Hi folks! Welcome the to our weekly recap of Archer on the Multiversity Summer TV Binge 2020. This week’s episode is named “Blood Test” and we learn about one of Archer’s biggest fears: being a father… well, more like “having responsibilities”. Let’s dive right in.
1. Archer is an Asshole
The very first scene in this episode involves Archer claiming a parking spot… to an employee on wheelchair, this is the epitome of one of our protagonist’s traits, he is an absolute asshole, he doesn’t care about almost no one but himself, he doesn’t care if a woman is ovulating, he doesn’t care if he uses condoms.
In this season, the biggest moments when he care about someone are his eventual “friendship” with wee baby Seamus and with Babou the ocelot, I can’t think (so far) of another moment when he cares about someone other than himself, he eventually matures trough the seasons, but in reality he keeps being and egotistical person, even at the end of the episode he says “but I don’t wanna be people!”.
So… why is he such a lovable character? Well, surely there’s a reason, we wouldn’t be waiting on an eleventh season if he weren’t ultimately a good person, and it is hard to explain on this episode, but we’ll see in future episodes this season.
2. Seamus Sterling McGoon-Archer
Archer has a son?! Well, not yet, but this one isn’t. The entire plot of this episode revolves around a prostitute who comes back after a year of having unprotected sex with Archer and she brings with her wee baby Seamus, and she claims he is Archer’s son, so she subpoenas him for a paternity test, and everybody in ISIS has a reaction to it, so let’s see how they reacted.
For starters, the least important characters to this plot, so, the reaction is the less meaningful: Krieger appears very little, but he gifts Trinette breast milk, why? Where? Ew. Then Pam, who sees it as an opportunity to throw a party in Archer’s apartment and tries to rape a passed-out Cyril, and finally, Cheryl, who just absolutely hates babies.
3. Barry establishes himself as the arch-nemesis
Now, how the hell is Trinette supposed to prevent the tampering of the test by the Archers? Well she has a whole team at her disposal, and that’s because Barry from Odin decided to help her protect the blood sample, and he is doing it pro bono!
But not only that, he drains a whole liter of Archer’s blood, and he absolutely knows that a debilitated Sterling is going to try to mess with the blood sample, and he allows it to happen, I don’t know if that was his plan all along but he managed to mess with his fiend and make him pay pension to Trinette, and with that, he establishes himself as the arch-nemesis of our protagonist, their fights are only going to get worse and he will end up turned in a soulless villain eventually, and all that was triggered here, when he decided to take revenge on Archer after he broke his leg.
4. On Parenthood
Sterling, shows himself a little disinterested in the whole thing, he doesn’t want to be a father and he clearly is not going to be forced to be one, even if wee baby Seamus turns out to really be his son, when he is about to change the bottles with blood, he has a little bit where he admits that maybe he will consider being a dad… eventually.
Then there’s Lana, who gets jealous of Trinette, because she maybe considered being a mother with Archer and he is the one who rejected the idea and ended up still being a father with another woman. This will kickstart a whole plot with her, but for now the important thing is to say that she start’s contemplating the idea of not being alone, of having a kin, after all, is being a spy her sole desire? Or is there more for her in the future?
And finally, we have the mother of the year, Malory, so obsolete in the world that she is racist even to Irish people, she was a psychological oppressor to Archer, she was an awful mother more interested in her reputation than in the life of his own son. But then she gets drunk and starts contemplating her life, and how she missed her opportunity with Sterling, she feels guilty and the opportunity to redeem herself comes in the face of Seamus.
Continued belowDamn, this is heavy, three states of mind, from disinterest, to feeling unaccomplished to realizing you did wrong. Folks, paternity is hard, and thinking about my parents and how they struggled to get where they are, I’m grateful to be here and to have been educated by them, even ir they made mistakes, they are not even close to be near to Malory.
5. Misogyny
One of the most important elements of the male characters in the show is their misogyny, Archer doesn’t care for any woman, he has unprotected sex and stops having sex when his mother calls him. Barry is willing to use a mother only to mess with Sterling, and offers Lana a big position in ODIN if she has sex with him, and finally, Cyril takes advantage of his self-pity and argues that he has an addiction to sex in order to have relations with whomever consents, and he doesn’t care if he has a stable relationship, he is willing to enjoy himself and not only that, but to risk Lana’s health by doing it without condoms.
The creative team of the show gave us really flawed men, and that’s what you would expect from a super-spy, but it isn’t just him, it’s also the regular men like Cyril. In the real world, men use the stupidest excuses to pass the blame on women, shit like “I don’t want to use a condom because it doesn’t feel the same”, oh it doesn’t buddy? Well boo hoo, it’s your responsibility to take care of the people around you, and that absolutely includes your sexual partners.
This is one example of why I love this show, you can do black comedy to do great satire without being (very) offensive or racist or misogynist; yes, the characters in this show do are misogynist, but it is reflecting the very flaws on our society.
Joke of the week: [Interrupted by her mother while having sex with Lana]
Archer: Yeah, I’ll come over, mother just give me… twenty minutes… Well I’m sorry Lana but I didn’t invent the childproof pill bottle!
And that’s it for this episode, at first I was a little scared of not having anything meaningful to talk about this one, but I ended up having big moments of realization while writing it. What did you think of this episode? Leave your comments below and join us next week for our take on episode 204, “Pipeline Fever”.
