For ISIS Eyes Only: White Elephant
It’s been a while since we had a weekly recap feature. In fact, two of the shows we recapped ended last year (Burn Notice and Breaking Bad) but one of our favorite shows is back and it seems like the perfect time for a new feature. So, get ready for Archer every week here at Everything Action. Since it’s the fifth season, I’m assuming you know who everyone on the show is, and if you don’t, go back and watch the first four seasons because it’s amazing.
Things kick off in a bizarrely serene fashion at ISIS HQ as Archer arrives to the strains of the Morning Song from The William Tell Overture, handing out roses to the ladies of ISIS before arriving in Mallory’s office right when the entire floor blows up. A massive firefight ensues with perpetual bullet sponge Brett getting killed, which Archer could care less about because he’s obsessing over who Beaker’s boss was in The Muppets. The gang is shocked to find that the attackers are the FBI, who have arrived to arrest everyone for conducting illegal espionage activity. Mallory doesn’t deny it but assures everyone on the ride to FBI headquarters if they all just shut up, she’ll get them out of it. Pretty much everyone spills every last thing that happened over the last four years, except Lana and Archer, who “fake” an argument and manage to escape and bust everyone out. Getting Mallory last, they find that she was telling the truth and signed a deal that ISIS would halt all operations and give up their building in exchange for not going to jail.
The gang heads back for one last drink in the ISIS building where it’s revealed that they have a shitload of cocaine (roughly $60 million according to Cyril’s math) and the highlight of the episode begins with Archer imagining what would happen if the gang attempted to sell that much cocaine. There’s way too much to even attempt to list but some of it is that Cheryl becomes a country singer, Pam gets the Yakuza on their trail and Archer single handedly invades Laos and gets a pet tiger. Apparently, this is what we can expect from this season of Archer Vice, which is so mind blowingly awesome, I cannot wait. I thought things were great last season but this change, cutting any sort of moral obligations, seems to be going to let the ISIS crew go completely over the top with nefarious activity, which they were actually pretty much doing already.
- Obscure Reference of the Week: Archer is obsessed with remembering the name of Dr. Benson Honeydew after a flashbang makes Cyril sound like Beaker. (It was figuratively killing him)
- Post ISIS careers for the gang include Cheryl wanting to be a country singer (better than Mack Davis), Pam getting back into underground fighting, Cyril possibly going back to being an accountant or defense attorney and Archer becoming a professional lacrosse player, only to have Pam immediately shatter his dreams by pointing out he’s too old.
- “When you list everything ISIS has done, it does sound pretty bad”
- Lucky Yates, who voices Dr. Kreiger, is a full on regular now, so hopefully that means plenty of glorious Dr. Kreiger moments this season.