Review: Archer: Danger Island “Different Modes of Preparing the Fruit”

I assume one involves a lime and a coconut.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Archer pouts over getting socked by Pam, leading to more arguing and another slap fight. They’ll have to finish later since their plane is still crashed, and they need to come up with a source of income for the vast amount of repairs, and it can’t involve making chinchillas into enchiladas…again. Pam remembers what Fuchs let slip about the idol, which is DEFINITELY NOT a gold monkey (so $5 on gold monkey) and so they plan to steal whatever he knows and go steal it themselves.

Meanwhile, Fuchs convenes with Lana to discuss the idol and Germany’s particular interest in it, leading to some haggling for the price and help in overthrowing the French’s rule on Lana’s people and a bit of snogging on the couch. And I guess I didn’t really keep track of the era, because this is the first time I put together that Fuchs was working with the Nazis (what is this, accidental Nazi week?), who most likely want the idol for their usual collection of foreign artifacts to hide or destroy from the world.

Archer and Pam, with the help of Malory and her reverse “My Fair Lady”-ing of Charlotte, get Fuchs distracted at dinner in order raid his room. After your usual crappy infiltration, they find a map with a pinpoint for the idol’s location, but Pam only manages to make a bad copy to work with, leaving Crackers to leave his mark in more ways than one. But hey, at least Luigi’s is finally getting some business.

OUR TAKE

Well, looks like we’re finally picking up steam now that knowledge of the idol is out in the open. Now we’ve got multiple parties with different reasons to get it, and so the race will be on for the second half of the season to retrieve it. Though that may end up being one of the only things to look forward to since the jokes are falling pretty flat by Archer standards. The Luigi gags didn’t even register with me upon first viewing, and having silly accents doesn’t equate to many different kinds of comedy, though the Chinchillas bit was a chuckler. The character work does remain notable, however, as Mallory’s odd motherly relationship towards Charlotte as her pimp does lend itself to some stretch of heartwarming, and the trio of Archer, Pam, and Crackers is growing on me. It is worth mentioning, though, that this being apparently in Archer’s dream does make it odd that he’d be imagining Lana and Cyril banging in his mind, but DOES explain how Pam could be making a Catch-22 reference when that book won’t be out for another twenty-two years. But yeah, looks like we’re in for a pretty smooth remaining five episodes at this rate.