Review: Archer “Bell Panto: Part 1”

In Bell Panto Part 1 “Party crashers turn a fundraiser into no laughing matter.”

This episode was pretty good. It did an excellent job advancing the season’s plot forward as well as introducing something interesting in this self-contained episode. The first half of the episode was character and relationship development. Seeing the characters interact with one another and getting a feel of how the characters think about each other. Humans have a desire for drama and gossip and Archer does a good job fulfilling this craving with it’s sensationalized characters in scandalous situations.

The second half of the episode put all of that on pause to introduce the villains. A group of masked clowns who take the party hostage. Cheryl did mention that they should have hired a clown, so the foreshadowing paid off in the direst way possible. The clowns are obviously crashing the party to look for the beautiful Zarina necklace. Luckily, Archer and Veronica (the Hollywood starlet wearing the necklace) manage to escape to a secret room obviously only accessible by a book switch in the library.

Overall, this episode was pretty good on two fronts. Advanced the characters and relationships and introduced something interesting that will have us tuning in next week. Like a lot of these two part episodes, the first is essentially setting up the dominos and next week we will see them all knocked down. I tend not to hate two-parters because they only have so much time in a week to tell a story, sometimes you need to stretch it out. But it did leave things feeling incomplete. I’m in the camp that believes that there was enough substantial content in this episode to leave me feeling satisfied.