7 Ways to Tell If Season Two of ‘Digman!’ Is Right for You

1 Are You A Nerd (in the Good Ways)?

Digman! isn’t just about archeology: It imagines a world in which “arky” (that’s “archeologist” for short) is such a glamorous and respected job that there’s a whole cable news network — ArkyTV, of course — devoted to reporting on members of the field and regularly ranking them according to their latest exploits and achievements. As you might expect, the kind of people who would conceive such a show and/or want to write on it are excited to show off their research and erudition. 

The season premiere, for example, requires eponymous hero Rip Digman (voice of Andy Samberg, who co-created the show with former Brooklyn Nine-Nine writer Neil Campbell) to track down Bella Torres (Melissa Fumero), once Rip’s wife but transformed via cursed artifact into the Antichrist — or, rather, the Auntichrist, since she’s rampaging around the world with a male counterpart, the Unclechrist. Rip and his team — assistant arky Saltine (Mitra Jouhari), pilot Swooper (Tim Robinson) and office assistant Agatha (Dale Soules) — have just learned that being splashed with holy water temporarily deactivates the Auntichrist and Unclechrist’s demonic powers. Rip must assure Saltine that if this gambit doesn’t work a second time, he will definitely decapitate Bella to save the world, even though he has merely pretended to do it once in this episode already. 

As he and Saltine run through a cave to the presumed location of the Auntichrist and Unclechrist, Rip does a rhyming monologue worthy of Gilbert and Sullivan: “I will not hesitate to decapitate. Towards doing what’s right shall I gravitate. Do not dubitate, Saltine, for even if t’would agitate and make mine heart palpitate and though the demon may jacticate and vagitate — that’s a real word — she cannot imitate she with whom I used to cohabitate. And when slain, the ghoul’s corpse shall crepitate, and the celebratory ale we drink shall be nippitate — also a real word. And that’s no crapitate — not a real word but should be and I submitted it to Webster’s; stay tuned on that one.” 

Yes, we all know the word before “vagitate” should have been “jactitate,” but let’s say that was bait to give the true vocabulary heads something to complain about online. 

A later episode sends Rip and Saltine into a submersible in search of sunken treasure. Speeding through the depths, Rip narrates as Swooper takes them through “a shoal of mackerel! And a risk of lobsters! And a consortium of crabs!” He then turns to the viewer and smugly adds, “Those are all the actual terms, you know.” As the journey continues, another character spots “a smack of jellyfish.” “I didn’t even know it was called that!” Rip yelps. Everyone who’s ever tried to memorize all the collective animal nouns for their pub trivia team will be hooting and hollering.

The first season featured episodes about a lost Shakespeare sonnet so erotic it causes instant orgasms in everyone who hears it; about the location of the actual Fountain of Youth; and about the unexpected answer to the question of what happened to Amelia Earhart. The second season gets into similarly wonky territory: whether Cleopatra really was a legendary beauty; the connections between the shipwrecks of the Titanic and the Lusitania; and the animosity between arkies and “looties,” who want to sell artifacts to wealthy collectors instead of handing them over to museums. The payoff of a character having the surname “Null” snuck up on me and made me groan — with dorky appreciation. The greatest compliment I can give Digman! is that it’s smart in its stupidity.

2 Are You a Nerd (in Some of the Self-Destructive Ways)?

While Digman! is, of course, primarily about its titular hero, his many weaknesses and strengths would be a lot less obvious if not for the contrast against Saltine. In the series premiere, Rip is at a low point. Ten years earlier, he lost Bella on a dig gone wrong, knocking him off the top of the arky rankings and functionally ending his career. (What we don’t know until the end of the pilot is that Rip froze her in specially preservative glacier water and kept her in a secret chamber at his treehouse.) Rip has ended up teaching archeology at the undistinguished Garfield Community College, and Saltine is the grade-grubbing-est student in his class, eager to try to find the Holy Grail just for extra credit. (Turning up at his house later to tell him about an arky contest she wants to assist him in entering, she brightly reminds him, “It’s me, the student you hate!”)

As has been the case for so many young women before her, Saltine’s job as Rip’s assistant arky requires seemingly endless emotional labor. She has to keep him focused when he grows self-indulgent with grief, when he wavers on making decisions where what’s ethical may not align with what’s moral, and when he takes unnecessary risks with the team. But Saltine also manages to look out for herself a little more in the second season, including running for president of the Assistant Arky Union. Securing a mystical sari that causes any wearer to appear unfathomably beautiful is supposed to help her in the campaign, but what actually makes the difference is Saltine’s willingness to collaborate unselfishly with her opponent. Those of us who, however grudgingly, did all the work on group projects from fear of a bad grade will recognize ourselves reflected in Saltine’s thick, thick glasses.

3 Do You Enjoy Andy Samberg’s Nicolas Cage Impression?

I’m not here to say Samberg’s impersonation of Cage is good enough to stand up beside the original. That’s for Nicolas Cage to say — and he effectively did over a decade ago during this Weekend Update segment on Saturday Night Live.

Cage’s performance as historian Benjamin Franklin (sigh) Gates in National Treasure is probably not the first or even the tenth role any of us thinks of when Cage’s name comes up, but it evidently marked Samberg for life. When he had to come up with a voice for a character who is constantly searching for precious artifacts, he went with his take on Cage. 

4 Are You Here for Unexpected Voice Guest Stars?

Many of the vocal performances in Digman! are by people you expect to hear in a show like this. You’ve got your voice-over stars (Eric Bauza, Clancy Brown, Maurice LaMarche). You’ve got your UCB types with multiple Comedy Bang! Bang! appearances under their belts (Andy Daly, Lauren Lapkus, Claudia O’Doherty). You’ve got your SNL alums (Beck Bennett, Kyle Mooney, Maya Rudolph). But there are plenty of surprises across the show’s two seasons: Steve Buscemi, Cole Escola, Dennis Haysbert, Nathan Lane, Tatiana Maslany, Kayvan Novak, Daniel Radcliffe, Jason Schwartzman, Geraldine Viswanathan, John Waters and Kate Winslet. Booking beloved comedy stars on your animated show isn’t always a mark of quality — see The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy or In the Know — so you’re going to have to trust me when I say that, this time, it is.

5 Do You Like It When Adult Animation Shows Get Dark?

Generally, Digman! episodes turn on themes that are suitable for viewers of all ages: friendship, hard work and (of course) the importance of museums. Sure, the series premiere also features the members of a remote tribe who want Rip to have sex with every one of them, and whom he tricks with a dummy made of straw, which we see several villagers going to town on, but will your 9-year-old even register what’s going on there? If they will, that’s probably on you for having given them the context already.

But this isn’t about your failings as a parent, hypothetical reader. This is about noting that Digman! doesn’t only get dirty on occasion; it also gets dark. In just the second episode, the quickest way out of a sticky situation is for Rip to murder an antagonist — something he seems to do easily. “So!” says Saltine, smiling and unbothered. “You kill people?” “It would appear so, yeah,” says Rip. “Truth be told, this was my first time,” he adds, before admitting he’s having a little trouble with it and then bursting into tears of remorse: “His life! I snuffed it out! He’ll never have another birthday!” 

After Rip has puked over his victim’s corpse and he and Saltine are flying back to the U.S., they agree never to talk about that again. Saltine: very intense about the ethics of recovering artifacts; unexpectedly chill when it comes to ending a human life.

Saltine also comes to Rip with a backstory that seems absurd to us, but is deadly serious in the world of the show: pitching herself to Rip in the series premiere, she says she’s so determined to become an arky, she’s been disowned by her anti-arky parents for refusing to give it up. The second season delves into the schism, and (moderate spoiler) closes on an ambivalent note: Saltine’s lucky to be secure in her chosen family, since the odds of her mending relations with her parents seem very low. The psychological realism of Saltine’s estrangement is startling in the context of a show where a character might be picked clean in seconds by piranhas or swallowed by a homicidal couch.

6 Do You Like a Tangent?

On a job in Venice, Professor McEwan (Joe Lo Truglio), an extremely clumsy mentor of Rip’s, breaks a teacup and comments that he should just replace all his things with rubber duplicates. Do they know a rubber monger? “Not locally,” says Saltine. Professor McEwan asks her to email her home monger’s contact info to him later.

Saltine: Of course. But just so you know, he’s in Temecula until Thursday. 

Rip: It’s his aunt and uncle’s 40th anniversary.

Saltine: The anniversary was actually last year, but Don hurt his foot, so they couldn’t celebrate.

Rip: Don is the uncle.

Professor McEwan’s assistant Roberto (Schwartzman): What is Don’s wife’s name?

Rip and Saltine: Kathleen.

Saltine: Kathleen and Don actually met a few blocks away from where the party is being held. 

Professor McEwan: Is that so?

Rip: But Kathleen was with Gary Delvecchio back then, so she and Don didn’t start dating until a few months later. 

Saltine: In fact, he wanted to come to the anniversary, but he’s staying in Chicago because it’s his granddaughter Jessica’s seventh birthday party.

Rip: It’s pony-themed.

Saltine: Which, yes, was also her friend Madison’s birthday theme.

Professor McEwan: Ah, well, please send Madison and her family my best.

Saltine: Will do!

If that entirely pointless runner doesn’t get you, maybe the same episode’s several-minute-long diversion into Swooper’s time in the Top Gun-eseque gondolier training program will. Or maybe you’ll prefer to start with Season Two’s full-length Bachelor parody, entirely in the format of an in-universe dating show: The Eligible Arky. 

7 Is There Room in Your Hater’s Heart for Another Billionaire Parody?

After Mountainhead and Nicholas Hoult’s take on Lex Luthor in the new Superman, I wasn’t sure I was — and believe me, my hater’s heart is capacious. But then I met Quail Eegan (Tim Meadows). A self-important tech billionaire, Eegan’s schemes out in the open are pretty evil. Consider GAWD (Rudolph), an A.I.-powered digital assistant that lets Eegan capitalize on consumer fear in the wake of the worldwide lawlessness that ensues after Rip accidentally drops the Ten Commandment tablets, convincing billions that it was God’s will to discard the Commandments themselves. But Eegan’s secret schemes are even more nefarious, as he enlists Rip’s former assistant-turned-nemesis Zane Troy (Guz Khan) to acquire precious artifacts for a museum Eegan’s opening, but which has a secret purpose beyond public education. 

Of course the great Meadows really makes the character his own. Part Jeff Bezos (using surveillance tech for commerce), part Elon Musk (getting enraptured by A.I. he barely understands), part Mortimer Sackler (laundering his public image through art philanthropy), Eegan is all villain, and — crucially — very easy to root against, just like the real-life ones he evokes.