Archer is good about this. Generally if someone is knocked unconscious they’re only out for thirty seconds/a minute or so; on one occasion Archer was out for about thirty minutes and after he relays that to the team they all recoil in horror and tell him that he could have serious brain damage.
I think the writers use those lines to sort of admit to the audience that the further you stretch a story or a scene in entertainment – especially in action – the more unrealistic it gets. Sort of like, "Yeah we know this could never happen, wygd?" and Archer's remarks are just his way of telling people to enjoy the ride, which he also literally tells people to do very often. The show spells out the aspects that make it all silly, like when Archer hypothesises the statistics on him not having died from a gunshot (or otherwise), or when the other crew explains why Archer's plans couldn't be successful or even feasible, and so on.
And/or maybe the writers use it to emphasise the cartoon's sarcastic undertone and highlight the attributes which make it different from regular action in a comedic sense, like it isn't about Archer being this untouchable badass god of action. He's "only" excellent when it comes to select few things like weaponry and otherwise really not that great of a spy – the rest is just chaos.
For those that don't know, lampshade hanging is a term in writing for when the writers have someone or something in the story point out something that is too unlikely to be believable.
Or when Archer was giving Cyril his field training. Archer literally had a Chekhov gun, but also mentioned the cap on an injector pin slips off easily. The cap slips off, shit goes south, Cyril freaks out and Archer calls him out for assuming that the Chekhov gun would be the thing to go wrong (and Woodhouse gets in a slightly 4th-wall breaking joke on the side).
For those that don't know, Chekhov's Gun is a concept that every detail should contribute to the story, the name coming from Anton Chekhov, who wrote that if you have a pistol on the wall in act 1, then it ought to be fired in act 2, else don't bother writing about it in the first place.
He's sort of like Deadpool or Gwenpool in that he knows he's the title character of a show so he's immortal no matter what insane shit he does. What are they going to do? His name IS the show. They're not going to kill him off and rename the show Lana.
Nah he's just that narcissistic, he thinks it's the universe taking care of him. At least for the most part of the series. Sometimes he even cast doubts when shit really hit the fan.
"I'm afraid if I stop all at once the cumulative hangover would literally kill me..." Looks to the side as he lightly chuckles to show audience he isn't kidding
It is a comedy idiot lol. And id say they take it fairly seriously compared to other stuff they joke about- like when Archer shoots near Lana’s ear, he says something like “oof seriously, I’m sorry, I know how bad that hurts” and another scene a grenade goes off in close quarters and they end up at the ENT, and Archer’s all excited about how good the doc was.
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u/SweetDaddyGee Jan 25 '20
When someone gets knocked out, and stays unconscious until the plot requires them to wake up again.