Review: Archer “Double Indecency”

The score is indecent.

Spoilers Below
Archer
is undoubtedly one of the best comedies on TV today. After seven seasons on TV, the show has still yet to lose it’s steam. Only a handful of shows throughout history have gone for seven seasons and maintained the quality that made them popular in the first place. Perhaps one day we’ll look back and clearly see which season sent everything downhill for Archer, but for now, everything is looking up… for the most part. While the show is great, it’s still capable of giving us a flat episode every once in a while. Was that the case last night? Read on to find out! (But yes, that was the case).

In “Double Indecency” the guys and gals are divided after being hired without the other groups knowledge by a husband and wife who simultaneously suspect they are cheating on one another.

This was definitely a throw-a-way episode. It didn’t impact the overarching story of the season and even as a standalone episode it didn’t work very well. The episode opened kind of slow. We set up the case of the week, Really just the routine we’ve been going through this season. Once the teams are briefed on their cases, they immediately start making bets on who will seduce which spouse. Archer and Ray bet on Krieger and Cyril while Malory and Lana bet on Pam and Cheryl.

The remainder of the episode is really just seeing the four lusting race horses prepare themselves. Shopping, hairstylists, the whole nine yards. While this is going on there is negotiating on whether or not to double the bets. This is going on with both groups simultaneously and it comes across very lazy and it just sounds repetitive when you watch it. The episode ultimately concludes with a plot twist, a small action scene and the realization that the episode leading up till this particular point was a waste of time.

While the characters are just as charming as ever and the dialogue and banter is fun to listen to, this episode will most likely rank as one of the worst of the season and possibly the entire show. There aren’t too many bad episodes of Archer, so when one comes around it gets placed in the discussion of worst of all time by default.

Overall, I wasn’t impressed with this episode. The points this episode does receive is for it’s characters that are always entertaining. You could literally lock these characters in a room for an hour long special and just have them talk and it would honestly be one of the best episodes of all time. Where this episode fell short this week was just about everywhere else. The story, the pacing, the ending. It all felt wrong. Hopefully, Archer can bounce back from this and continue to deliver the goods like we know they can.

SCORE
3/10