Surfing Cartoons: Archer – “El Secuestro”
Check out these Archer spoilers, before I violate the first law of robotics!
“El Secuestro” may have been my favorite episode of a very, very, very good season that has already won our “Pick of the Week” three times. We’ve spent a great deal of time filling in the backstories of various characters, but this week the writers dropped a bombshell about one of my favorite characters, a bombshell that explains A LOT. The hilariously mentally ill Cheryl/Carol/whatever her name is turns out to actually be the heir to the “Tunt” railroad fortune (Archer: “Tunt? Tum again?”). She’s a trust fund kid worth half a billion dollars, living in a huge empty house with her pet ocelot. Given that the weird little glimpses of Cheryl’s craziness we get are often among my favorite bits of your average episode, I was a big fan of this development.
Meanwhile, a bunch of kidnappers are after Cheryl but take Pam instead. She turns out to be a little more than they bargained for. Her backstory appears to involve putting herself through college by dominating the underground ultimate fighting circuit. We also learn that she has a stanza of Lord Byron’s “The Destruction of Sennacherib” tattooed across her back. That’s what kind of show this is. Add in Malory sinking to new depths from a human being standpoint while trying to wrest as much of that half a billion away from Cherly as she can, Cyril desperately trying to get his $3,700 back, and Archer becoming convinced that the kidnappers are robots, and new levels of hilarity were reached amidst the chaos.
I’m told that the voice cast of Archer records their parts separately and is rarely all in the same room. However, they still have undeniable chemistry, and I think they bring a lot more to their roles than your average animation voice cast. Consider how Aisha Tyler can turn “Nope!” into one of the funniest lines of this episode. The writers give them some great material to work with, but it’s hard to go wrong with the way this cast keeps hitting it out of the park.
On that note, not only was Archer renewed for a third season this week, next season will be 16 episodes! Usually when I love something this much it’s about to go away, but I’m happy that’s not true in this case.
Quotes:
-”Mopeds are fun, but you don’t want your buddies to see you riding one.” “”I thought he meant I was fuel-efficient. I only had ten beers!”
-”This is a way better excuse than the train dwarf, which, uck.” Later: “The train dwarf was real, and he looked right at me with his little dwarfy eye-balls!”
-”I used to listen to him complain about Abraham Lincoln. Apparently slavery was pretty awesome.” “Prove it!” “What’s t0 prove? It’s free labor.”
-”You guys, look at his little spots! Look at his tufted ears!”
-”What’s his name?” “Babboo… but it should be Buyer’s Remorse.”
-”It’s like Meow-schwitz in there.”
-”Bring me some stuff to do. It’s crazy stupid boring in here!” “Well, now you know how Babboo feels.” “Crepuscular?”
-”Guess how many pygmies died cutting it down. Hint: six.” And later: “Unless you include the funeral expenses for those pygmies, and I bet that sneaky little chief just dumped them all into one medium-sized hole.”
-Repeatedly: “Oh, for… seriously?”
-”No heroics, you two. It’s just Pam.”
-”The IRS? Jesus, how many Irish gangs are there?”
-”You’re Daddy’s dirty, dirty little whore. Okay, I’m done masturbating, goodbye!”
-”I’ve been up here the whole time. Havin’ some phone sex! Just… jackin’ it. On the telephone.” “Does Internet porn know you’re cheating on it?”
-”They’re not gonna shoot you, Pam. Their programming won’t allow it.”
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