEse.)

Occasionally, Sleuth has done something nice like temporarily revive a show I've longed to see again (Keen Eddie, The Rockford Files) or air a 007 marathon or the surprisingly good 1973 made-for-TV caper movie/unsold anthology show pilot The Alpha Caper, which isn't on DVD and stars Henry Fonda as a forcibly retired parole officer who teams up with the ex-cons he used to watch over--two of whom are played by Leonard Nimoy and Larry Hagman--to hijack a shipment of gold. But otherwise, as a fan of the private eye and caper genres, I've found Sleuth to be a wasted opportunity, regurgitating too many of the same broadcast network procedural reruns that can already be found on USA (House, NCIS).

Unless it's airing a White Collar episode I've never seen before or a Burn Notice rerun with a useful spy tip I need to jot down, Sleuth isn't worth my time. The channel's so cheap it doesn't have any on-air hosts or any original programming that could have given Sleuth a distinctive personality, like how breezy procedurals have become USA's forte or how FX has become synonymous with edgy comedies and gritty and violent but intelligently written dramas (the only original show that Sleuth has produced is a 2006 I Love the '80s-style special about "America's Top Sleuths").

It's owned by NBCUniversal and it's called Sleuth (that is until the name change to Cloo takes place), so why isn't the channel diving into the NBCUniversal library, with its vast history of influential crime shows, and pulling out classic sleuthy properties like Columbo (R.I.P. Peter Falk) or the other NBC Mystery Movie shows? Shouldn't a channel called Sleuth be a little, uh, sleuthier?

Also, as someone who stopped finding Law & Order interesting after an ailing Jerry Orbach left the mothership (although the later pairing of Jesse L. Martin and Jeremy Sisto was a great and too-brief one during the mothership's Law half, as was the duo of Chris Noth and Annabella Sciorra on Criminal Intent), I don't think Sleuth needs to be another repository for Criminal Intent and Special Victims Unit reruns (TNT has exclusive rights to reruns of the mothership, which explains its absence on the NBCUniversal channels' schedules). Okay, maybe Criminal Intent is tolerable once every weekday, but a five-hour Goren-thon like the ones Sleuth often does is overkill. Plus, Sleuth is the sixth channel on the dial that currently airs Criminal Intent reruns, after USA, Bravo, Oxygen, WGN and the local MyNetworkTV affiliate. Enough already, man.

TV Critic Grimlock is the new definitive voice of TV criticism, so move over, Tom Shales--that is if you can move that hefty ass of yours

In just 50 or so tweets, Grimlock the Dinobot has emerged as a new insightful voice in the often stuffy and annoyingly middlebrow field of TV criticism. Nobody--not even the witty recappers over at the Onion-owned A.V. Club or the refreshingly not-so-stuffy, comic book-loving Alan Sepinwall--has enlivened coverage of the new fall TV season quite like the belligerent tyrannosaur has:

"me grimlock liked when grace park in bikini punched out surfer on five-0. hottest entrance since julie warner skinny-dip in doc hollywood!" (Tuesday, October 05, 2010 8:06 PM)

"me grimlock not miss rick sanchez. sesame street newsflash reporter kermit frog: he more credible journalist than rick sanchez." (Tuesday, October 05, 2010 8:00 PM)

"me grimlock not into unfunny nbc sitcom outsourced. me wish that call center get torched by mumbai gangsters in final episode." (Wednesday, October 06, 2010 11:45 AM)

"me grimlock not masturbate to fox news ladies because they sound so hateful and whiny like starscream." (Wednesday, October 06, 2010 11:41 AM)

I haven't been this riveted by the thoughts of a writer who's discussing TV since the time Armond White implied he wanted to spoon with Keller from Oz.

So what if TV Critic Grimlock, who launched his Twitter page with my help last Sunday (@TVCritGrimlock), has only one follower? Some talented writers are at their most interesting when they're a best-kept secret--or before they jump the shark, to borrow a TV-related phrase that, now that I've finally thought about it, is kind of as tiresome a term as "BFF" or "bromance."

From the Autobot homebase known as the Ark, Grimlock took some time out of his busy TV-watching schedule to discuss the fall season and the animosity towards Optimus Prime (and Dinobot teammate Slag and anyone who's a Decepticon) that occasionally seeps into his tweets, which always look e.e. cummings-esque because Grimlock doesn't quite understand the purpose of the Caps Lock key. To make this Q&A less irritating to read, all of Grimlock's words have been properly cased.

Tribeca: Jimmy J. Aquino's Lacuna Matata, Part 1

This is the first in a series of posts I'm calling "Lacuna Matata," in which I attempt to preserve the fading memory of TV shows (or in some cases, comic books) that no one except me remembers watching because the networks somehow Lacuna'd these things from everyone's noggins.

Buried somewhere in my old VHS collection at my parents' house is a tape in shabby condition that contains the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles episode that guest-starred Harrison Ford and the first two episodes of Tribeca, a pretty good, rarely seen 1993 anthology series that was filmed on location in New York and lasted only seven weeks on Fox.

A decade before Robert De Niro and his Tribeca Productions business partner Jane Rosenthal co-founded the Tribeca Film Festival, the two producers used the Lower Manhattan neighborhood as the setting for what was essentially a throwback to the highbrow '50s and '60s TV dramas that were made during "a time when socially-conscious New Yorkers ruled the airwaves," as Maclean's' Jaime J. Weinman describes the New York-centric early years of scripted TV. That somber, East Side/West Side-esque approach meant this anthology drama, which focused on a different Tribeca resident or two each week, fit right in on the Simpsons and Married... with Children network's schedule about as well as Carrie Prejean at an opposite couples pride parade.

There are two things I saw while growing up that made me think to myself, "Wow, despite the cockroaches and occasional muggers, New York ain't such a bad place after all and I want to move there someday": Ghostbusters and Fox's Tribeca. The show also gave me my first glimpse of Kevin Spacey, who guest-starred as a suicidal singer/songwriter--and got to show off his singing voice--in an episode that reunited him with Tribeca showrunner David J. Burke, who previously co-created the classic Wiseguy arc that gave Spacey his big break. Burke's taste for downbeat, untidy endings--a frequent element of his writing on Wiseguy--also gave Tribeca at the time a certain edge over network dramas not called Homicide.

Though it was an anthology show, Tribeca had a two-man regular cast (Philip Bosco as a kindly coffeehouse owner and Joe Morton as an equally kindly patrolman who looked like he came from Law & Order: Mounted Police Unit) and some nice bits of continuity (a character like a homeless war vet played by Stephen Lang would briefly appear one week and then turn up as the main character the following week). Like many other anthologies, Tribeca didn't always hit one out the park, but when it did, it was network TV at its best. The series' strongest episode was the first one, "The Box," which featured a standout Emmy-winning performance by a fresh-off-Boyz N the Hood Laurence Fishburne as a plainclothes cop who's obsessed with both finding the mugger who killed his stockbroker brother (Carl Lumbly) and opening a puzzle box that his brother gave to him before he died.

With its all-black guest cast, "The Box" is also a great 45-minute argument for the need for more network drama series with casts that consist mostly of actors of color. It's a shame that the five networks have been willing to take a chance on all-black sitcoms but not all-black dramas, possibly because of the low ratings of past dramas like Avery Brooks' A Man Called Hawk, James Earl Jones' Under One Roof and Blair Underwood's City of Angels. Sixteen years after its initial broadcast, "The Box" is sadly, still a rarity rather than the norm.

I remember seeing the reclusive De Niro make a surprise appearance in a Fox promo a la John Wayne's 1955 Gunsmoke series premiere intro to get Fox viewers to tune in to his show. No such luck. One other thing I remember about Tribeca was its cool opening and closing theme, an instrumental version of "Keep It Goin'," a James Brown-sampling 1992 track by largely forgotten alt-rap artist and A.V. Club "Least Essential Albums of the '90s" nominee Me Phi Me.

Tribeca is such an obscure series that there are no YouTube clips or .jpgs from the series online (the only pictures that turn up in Google image searches for Tribeca are pics of either De Niro or the neighborhood skyline). So as you listen to the Me Phi Me tune (that is if you can find it online), just stare at the photo of the Tribeca skyline at the top of this post, and you'll get a pretty accurate recreation of the Tribeca opening titles, which consisted of nothing but whip pans across the Tribeca streets and skyline. If you want to see whip pans, just hit yourself in the head with a skillet.

My snarky movie summaries (Part 4)

Previously: Parts 1, 2 and 3.

Red Road
This is an Advance Party Concept film, which means the crew had to abide by a bunch of strict filmmaking rules, much like the Dogme 95 collective: 1) Keep the director away from light. 2) Don't get the director wet. And 3) Whatever you do, never ever feed the director after midnight.

Reign Over Me
Adam Sandler wears a wig that's supposed to evoke Bob Dylan. He looks more like Doctor Who #3 (ask your nerd friend).

Rocky Balboa
The next sequel should pit Rocky against Rambo a la Freddy vs. Jason. Two times the action! Two times the mumbling! It would end up being the first Rocky flick done entirely with subtitles.

Saw IV
Saw IV, patience 0.

Scary Movie 4
Leslie Nielsen's naked ass may be the first genuinely scary moment in the history of the Scary Movie franchise.

Scoop
A ghost tips Scarlett Johansson to clues about a serial killer. Why didn't that ghost warn Johansson about the suckitude of The Island?


Severance
It's a movie about that hot chick who played Susan Profitt on Wiseguy.

Shooter
Starring Dick Cheney.

Snakes on a Plane
The eagerly awaited horror flick that pits Samuel L. Jackson against a plane full of William Morris agents.

Three Times
Taiwanese art-house favorite Hou Hsiao-hsien follows three different couples, each in a different time period. In America, we call that an episode of Blind Date.

Transformers
The '80s franchise that allowed Orson Welles to conclude his career with dignity by casting him as a planet-eating lard-ass is back.

Vacancy
A look inside the mind of Jessica Simpson.

Vitus
A six-year-old piano prodigy gets no love. Not even from the ladies. They'd rather get cooties from Zack and Cody.

Volver
The title is Spanish for "to drive a boxy Swedish car."

War Dance
This documentary looks at troubled Ugandan kids who have discovered the power of dance. It's like Footloose, but with music that doesn't suck.

What Would Jesus Buy?
The Christian Broadcasting Network. So that He could take it over like Ted Nugent wanted to do with Muzak and tell Pat Robertson to shut up.

Zodiac
Decades before San Francisco was terrorized by one of Jan Wahl's giant hats, there was the Zodiac killer.