Good news. Remember that underwear-bomb-carrying guy who made it onto a plane last month even though his own father warned the State Department that he was probably a terrorist? Quit worrying about it. The government was just helping the FX cable network shoot some episodes of its new cartoon spy spoof, “Archer,” which debuts Thursday night at 10.

That’s more palatable than any other explanation I can think of, and it certainly could be true. “Archer” is a millennial (and very much R-rated) “Get Smart” that acerbically and hilariously plays on our post-9/ll fears that “U.S. government intelligence” might be a grim oxymoron.

Certainly the slapstick life at “Archer’s” International Secret Intelligence Service resonates with some of the real-life tales that have leaked out of America’s spy agencies. One agent sends the whole office on a hunt for a fictional Russian mole to deflect attention from charges for hookers and booze on his expense account. Others are using the agency’s super-computer to hack into their insurance plan to get coverage for elective surgery. (Including the all-important “skinny bitchectomy.”)

And there are a few glitches in the weapons systems, including that pen that’s really a hypodermic needle loaded with a fatal poison. Warns an agent as he gives one to the new man in the office: “The cap slips off for like NO reason.”

Among the characters striding through this foolscape are lead agent Sterling Archer (voiced by Comedy Central and Cartoon Network vet H. Jon Benjamin), whose code name “Duchess” accurately reflects some serious Oedipal issues; his spy-master mother, Malory (Jessica Walter, “Arrested Development”), whose most meaningful — not to mention lascivious — relationships are with garden vegetables; and the voluptuous agent Lana Kane (Aisha Taylor, “Friends”), who carries a spear-gun in the office and shoots up the car of an agency boss because “my feelings were hurt.”

I sure hope Valerie Plame isn’t watching.

— Glenn Garvin, The Miami Herald