Hi folks! Welcome to our weekly recap of Archer on the Multiversity Summer TV Binge 2019. The episode for this week is named “Diversity Hire” where we meet on of the first “villains” of the show, there’s a lot to explore, so let’s dive right in!
1. On the series’ diversity
This episode began with a staff meeting, with Malory telling the team that agent Ruiz is dead, and that they need a diversity hire to enjoy title 6 tax incentives, and I want to take the opportunity to talk about the series’ diversity.
We talked last week about how this series has much more female roles than the average show, but what it lacks is race diversity, of the eight main characters, only Lana is black, Cheryl Cristal says that she is 1/64 Cherokee, but that obviously is just played for laughs.
In other departments, the show has an overweight character, a gay character, and a character with auditive incapacity, Archer, who suffers from the very real and often incapacitating tinnitus, but to be honest, every diversity characteristic is used as a trait for the dark comedy of the show. So, the series is imperfect, I love it but I do feel obligated to talk about their “improvement areas”. It seems that the tenth season is going to be the last one, at least for creator Adam Reed, so I cannot ask for future improvements, but it’s an important think to talk about diversity in all animated shows.
2. Death toll
Damn! ISIS does NOT care about their employees! Well this is true for most of the businesses in the world, but in Archer it is very meaningful, because, just like with many other aspects of the show, it shines a light on the uncool part of spies in TV and Movies: they die, more often than not.
Clearly, Malory doesn’t care about the wellbeing of her employees, Ruiz’s death is the seventh item in the agenda, which proves that death is an inconsequential topic in the office. Archer has provoked the death of at least three coworkers and deliberately shoot another one in this episode, to be honest the jokes are hilarious, but if you think about it, damn, being spy is not an easy life.
3. The submarine & 4. Conway Stern, diversity double-whammy
This episode can be split in two parts, the first is the introduction of Conway Stern to the ISIS employees, and the second one is the mission to recover the plans for a submarine, one of the many missions Archer has on Miami.
It’s very interesting to see how Conway makes his way through ISIS almost unnoticed. The drones, as Malory calls them, immediately fall for him, Cyril and Pam feel respected and Malory and Cristal feel attracted to him. The only ones that don’t fall for his charm are Lana and Archer, and not because good spy-instincts, but because other interests, she is jealous of a diversity hire that might be better than her –internalized racism?−, and Archer hates him because he feels threatened by the idea of his mother marrying Conway –very externalized Oedipus Complex−.
So, after earning Archer’s trust saving his life twice when the mission goes wrong, Conways –obviously– betrays them, literally stabbing him on the back, then Lana saves the day, ampitating the traitor’s hand, inaugurating the series long-running joke about disabilities, broken backs, amputations and body enhancements.
5. Female sexuality
Another aspect explored on this episode is the open sexuality of the female cast. Both Cristal and Malory are incredibly horny for Conway. Lana is very open with her sexuality wherther it’s with Archer or Cyril. I think this is very meaningful because we as an audience are accustomed to see men boasting about their sexual proesses, but female openess is barely being more talked about this recent years, while this show has been doing it for ten years.
I mean, I know they are not pioneers at all, there have been voices about female sexuality for years, even decades, and Archer is not feminist per se, but it’s still uncommon and therfore, worth mentioning.
Joke Gag of the week: Hell yeah! We are in the Danger Zone now! This is the first episode to feature Archer’s favorite catchphrase and all thanks to Kenny Loggins’ hit song for Top Gun.
(Also, that J. Edna Hoover reference was very interesting.)
And that’s it for this episode, one of my favorites of the first season, after getting to know the characters, we now have an episode fully commited to tell us a story without the need to explain the rules of this world. What did you think of this episode? Leave your comments below and join us next week for our take on episode 104, “Killing Utne”.
And remember! Season 10, Archer: 1999 is airing right now on FXX, the fourth one is airing tonight! Go watch it!
