Hi folks! Welcome the to our weekly recap of Archer on the Multiversity Summer TV Binge 2020. This week’s episode is named “Placebo Effect”, a follow-up to last week’s episode and oh my god, it may be the best episode so far, I seriously love it. Let’s dive right in.
1. First of all, Krieger
Let’s start with this episode’s subplot, after feeling bad for Archer, Krieger starts making flash cards in Portuguese to him, but Cyril starts interrogating him on why he knows the language and ended up shouting nazi-related phrases.
This makes Cyril wary of Krieger and goes with Mallory, who reveals that Krieger is not a Nazi scientist imported from the regime, instead he might be a Brazilian clone of Hitler! This is a reference to the movie Boys from Brazil, where Joseph Mengele hid in Brazil and kept his human experiments. This story of Krieger’s origins is hilarious to me, and I’m eager to talk about season five, where this story is developed.
2. Sugarpills and Zima
Now it’s time to talk about the main plot, this episode begins with Archer celebrating his strength because he hasn’t been affected by the treatment or cancer, but Krieger is suspicious of the fact, and he discovered that his drugs were fake, which means he is weeks late in his treatment, and what’s worse, who knows how many people were affected by that.
This story hit me hard, first of all, maybe the writing team weren’t inspired by true events, but it hit me hard because it really happened a few years ago in Mexico (where I live) and they did it to kids, so yeah, even if it’s fiction, this episode was a little bit cathartic.
3. Retaliation for Ruth
I always say that Archer is an asshole, but here, he show us that in fact, he does care, he is angry because he might die, but what worries him the worst is his new friend from chemo, Ruth, and old lady he grew fond of.
Throughout the episode, we see flashbacks of Archer and Ruth, the most meaningful to me was when Archer said that he lost his hair, his fifth best attribute, only to discover that Ruth believed that his most important attribute was his sweetness. You know, we rarely see this face of Archer, his open and vulnerable side, and when it was revealed that Ruth died, one tear rolled down my face.
So, yeah, the spy satire made me cry a little.
4. Mickey Hannity
What do you do when you discover that the medicine you are taking is fake? Well, Archer went on a rampage, he got to a warehouse of the Irish mob, there, he played Family Feud, but instead of strikes he shot knees.
There, we even got the chance to add a little bit of immigration critique, because an Irish mobster named Hannity started criticizing the Guatemalan janitors for stealing the American jobs, damn! 10 years latter and we still have a piece of garbage with the same name spewing hatred on live TV!
5. Did you see Regis this morning?
Later, we see Archer finally getting to Frankey Delaney, the old mafia boss in charge of the operations, he chastises Archer and tells him that he doesn’t believe Archer is going to kill him, then, just like in Magnum PI, he ask’s him about his morning and kills him. I didn’t know it was a tribute, but I was still very impressed with that scene, damn, such intensity, the closing of a Rampage after being close to death. And it turns out we are watching the recording of the killing three months later, with Archer celebrating that now he is truly cancer free.
Last week we talked about how I didn’t like how they used comedy relating to cancer, and you might disagree with me now, but I think this is how you tackle a theme as heavy as cancer, It’s not about making fun of the victims, instead, you do a satire of the health system, because you don’t need a gang controlling the drug supplies, when we have legal mafias that have the American health system on a chokehold. Health insurers have been lying about the benefits of a private system and now after the pandemic, over five million more people have lost their insurance, screw them, Archer would have blown their kneepads years ago.
And that’s it for this episode, the best one so far, I cried a bit, I got angry while writing this, you know, if you manage to make me reflect and think on that level, leaving a meaningful thing after watching your show, you deserve all the praise I can give. What did you think of this episode? Leave your comments below and join us next week for our take on episode 210, “El Secuestro”, ohh, español!
