Hi folks! Welcome the to our weekly recap of Archer on the Multiversity Summer TV Binge 2020. This week’s episode is named “Movie Star”, to be honest it was a “regular” episode, but it is still better than other shows, with great laughs and meaningful storytelling. Let’s dive right in.
1. Rona Thorne
Picture this, you are a famous actress and you are going to do a movie about spies, what do you do? Of course you go and try it for yourself, and that’s what famous actress Rona Thorne did in this episode, and Lana is in charge of babysitting her.
At first, she doesn’t accept, I mean, it’s obviously dangerous and she won’t put at risk a civilian, right? Well, Archer came and attempted to move on Rona, and of course Lana is IS going to “teach” Rona, after all, this is an opportunity to spite Archer.
They form a meaningful relationship, because Rona tells Lana that she is still hung up on Archer, and that she is an empowered, sexy and strong woman, but she is still an insecure person. Eventually we will see Lana develop more confidence and do empowering things (like getting pregnant without a father… kinda), and I don’t want to say that it is Rona who kickstarted Lana’s grow, but it definitely tells us that the writing team intended to show us Lana’s growth through the subsequent seasons.
2. Snooping on Rona’s Cheryl’s life
Meanwhile, Pam stole Rona’s diary, and that means she, Cheryl and Ray must break in the actress’ apartment to give the diary back, but the important thing her are the stuff we learn from Cheryl/Carol, whom we learn is, if not crazy, at least seriously troubled.
First, she tells a story about how she broke her arm on purpose so a dude named Dick Sludge could sign her cast and she ended up permanently damaging him a tendon, then, in Rona’s house, she says that if you say the right stuff they send you to a mental ward, which means it’s not the first time that she is in a similar situation, damn!
3. Archer and Tinnitus
When Lana was “teaching” Rona how to shoot, Archer appears and attempts to hit on the actress, only to have Lana fire her gun next to his head, which lefts Archer temporarily deaf, this is the first time in the series that we have this recurring joke where, after firing guns, Archer only hears the buzz from his tinnitus.
Of course her it’s played as a joke and a logic consequence of being a spy firing guns all the time, but I am happy to see this kind of disabilities; hearing impairities have been more present on popular culture, like Baby Driver, The Shape of Water and “Hawkeye”, more recently on Rosenberg & Schmidt’s “Freefall”, I recommend Mickey Newman’s video on the first movie, it helped me understand a lot about the meaningfulness of showing hearing disabilities on media.
4. Mandingo Two, The Enslavening
Just like always, Malory only accepts a job that will benefit her, she accepts to have Rona because of the possibility of being in her movie, but not only as an advisor, hell she was destined to be an actress! So she starts rewriting the script.
Of course she has problems with it and ask Cyril for help, they end up with an entirely new script and ask the “producer” if their re-write could be the main script for Rona’s movie, he rejects them but offers them the opportunity to give him a treatment for and entirely different movie. And Malory and Cyril are going to celebrate their win in the best manner they know: having sex!
5. Counter Snipers
Archer asks Bilbo for a mission, and he warns him that somebody is trying to kill the Soviet Premier when he arrives at the UN, and Lana takes this mission to go with Rona, only to discover that she is the sleeper agent they were warned about!
Rona is torn between having her acting career of doing what she was born for but is ultimately convinced that she could start a directing career on the flourishing Soviet cinema industry and kills the premier.
Continued belowAs usual, the two best agents of ISIS, seriously good spies, are defeated and paralyzed by their ego, cheated by another person just because they cannot afford to be defeated by each-other.
Joke of the week: Rona: “Oh my God, if I like, possessed the capacity to be embarrassed…”
And that’s it for this episode, as usual it was very funny but ultimately unnecessary in the season’s story arc, but hey, at least this episode served to present a lot of future plots, Lana’s empowerment, Cheryl’s craziness and Archer’s tinnitus. What did you think of this episode? Leave your comments below and join us next week for our take on episode 208, “Stage Two”.
Oh! And yesterday we had two big Archer things, first, their panel at Comic Con @ Home and then, the trailer and release date for season eleven, coming September sixteenth! Amaziiiing!
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