Archer 205 Double Deuce Television 

Five Thoughts on Archer’s “The Double Deuce”

By | July 11th, 2020
Posted in Television | % Comments

Hi folks! Welcome the to our weekly recap of Archer on the Multiversity Summer TV Binge 2020. This week’s episode is named “The Double Deuce”, I tend to write my thoughts in a somewhat “linear” following what happened at the episode, this time I made a mees and talked about different things with no order whatsoever, bear with me. Let’s dive right in.

1. A Tontine

The whole premise of this episode involves, for the first time, Woodhouse as a character with more value than just being Archer’s servant. Turns out all his fellows from The Double Deuce squad are dying in uncommon ways, which can only mean one thing: they are being murdered!

But why would anybody want to kill old people? Well, just like in the classic The Simpsons’ episode “Raging Abe Simpson and His Grumbling Grandson in ‘The Curse of the Flying Hellfish’”, they had a Tontine and that would make the last survivor a millionaire. So, Archer is forced to take care of his batman, despite his absolute disdain for him.

Meanwhile, at the office, when they learn what’s happening at Archer’s apartment, Cheryl and Pam decide to organize a tontine, because of course, being as good at spying as ISIS are, their field agents die pretty often.

2. Woodhouse’s abuse by Archer

This episode’s main plot is very straightforward, the guy Woodhouse thought was coming to murder him was there only to present his condolences… only to be killed by Archer.

One of the things I don’t like of this show is how Archer treats Woodhouse, if he is an asshole with everybody, he is worse with his butler, and it is really uncomfortable because he is abusing an old person. He throws Woodhouse’s pants and shoes from the roof, and in this episode Archer says he is going to make him eat “so many spiderwebs”. Damn, I understand that this is by design, the writers of the show know that being an asshole to his servant is necessary in the representation of a spoiled superspy, but sometimes it’s hard to watch.

So, it’s refreshing to see Woodhouse really angry at Archer after he kills one of the members of The Double Deuce, and archer is probably going to take vengeance for the insults in future episodes, but hey, at least Woodhouse let out a little of steam.

3. Seamus and Archer’s nurturing

Did I mention that Wee baby Seamus is in this episode? Well, he is, because Trinette is on a prostitute convention or something and “the father” must take care of him. Archer obviously is bad at parenting, he lets Seamus eat the celery from his Bloody Mary, he lets him eat the shaving foam from a brush, and the boy ends up drinking martini, so, when Archer takes the baby to the office to leave him with Malory, he has a hangover! What?!

But what’s worse, Malory treats wee baby Seamus incredibly bad, she threatens to kill him if he pees himself, she keeps giving him alcohol, and openly says negative reinforcement is the key, so, Archer and us start to understand why in the hell Archer acts like he does, his mother was an incredibly bad mother, and that’s when she was around because , as I’m going to explain next, she practically met his son 5 years later after giving birth!

4. Woodhouse and Archer’s nurturing

The most appalling part of Archer being an asshole with Woodhouse is that he practically is his adoptive father, as it’s revealed on flashbacks, after Woodhouse is discharged from the royal army, he ends up in Morocco and helps Malory give birth to baby Archer, he even attempts to name him “Reggie” like his sergeant, which, of course doesn’t happen.

Then, Malory left and came back five years after, and when Woodhouse tries to literally introduce Archer to his mother, he says he doesn’t have a mother, which… ouch, that’s gotta leave a mark on her mothering desires. That also explains a little bit about why Archer is such a bad person with Woodhouse, maaaaybe he let him be spoiled a bit, after all, her mother is absent.

5. The animation

The other element that I talked very little about so far are the flashbacks from Woodhouse’s time at the first World War, the homoerotic tension in them were hilarious and I can only imagine that was just like that in real life, I mean, a bunch of men living together for years?

Continued below

Well, what I want to talk about is the animation, Archer is done with a bunch of software, mainly Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects; also Toon Boom Harmony and Cinema 4D (thanks Wikipedia!). In the first season we had a very “blocky” way of animating, and, as with every show, they get better every season, and this episode is proof of how they are getting better at it.

We had a lot of sets from the World War that would be time consuming to do, either at outdoor and indoor, day and night; then we have Woodhouse rampage spree à la the movie “Legends of the Fall”, where, using shadows of the characters, the animation team managed to give us very dynamic (and bloody) scenes that were time consuming and expensive to animate, so, kudos to them, they prove that they are amazing and only getting better at what they do.

Joke of the week: Archer: “You want me to take a baby… to a murder”

And that’s it for this episode, I enjoyed a lot the premise and how they developed it here, if they are good at something in this show is the way they use sarcasm, irony and dark humor to their advantage. What did you think of this episode? Leave your comments below and join us next week for our take on episode 206, “Tragical History”.

And remember, they announced Archer’s panel at this year’s Comic-Con@Home, on Friday, July 24th 5 PM PT!


//TAGS | 2020 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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