Review: Archer ‘Drastic Voyage: Part I’

 

Spoilers Below:

What? We’re at the end of season six already? I know this because we’re entering a two-part episode, and I’m pretty good at counting to 13. As it’s difficult to fully evaluate an episode that’s likely to be not much more than a set-up, let’s get right into it.

The gang (the entire gang, since the non-agents are always stowing away on missions anyway) received quite the elaborate mission this week. They were to be shrunk down and injected into a one Dr. Zotlan Kovacs, a brilliant Soviet-defector scientist who was recently attacked and put into a coma, in order to fix a blood clot in his brain. The reward? $1 million each. If they decline, they’ll never work in espionage again. And by the way, they of course only have 60 minutes before returning to their original size and, you know, dying. Oh, and in the end, they were accidentally (thanks to Krieger) injected into Kovacs’ foot instead of his neck, so time is a factor.

Whoops.

In Case You Missed It:

1) Best insult name of the episode? Slater calling Cheryl “Julia Gluey Dreyfus.”

2) Best joke at the expense of Ray’s black hand? Getting “Handingo action” or Sterling calling it “his racist robot monster hand!”

3) Krieger’s miniature scientific research isn’t the same as the CIA’s: “Well, then, I’ve wasted my life.”

4) “Do you know what this is?” / “Your best gal.”

5) Sterling was playing Operation at the beginning of the briefing.

6) Archer (and Pam’s) list of submarine movies: Operation Petticoat, Das Boot, The Enemy Below, Run Silent Run Deep, Grey Lady Down, and Yellow Submarine. (But not Down Periscope?!)

7) George Combe (1788-1858) was the leader of – and spokesman for – phrenological movement for over 20 years.

8) Ron’s bedtime story to AJ: “And then Papa Bear said, “Yeah? You just keep it up, because this town is just crawling with Goldilocks with hot young bodies and daddy issues … Yeah, exactly, like whats-her-face at work.”

9) Nice Star Wars reference by Sterling, re-blasting womp rats with his T-16.

As I stated before (in this review and previous similar ones) it’s hard to judge a two-part episode fully until you see both halves. So let’s look at three factors: the story, the characters involved, and the humor.

For starters, how can you hate a classic plot like getting shrunk down and injected into a human being? (A.k.a a Fantastic Voyage parody.) Sure, it’s cliché, but every show should get one crack at it. In fact, I’m surprised Archer hasn’t done it already. It only took Rick and Morty like two episodes. The Simpsons, Futurama, Family Guy, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and Venture Bros. all did it too. (Also kids cartoons like Regular Show, SpongeBob SquarePants, Dexter’s Laboratory, Jimmy Neutron, Invader Zim, The Fairly Oddparents, Ren & Stimpy, and Rugrats.) The episode only got up to the injection point, so all I can say is I’m intrigued enough. But like the mission itself, who knows how it will pan out.

As for the characters, I really enjoyed that that Adam Reed & Casey Willis were careful to include everyone. The whole crew (minus Kriger, plus Slater) were on board, giving the episode the highest probability of success, and the mission the highest probability of failure.

In addition to the regulars, we also saw the return of Gary Cole’s Special Agent Hawley (“Time’s a bit of a factor here, so as much as I’d like to spend the day murdering all of you, let’s press on.”), Ron Leibman (Ron Cadillac!!), and Carrie Brownstein & (TV’s) Michael Gray in guest roles. The relationship (or former relationship) of the latter two was a humorous bonus too.

Speaking of relationships, Slater & Sterling’s antagonistic one is developing quite nicely, so much so that it’s apparently making Cyril jealous.

The writing was witty as always, and there were some great running gags and callbacks. This included Krieger (“Paging Dr. Dickwads…) pointing out that if he was a clone of Hitler, wouldn’t he look like Hitler? And Sterling continuing to forget past missions, like the last time they were in a submarine (season four’s “Sea Tunt” Parts I & II) and his constant belief that he would be weightless aboard the vessel.

There was silly little Goldilocks running gag as well, with Ron reading the story, Sterling falsely believing he and Lana were talking about bears, and Cheryl mentioning porridge in her sick fantasy about bulldozing an orphanage.

There’s not much else to say at this point, but this was a very promising start to the end of the season, and I’ll err on the side of optimism.