Another guest review. -- HGF
During pre-season interviews, Adam Reed emphasized that ARCHER was going to concentrate more on serialized storytelling. This season has explored Archer's mommy issues, friendships (or lack thereof), daddy issues, relationships (past and present) and his innermost fears. The previous episodes touched on these topics in a humorous and light beat fashion. This episode went deeper.
Once Bitten provided us with an emotional and in-depth analysis of Sterling Archer while paying homage to a wonderful book called The Natural which tells the story of a baseball player named Roy Hobbs. Like Hobbs, Archer lives a lonely existence where he has no friends and no one to loves him.
This season has gone to great pains to paint a picture of Archer being lost in his own inadequacies. It is easy for the show to rely on these traits as a source of humor, but when they take the time to explore what made him into the man he is today, it can be a breathtaking journey that changes everything we know.
Paralleling Roy's history with Archer's enables the show to dig deep into the psychosis of a man who is simply not just an alcoholic womanizer with mommy issues. They provide Archer with a pathos, and allow us to empathize with a man who deep down is a scared child, who craves a maternal/paternal figure who will choose him over everything and everybody.
I will never look at Archer in the same way, and I have a greater understanding of why he hates alligators. Alligators are to Archer what baseball is to Roy Hobbes: daddy.
Excellent episode.
Grade A
Stray Observations
- So, Lana's dream is to run ISIS? Hmmm, interesting.
- The lengths this show goes to hurt Ray are becoming epic. Please keep going.
- Cyril, when are you going to not suck at this field work?
- Cheryl/Carol: way to go with the insight, even if you did not know what you were saying.
- Mallory Archer is an evil bitch, and if there is any redemption for Sterling, I hope he quits ISIS.
- Turkmenistan people are funny, with all their weird words that mean the same thing.
-- Shawn Mahone
