Archer - The Complete Season Five

"Archer" has always walked a fine line between droll and dull, wavering from uproarious to tedious. With "Archer - The Complete Fifth Season" the show scores high on the yuk-meter, registering laughs both for its particular brand of giddy lateral humor and its sly parodying of the traditional workplace comedy.

In a bold move, the show's creators blow up the headquarters of super-spy Archer (voiced by H. Jon Benjamin) in the first few minutes of the season opener, launching a season-long storyline that finds Archer, the pregnant Lana (Aisha Tyler), cocktail-swilling schemer Malory (Jessica Walter), and the office staff trying to offload a metric ton of cocaine (and getting into their usual brand of scrapes, scuffles, shootouts, and dustups).

Ditzy Cheryl wills herself to country super-stardom; HR director Pam (Amber Nash) finds that being addicted to coke is great for her figure; Hitler clone and all-around tech guy Krieger (Lucky Yates) has a chance to hang with his (also cloned) bros; Cyril (Chris Parnell) proves what sort of damage an accountant can do once he's given a gun; and gay computer whiz Ray (Adam Reed) continues to bounce from wheelchair-bound paraplegic to unsteadily-powered cyborg and back again. Yakuza, banana republic dictators, Southern small-town rednecks (some in deputy uniforms)... it's all right here. The one-off punchlines and riffs on recurring themes fly thick and fast -- this show never met a running gag it didn't slap into irons and wring dry.

The season brings Kenny Loggins in for a mystifying guest turn, and Christian Slater embraces his bad-boy persona as a CIA agent and drug runner named... wait for it... Slater.

The special features are few and brief, but just as inventively funny. In "Old Pam Poovey Had A Farm - The Musical," a chore as ordinary as babysitting goes spectacularly awry; Cheryl, a.k.a. Charlene, crushes a talk show appearance in "Cherlene Tunt Interview on Wake Up Country"; and a Cherlene music video, "Midnight Blues," takes the show into MTV turf, where (you're not surprised by this?) it rules.

"Archer: The Complete Season Five"
Blu-ray
$39.99
http://shop.fxnetworks.com/archer-season-5-blu-ray/detail.php?p=743221&v=fx_shows_archer