Hi folks! Welcome the to our weekly recap of Archer on the Multiversity Summer TV Binge 2020. This week’s episode is named “Jeu Monégasque” and although it was a fairly simple plot, I think they did very interesting things in it, let’s dive right in.
1. Personal businesses
This episode’s story is pretty straightforward and a classic from the show, somebody has information and Malory wants it back, this time a generic Bond-esque villain in Monaco has a disc and Archer speculates that it’s a sex-tape of his mother (as usual), so, they are supposed to pay 4 million dollars for it, but the city is expensive!
It’s interesting to see how the formula is being filled up until the end result is this particular episode, and how it stands out from other episodes despite being familiar to us, if this happened in New York with money from “the budget” it would be boring as hell, but the stakes get raised when you present a new place, Monaco, and the money is taken from the retirement accounts of the agency, so, if it’s lost they lose their money.
2. Another addiction
As I said, Monaco is expensive, and if you add Grand Prix-related price surges, you could even lose your reservations on a luxurious hotel, thankfully Archer has the 4 million and he isn’t addicted to gambling… right?
Well, he is forced to spend money if he wants to keep his room and free blowjobs, so in twenty minutes he loses 3.2 million, and he must recover it some way or another, and if you add to the list of problems that they had bearer bonds and the owner is the one who holds the paper, they could lose all their money!
3. Toothbrush Mustache
Archer didn’t use to have a gambling addiction, and we see why in two flashbacks from his childhood. It’s Halloween and while playing cards an Archer dressed as Chaplin loses all his candy to Malory, dressed as Elvira, whom not only chastises him, she makes sure to tell him how big of a disappointment he is… and can’t even handle being drunk also!
You can understand why Archer is such a difficult person to deal with when you see those things from his past, he could very easily be a serial killer with a mother so fucked up. Damn I feel sorry for him and I’m aware that he is a fictional character!
4. 401(k)
Meanwhile, at the office, Cyril discovers that Malory wiped out their retirement money, so, we see Krieger selling ISIS’ things to recover his dough, and eventually they end up selling everything they could give, including (apparently good) bj’s from Pam… only to discover that they didn’t got paid, so they probably lose their money even if Archer recovers it.
5. A change of pace
Now let’s talk more about what they did differently on this episode, first of all, the “main” villain is only reduced to a “I Know What We Can Do” Cut, so, if we expected a standoff between the team and the bad guy, we do see it but it happened in seconds instead of being the climax of the episode.
Instead, thanks to the setting, we have a concierge turned criminal who steals the bonds and flees on a Grand Prix car. We have had action sequences during the season, but the most dynamic happened a while ago, in “The Double Deuce” where I praised the animation techniques using during Woodhouse rampage.
Now we have the most dynamic scenes in the series so far, with high speed cars moving all around Monaco (which mean they had to design all of this for the episode instead of recycling sets) and a great explosion between a car and a helicopter.
This is one example of why I think Archer is a masterclass in storytelling, you take a simple story and you start to add a setting, and layers of storytelling to get a more compelling story, and added to that, they also do a ton of work of animation to add to the story being told!
I can only imagine, but hopefully, the animation team knew ahead of time that they had this story coming and invested time to do it so gracefully, you can tell it was done with a lot of dedication and passion for their craft and they deserve a all the praise I can give.
Continued belowJoke of the week: Archer: “Sorry… I was laughing at your name”
And that’s it for this episode, a simple story turned into a great episode, I didn’t even remember that it was so great, and now it might become one of my favorites from this season.
What did you think of this episode? Leave your comments below and join us next week for our take on episode 212, “White Nights”, the penultimate of the season.
