The entire point of Archer (such as there is one) is that it portrays the white male protagonist action hero archetype in a manner that actually highlights his ignorance and bigotry. And also, to make some of the most inappropriate workplace humor jokes ever[SUP]*[/SUP]. It is to Bond films and Michael Bay movies as The Graduate is to romantic comedies; it is deliberately intended to make the audience laugh uncomfortably at the mindlessly offensive tropes of conventional action movies, hence Archer’s fascination with Burt Reynolds. (BTW, the episode with Burt Reynolds is one of the best.) And yes, making fun of Indians for smelly food is a pretty obvious and sophomoric stereotype but that’s exactly where Archer goes. <Lana>Every…time.</Lana>
If curry jokes are the most offensive thing you found while watching an episode count yourself lucky. He makes fun of far more stereotypes than that: blacks, other Asians, homosexuals, parapalegics, accountants, the French, cyborgs, Johnny Quest…the list is endless. But mostly, the show makes fun of the archetype of male-savior-action-hero-who-is-bigotted-but-correct. And Archer (like Bond) is just about the most useless and incompetent spy ever who only survives every episode because he is inexplicably good at impossible stunts and the support of all of the coworkers he otherwise disregards and offends.
Stranger
Archer: "Why do ywe have so many damn dolls in here?
Pam: For sexual harassment complains so people can non-verbally indicate where stuff happend on their bodies.
Archer: That takes like one doll.
Pam: Not if there’s ever a gang rape. (fingers crossed)
One of the funnier things is that Archer is incredibly dense creature of pure impulse on the one hand, yet an oddly savant-like auto-didact about obscure topics and is in fact an almost super-humanly capable action figure. He actually is a very good James Bond-cartoon-level spy. Anything involving action, you’d want him on your side. Anything other than that…welllll…not so much.
Yeah, I didn’t watch the last season but, over all, if you wanted a bomb set deep in an enemy base or a missile launch stopped or something else like that then Archer would be your guy.
I can’t speak for Anaamika (I’m a white dude and not only that, I have no Indian friends…) but when there was a kerfuffle about Stephen Colbert’s “Ching Chong Ying Yong” joke I read a lot from Asian Americans about the issue. Plenty were saying it was NBD. Plenty of others were saying it was about time someone spoke up against these kinds of jokes. And they weren’t missing the joke or anything. They understood that Colbert’s intention was to make fun of white people’s casual racism. But (said the people whose stuff I was reading), many of them had grown up with that kind of epithet being a source of real trauma. It is absolutely understandable, not even a little bit of a problem, if they felt uncomfortable on hearing it used so casually–and it is absolutely understandable, not even a little bit of a problem, for people who are being made to feel uncomfortable to say something about how they are being made to feel uncomfortable.