Surfing SF: Archer – “Movie Star”

You can’t hear these Archer spoilers because I just fired off a gun right next to your ear…

 

I was excited about Archer even before it started airing, simply because it came from the same creative team behind Sealab 2020 and Frisky Dingo. Both of those shows gained much of their momentum from their anarchic quality and utter lack of rules. A fairly decent percentage of Sealab episodes end with some variant on the station blowing up and all the characters dying. Archer has more of a traditional comedic structure, in that the episodes seem to take place within continuity with each other and generally the good guys win in the end. Not this week, however, as “Movie Star” ends with a sleeper agent assassinating the Soviet premier (yes, apparently the Soviet Union is still around in this universe) and Archer and Lana incapacitated and left paralyzed in an amusingly suggestive position.

 

The good-guys-lose-one ending came on the heels of yet another strong episode, one that once again spent a decent portion of its time hanging out at the ISIS HQ. The show is having one heckuva second season. Almost all of the characters felt like they had something to do, and the three or four disparate storylines all worked together and made sense in the end. Sometimes when a series, especially a series like this one that thrives on the energy of insanity, juggles multiple storylines it can result in something of a mess. This is usually the cause of the weaker Venture Bros episodes. But here all the balls miraculously stay in the air.

 

One way I think the show could have improved this year was spending more time with Pam and Cheryl/Carol/whatever her name is, and that was one thing we got in this episode. The plot involving Pam stealing the movie star’s diary and trying to decide whether to read it or return it. For whatever reason, some of Archer‘s biggest laughs for me come from the occasional glimpses we get into the depths of Cheryl/Carol’s undiagnosed mental illness, which was on full display this week. Somehow Malory and Cyril’s antics rewriting her screenplay (and then sleeping together on her office floor!) felt overshadowed, but even that storyline had plenty of laughs. We’re heading into the tail end of this season and I have been loving it so far.

 

Bits:

-A little bit of the show poking fun at itself this week, particularly in the screenplay sub-plot: “Spy comedy?… Because that has been done.” “You can’t have a flashback in with a flash-forward in it. That’s just… bad writing.”

-I was surprised how much I enjoyed the character of the movie star/sleeper agent. Rather than turning her into a parody they kept her just a notch below that. Instead she fit really well into the ensemble cast. I hope she comes back at some point in the future.

-The ending probably would have been even funnier if I could understand what Lana and Archer were saying. I feel like they should have done a slightly different joke regarding their reaction to the poison.

-“Do you know who you are?” “I do!”

-“Three weeks later I was in Tunisia, killing a man.”

-“And she’s having a torrid affair with one of her sexy young agents… who’s black!”

-“Gimme that, Little Miss Invasion of the Privacy Snatchers.”

-“I made a phone call to the draft board, and now who’s laughing, Mr. Hooks for Hands!”

-“Deaf people are gross.” “Not as gross as the hook-hand ones.” “Eh, I dunno.”

-“…To see what kind of music he was into or turtles or roll around in his clothes or whatever.”

-“I don’t have c*** porn just laying around. But sometimes, you just forget it’s in the VCR. Then your parents come over so that they can tell you your mother has Lou Gehrig’s Disease.” “Why would you think it’s OK to share that?”

-“We’re calling it Mandingo 2: The Enslavening.”

-“What voice is that? Is that from Bullwinkle?”

-“You’re not my supervisor!” (in context, the line of the night)

-“Say the right stuff, and they just send you to a mental hospital for a few months.”

 

Is anybody else watching Archer this year? Let us know in the comments.