Archer has made plenty of Burt Reynolds references … so what better way to officially start its third season (after last fall’s “Heart of Archness” three-parter) than by getting Burt Reynolds to guest voice?
How about writing a story that allows him to screw up as much as possible?
Archer finally met his childhood hero, only to find out that Burt was doing the unthinkable: having sex with Archer’s mom Malory. Archer fans know that any mention of his mom’s sex life usually causes spontaneous vomiting, but this time he just decided to faint and give himself a black eye. The idea of the person he idolizes doing the one thing he can’t stand even considering was torture for him and hilarious for us.
Burt had plenty to do, whether it was psychoanalyzing Archer (who vacillated between anger, giddiness and freaking out like a fourteen-year-old boy) or essentially saving everyone else by dispatching of a Cuban hit squad. But even so, Archer didn’t turn into The Burt Reynolds Show. We got hilarious bits about how Malory had no idea that her son was a Burt Reynolds fanatic, how Krieger got a new van only to see it get jacked up like the old van, and how Archer’s apartment building had the world’s slowest elevator.
And we even got to see Archer attempt to be nice to his mother, ushering her off to a movie premiere with Burt, even if it only resulted in him being told to “blow it out your ass.” He might be a total douche 98% of the time, but there’s that 2% that’s kinda decent, and that’s nice. Even if it’s a very small number.
Kudos to Adam Reed for getting the best guest star Archer fans could have asked for and writing the best story around him. That’s how you (technically) start a season.
Clacked by Brittany Frederick 
on Jan 20, 2012 @ 09:29 EST5EDT
