Hi folks! Welcome back to our weekly recap of Archer’s fourth season, on the Multiversity Summer TV Binge 2022. We are now in the halfway point of the season and here we have a reality show-style episode named “Live and Let Dine” with guest star Anthony Bourdain, Let’s dive right in!
1. Lance Casteau
The late chef Anthony Bourdain appears in this episode playing a character closer to what we know as Gordon Ramsay’s persona, his performance is pretty decent and really hilarious, I imagine he must have had a blast acting as a villainized version of himself.
It is curious to think that, what at first was surely seen as a simple funny idea, inviting a cook in your spy show, takes on more value and becomes a cultural object once the actor is no longer with us.
I’ve heard that off-camera Anthony Bourdain was one of the best, most kind people in the often cruel world of cooking and entertainment, and seeing him in this way, as a bad person, is helpful to us as an audience because it demystifies the man and lets us appreciate all that he was and was not, by contrasting Bourdain with Lance Casteau.
2. Always the looming “what if I wasn’t a spy”
Here Archer takes over the kitchen of the Seize/16 restaurant and apparently becomes a very effective Sous Chef. He’s already good at torturing Cyril, what if that becomes his new job? The world of cooking is cruel and he seems to fit in nicely.
Much of the show focuses on the constant “what if”, thinking about a life outside of espionage and outside of the violent world that they are part of; in several episodes this season we have explored this idea of a different profession for our protagonists. Today Archer could, in theory, have found a job where his social skills would work even better than in espionage: the kitchen.
Although of course at the end of the episode the Casteau destroys that nascent dream and confesses to Archer that he was not good enough, he was simply distracting him to achieve his mission.
3. All Booked
As Cheryl’s mental health slowly worsens, it turns out that the threat at the beginning seemed to have been invented by Malory to get a table at the most coveted restaurant in town, as usual her motives are selfish and self-serving, and in this case, they particularly affect Carol and Pam.
Cheryl is tasked with getting a table at the restaurant, but she only has the phone where reservations are NOT made, and if she doesn’t get in, Pam’s fighting fish will be killed by their boss. So they go to Rodney the gun librarian and trade a handjob in exchange for the machine that detects phones by location, this way they can get the real phone where the reservations are held but at what cost? She had to unwillingly masturbate a disgusting man for someone else’s wants, that kind of abuse is intolerable, and she clearly is not keeping it together.
4. The Bastard Chef
While Pam and Carol have a hard job at the office, Lana and Cyril also have a bad time at the restaurant, she has to answer a phone that only works as elitism, because if you have that phone, you will never get a reservation, and she constantly receives contempt de Casteau for being an ineffective waitress.
Meanwhile, Cyril has to get different ingredients ready for the preparation of the Albanian food that is going to be served to the Albanian ambassador, but it is not a pleasant task, since she has to remove the meat from the calf’s head. In Mexico this produces a delicious food called “barbacoa” but separating the meat from the bone is done after the product is already cooked, not before, in this case, Cyril does a job so unpleasant that it convinces him to become vegan.
5. Hand me some of those crackers
When Malory finally gets her dinner, it is obviously ruined by the rest of the team, for starters the restaurant’s classic menu was changed to Albanian food to please the ambassador and, as there are much more important customers than them, they don’t even serve her a measly glass of wine.
Continued belowAnd of course, Ron rubs salt in the wound, taking saltines out of his suit and giving them to the girls to eat while they wait. This is frustrating for Malory, who married a very “mundane” person who has no problem being noisy or disgusting.
And what is even worse, their dinner is ruined when what they were trying to prevent happens and the diplomat is assassinated right in front of them, therefore losing the opportunity to work for the State Department ever again… Anyway, one more day in the espionage business.
Joke of the week:
Casteau: Anyway, those ISIS idiots are doing security, and for some inexplicable reason they have to do that undercover, so…
(A metallic bowl hits floor and makes that unnerving noise without anyone picking it up)
Archer: (After the sound finally stopping) Whoops!
And that’s it for this episode, overall, a very funny episode that made me miss Bourdain, maybe I’ll watch some episodes of his show. What did you think of this episode? Leave your comments below and join us next week for our take on episode 4×08, “Coyote Lovely.”
