Hi folks! Welcome to another installment of the Multiversity Summer TV Binge 2020, just like last year, I’m on my task of Reviewing the entirety of one of my favorite animated series, Archer. We are only in season two, but I assure you, I have seen the whole series at least three times before and I’m still learning new things, this show is so layered, with its idioms, linguistic tropes and heavily featured rhetorical/stylistic devices, that you can find a new joke or reference every single time you rewatch any given episode.
This year we will begin with –obviously– the season premiere, named “Swiss Miss” and just like last year, I’m gonna start with a warning, this show is for adults, it uses a ton of sexual imagery and dialogue, particularly this episode with a an uncomfortable (if not controversial) plot, take that in mind if you haven’t ever seen it. Now, let’s dive right in.
1. The eternal problem with the agency’s budget
As it always happens with Isis, the agency is in desperate need of money, it’s not like the director is going to start cutting in her absolute essential exotic leathers or her $300 alcohol am I right? So, this time the overcomplicated scheme to get funding is to look after a 16-year old socialite, in the hopes of convincing her father of injecting money into the spying company.
This is a recurrent theme in the series, as we saw last season and we will keep seeing pretty much every season, I love this critique of the spying world, a real spying agency would never be like in the movies, all a perfect machine, but it also turns in a critique of corruption, capitalism and the ineffectiveness of the bureaucracy, where the high commands are ineffective, and the money and resources go to their benefit instead of the people who should be benefited by said machine.
2. Enjoy your vacations in Gstaad, and don’t die!
And, as always, Mallory’s ploys always involve protecting something or somebody in a high-class, luxury place, this time it is a town in the Alpes where the über-rich go and enjoy their vacations in the snow, it’s never, I don’t know, a Swamp or something, right?
This shows how Mallory has other interests in her mind, like buying at least 50 bottles of alcohol, and getting laid with a millionaire, instead of caring for the wellbeing of her employees, or her son or even the person who hired them, but more on that later.
3. Seducing… an adult?
Archer did one mistake, and he was judged by the rest of the team for the whole episode, he’s always a narcissistic asshole, he is always a misogynist and a pervert, and the team can live with that, but then he objectivized a woman not knowing her age and he is –rightly– judged as a schwein.
But then, it turns out that the girl, Anke, is immediately attracted to Archer, and starts to seduce and harass him, which makes Archer highly uncomfortable, because he is seen as a pervert, even when he is absolutely (well, almost) against seducing teenagers, but that’s what happen when your fame catches up to you, nobody will believe you when you are doing something right. This plot, as many things in the series, also opened an opportunity to learn something new.
A great joke her was that the age of consent in Germany is 14, effectively making it “the Alabama of Europe”, and I laughed at it and said “wow that’s not good”, but I became interested in the subject, and it turns out that Alabama’s age actually is 16, which I think is still not so good, but better than fourteen.
Then, I was ready to criticize Germany but I decided to look Mexico’s age of consent (I live in Mexico), and I was awfully surprised to learn that some states have the age of consent set at 12! What the fuck is wrong with my country?! I mean, there are laws that protect minors against deceit, there’s a crime called “estupro”, and it is not common for people to have relationships with minors, I mean, we are a civilized country, but come on! Seriously 12? Damn, laws must be changed!
Continued belowAnd after that awkward realization that my country needs some work –thanks Archer–, let’s keep talking about the show.
4. Triggering themes
Age of consent, sexual addiction, promiscuity and prejudice, those are some of the themes that the writing team of the show were willing to talk about in this episodes, and that’s one of the things I always admired about this show, they are always willing to talk about “taboos” that should be talked about, it might seem to some people as too racy or over the line, but I like that that enables us, the fans, to learn about a ton about our social behavior, just like I learned something new with this episode.
5. Overcompensating for attention, a.k.a. So close to getting it
And, of course, we must talk about the most important theme of this episode; why is Anke trying to have sex with Archer? Well, in reality she is not sexually active, on the contrary, she just does stupid things to get the attention of her dad, always on either boarding school or camps, as Archer puts it, she misbehaves because she wants a little caring from her dad, just like Archer; she’s also insecure and overcompensates, just like Archer.
Problem is, when she tells him that, he responds angrily that he doesn’t do that. Damn dude! You were so close to learn something about yourself, if maybe you realize that, you wouldn’t make so many mistakes in your life… on the other side, we wouldn’t have a show, so, it’s better this way.
Joke of the week:
Gilette: [After seeing rifle lasers] “Ohh, Pink Floyd show!” [Guns firing] “Oh… man, I’m gonna be in trouble”
And that’s it for this episode, it’s almost ten years since it first aired and even if it tackles controversial topics with humor, I believe that it’s still relevant, harassment happens every day, and it was inversed here, but it really happens the other way around, adults coming after young people, and we must take care of them, protect them from predators. What did you think of this episode? Leave your comments below and join us next week for our take on episode 202, “A going concern”.
And remember! Season 11 is coming soon on FXX, it was delayed due to the pandemic, so we’ll have to wait a little bit to watch it.
