Hi folks! Welcome to our weekly recap of Archer’s third season, on the Multiversity Summer TV Binge 2021. This week’s episode is named “Lo Scandalo” and it is a character piece on Malory, what drives her and what she is willing to get done. Let’s dive right in.
1. “A man was murdered tonight”
There is a dead man in the Malory’s house and she, very upset, tells the story of how a group of murderers arrived, shot her sexual partner. Any of these things would be credible if it weren’t for 1) she has a freshly used gun in her hand; and 2) the man is wearing a zentai suit, covered from head to toe, tied to a chair, and implying that he is a giant dildo; oh, and he is the very prime minister of Italy.
Archer and Lana arrive to help the grieving Malory get rid of her “problem,” but they don’t believe the very flimsy story she told them, instead, they are pretty sure that she killed him.
2. “And his body was dismembered”
Archer recruits Krieger to help him dispose of the body, unfortunately he invites the entire ISIS team, so he turns everyone into murder accomplices, and if that wasn’t enough Krieger makes them an active part of the disappearance of the body.
The plan is very simple, he is going to cut the body into pieces and each one of them will put it in trash cans around the city tracing a happy face, just for the mad scientist’s pleasure, Lana even admits that it is a good plan to get rid of the body, well, almost the whole plan.
3. “The police was ineffective on finding a suspect”
A while later, a policeman arrives at the door attending to an anonymous call that dennounced that the prime minister of Italy was assassinated there.
Malory lets him in and he explores the whole house, but he finds nothing, just a bunch of crazy people pretending to be the fanciest individuals in the whole city, and apparently this is how to avoid a problem with the police.
4. “The murdered was never found”
At the end of the night, when Krieger arrives, he distributes the packages and everyone leaves, meanwhile Archer and Lana observe the situation after it’s finished and they argue that it was that it was Malory herself whom murdered the man.
In the flashbacks of what really happened, she was holding a grudge for a decades-long spy conflict, because he may have murdered a potential father of Archer, so, fed up with his increasingly insane sexual preferences, Malory finally decided to murder him and walk free thanks to her employees.
5. Today I learned: Operation Gladio
Yes, it deserves its own numbering, Malory met Savio Mascalzoni doing field work on Operation Gladio, a “stay behind” operation organized by France, the UK, NATO and the CIA with the excuse that they were trying to prevent an invasion from socialist countries, they were practically terrorists doing everything to thwart any attempt to get a socialist or even left-leaning politics in the region. They kidnapped, tortured, and made massacres in the name of capitalism.
I don’t know, it stuck with me because that’s part of the history of America that is not told at all and, in order to understand and heal, it’s necessary to show all the bad things too, it is surreal to see an animated show tackle this themes, even briefly or to make a joke, because at the end, I got the chance to learn about this and otherwise, I would have never do so.
Today I also learned: That the Irish were neutral on World War Two, they helped Britain a little bit with intelligence, but they did not fight. And googling a little bit more, I learned that it caused conflicts with Russia and they weren’t accepted into the UN until ten years after their first application.
Joke of the week:
Mallory [to her Irish superintendent when he asked for a Christmas gift and got a potato]: So once again, you’re left with the classic Irishman’s dilemma: do I eat the potato now or do I let it ferment so I can drink it later?
And that’s it for this episode, overall, a pretty straightforward episode with just enough of a plot to talk about but full of jokes, plus, I learned a lot. What did you think of this episode? Leave your comments below and join us next week for our take on episode 308, “Bloody Ferlin.”
