Hi folks! Welcome back to our yearly beloved (at least by me) recap of Archer, on the Multiversity Summer TV Binge 2022 this summer we’ll tackle the fourth season, which is the last “regular” season before the show changes into season-long experiments. We explode this season with the first episode, named “Fugue and Riffs” and at the very first scene I’m in love, let’s dive right in!
1. A crossover for the eras
We begin this episode in the setting of another beloved animated show, Bob’s Burgers. Here, “Bob” is doing his usual, but then, a bunch of Russians enter the shop and Bob defends himself, killing the spies… and definitely traumatizing Linda and the kids.
Of course, this is a joke about how H. Jon Benjamin works in both shows, but it made me think something interesting, sometimes voice actors have just one voice, like Benjamin, but there’s something in how he talks that makes a difference between Bob and Sterling, despite being the exact voice.
2. Psychogenic retrograde amnesia
Turns out that Mallory getting married was an experience so upsetting for Archer that he fled and suffered from amnesia, married a woman with three kids and became a cook for a family restaurant in the span of less than two months.
Now, the team finally found him thanks to the KGB and have to bring him back and make him recover from his amnesia, but as Krieger puts it, it’s no easy task, people that have suffered from amnesia have very fragile minds, and their perception of reality can be easily broken.
So, the team has to come up with a plan…
3. The KGBoneheads
While Krieger and Cyril pretend to be KGB agents, Lana tells “Bob” that she is on the run, being persecuted by spies, just like him, and she even kisses him, which is absolutely unnecessary, but shows us that the impulse is on Lana’s subconscious at all times.
Problem is, the whole team is, as we have seen many times, very inept and Archer start’s questioning why does Lana knows everything about his situation if she’s also being hunted. But then, the real KGB appears and their already brittle plan starts to crumble.
4. Mayor déjà vu
And it doesn’t help that “Bob” is the same impulsive Archer we’ve always know, at one point, he rips Lana’s clothes and puts a sticker on her boobs, which already happened back in the third season finale.
When Bob/Archer begins to question his reality, and his mind-brain is about to get damaged irreparably, Lana comes out with an easy solution, she hits him in the head with a Frying pan, and that does the trick, Archer is back in time to save the day by burning the Russian spies to death with Molotov cocktails.
5. The Usual Destruction
Of course, the team ends up destroying the hotel and although Cheryl tought that this was one of the hotels that she owned, it turns out that she doesn’t own this one, so, not only will Malory have to pay for the rooms and the services, ISIS will also have to pay for the destruction they caused, thankfully, Ron arrives to save the day.
At the beginning of the episode, it was a funny joke to see the Belcher kids and their scared faces, Archer being a spy show, we often forget about the consequences of their violence, like seeing innocent people shocked by murders; or a building destroyed, along with the ruined vacations of the people who were in the hotel at the moment.
But that’s our favorite spy agency, they almost always end up making every situation worse.
Joke of the week:
Malory: “Oh Ron! Thank you for coming so quickly!”
Pam: “PHRASING… FIRST! BOOM!”
Get it? The first “phrasing” of the season, hilarious!
And that’s it for this episode, overall, an excellent opener for the season, and I’m just happy to talk about this show that I love for a couple of months. What did you think of this episode? Leave your comments below and join us next week for our take on episode 4×02, “The Wind Cries Mary.”
