Archer 406 Once Bitten Television 

Five Thoughts on Archer’s “Once Bitten”

By | August 7th, 2022
Posted in Television | % Comments

Hi folks! Welcome back to our weekly recap of Archer’s fourth season, on the Multiversity Summer TV Binge 2022. This week’s episode is named “Once Bitten,” it shows us more of Archer’s past, and that is never a happy place, let’s dive right in!

1. How painful would it be?

The boys go on a mission to Turkmenistan but, in the middle of the desert, they get their jeep stuck in the sand and, classic Archer, he’s doing his best to do nothing, that is, until he feels like going to the bathroom and he has to negotiate the terms of his… cleaning.

Both Ray and Cyril are against Archer using the map, since it would obviously be a bad idea and they don’t even have a compass, so Archer must negotiate to use the money they brought to bribe on this mission; they agree that he would use $700 dollars, only for Archer to end up destroying the map they wanted to protect, unfortunately he is bitten by a snake in one of the most private areas of human existence: the taint.

2. What is love

Meanwhile, Lana shows her disgust for not being part of this mission and Malory justifies herself with the usual casual racism, she argues that it would be suspicious for a black woman to be in Turkmenistan being free; In addition, Malory hides from Lana that he has not received information about the mission and asks Krieger to help her find them, but he does not have the skills that Bilbo had, RIP.

In her constant complaint, Lana is confronted by Cheryl, who tells her that she should stop waiting for the fantasy that she obviously has that when Malory leaves the agency, she is going to pass it on to Lana. It’s a painful reality check for Lana to hear that this is the only place where she knows love and, strangely enough, Carol didn’t even seem to notice that she said what she said, she’s becoming more and more unpredictable as the series progresses.

3. Time to flee Turkmenistan

Now, escaping from the sand becomes a priority, since Archer is running out of time, and they suddenly remember that Ray has bionic legs and he could unstuck the jeep in an instant… but he decides to carry it on his back and ends up getting hurt in the back where he has no bionic parts, and now only Cyril is left to save the team.

That is, until they are ambushed by a nomadic warrior tribe and must negotiate their escape and save a poisoned Archer; But the mission becomes very difficult when the country’s leader has changed the name of different things, and communication becomes complicated. Although this is a joke, it actually did happen, when the first president of Turkmenistan changed several words for things with names related to his mother, a very similar obsession to Archer’s.

Luckily, money is a universal language…

4. A woman, a bullet, a suicide

During that time, Archer has two hallucinations, first he imagines James Mason as an avatar of his conscience.

In an episode chock-full of references, we see a scene similar to “The Natural,” with Archer as a promising (and really annoying) lacrosse player riding his lacrosse stick around all places, until he meets a woman who shots him in the gut and kills herself. It’s a shocking image, seeing a possible different life for him, his potential being destroyed by another damaged person. It makes you wonder how his life could be if he had… Happiness?

The second scene is shorter, he is back in his childhood room all alone, and suddenly a man appears with a gift, he loved alligators and this man has a plushie gator as a gift for him that man is his father, he finally remembers and then… He wakes up from his fainting, and the memory is gone, maybe forever.

5. The questionability of their actions

One of the things that kept Lana from doing this mission was the true intentions of the team, they had to bribe their way into the country to “hinder construction” of a pipeline that can give oil and gas to Russia, which is ironic, given how they previously tried to prevent exactly that from happening.

Continued below

Then, after the mission is botched, Ray and Cyril agree to give the Turkmen 25 grand and keep the rest to themselves. After all, the team doesn’t always have to be good guys or be on the “good team,” if they can be on good terms with the U.S. they will explode a pipeline, no matter how bad the environment could be affected, and even that doesn´t matter if they can cash themselves a big payday.

Joke of the week:

Cyril: You’re not using the map for that! (Cleaning his butt)

Archer: Hey, I’m not the idiot who didn’t… I mean, I also didn’t think to bring toilet paper, but I’m not, you know…

Gillette: An idiot.

Archer: Exactly.

And that’s it for this episode, overall, it was one of those surprisingly dark episodes where we see how Archer’s past is a sad place and that he could have had a very different life. What did you think of this episode? Leave your comments below and join us next week for our take on episode 4×07, “Live and Let Dine.”


//TAGS | 2022 Summer TV Binge | archer

Ramon Piña

Lives in Monterrey, México. He eats tacos for a living, literally. You can say hi on Twitter and Instagram. Besides comics, he loves regular books and Baseball - "Viva Multiversity Cabr*nes!".

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