Hi folks! Welcome to our weekly recap of Archer on the Multiversity Summer TV Binge 2020. The episode for this week is named “Tragical History” and it’s focused on Cyril the accountant, but wait, it’s about a boring person, but the episode wasn’t boring at all. Let’s dive right in.
1. Onomato-pee-ia
Archer is a badass, that thing is obvious and has been since the show started, I say it in almost every one of these review/recaps, but what I don’t say often is that every character is well rounded and have a meaningful reason to be in the show.
This time the focus is on Cyril Figgis, voiced by Chris Parnell, who also gives voice to Jerry Smith in Rick and Morty, and very much like that character, Cyril is astoundingly boring and insecure. For example, it is hinted that he has a big penis, but he lacks that “big dick energy” and confidence that supposedly comes with it.
Here we see how, thanks to peer pressure, he misses every single shot at the dart game and the men lose the bet, so the team humiliate and emasculate him. We see how it is a problem that has happened all his life, he even was publicly humiliated in a spelling bee, which disappointed his father.
2. George Spelvin
So, what do you do when you are an embarrassment? Well you treason your coworkers. Enter George Spelvin, an eccentric man accompanied with twin Japanese sisters, and offers Cyril an opportunity to redeem himself.
He gives Cyril a disc that contains a very catchy Virus that at first seemed to be innocuous, just a key stroke and the virus goes away, right? Well, No. Cyril is never given the opportunity to “save” the computers, but even if he managed to try, it is revealed that Spelvin is a hacker who sells security to the “big” spying agencies, so, he is using ISIS as a guinea pig, first, to prove that the software he sells is improvable, so he can sell more, but, since he’s already inside, why not steal Isis’ cover list with the names and locations of every spy on the agency’s payroll?
I liked this episode’s villain, he is not a “let’s end the world”-kinda villain, instead he just manipulated what he perceived was the weak link of the company and attempted to make a profit off of ISIS’ incompetency.
3. Hunch-Hunch! Wha-Whaaa!
So, what to do with a virus that has infected every computer? Well, they try to wipe clean every computer, but instead, Cheryl simply let every PC fall through the elevator pit. Meanwhile, Kriegger attempts (barely) to destroy the virus and Lana and Archer try to enter the mainframe to stop it from the root. Of course, everybody fail and it’s time to use physical force to stop the hacking.
4. Badass Fights
After various desperate attempts from Cyril to buy again the cover list, he goes to his last resource: asking a more confident person for help, of course, Archer emasculates him all over again, but after all, he has to save his mother’s company.
So, Archer proves that he is good at what he does, he asks Cyril for information on the building so he could take advantage of his surroundings, and he fights with Spelvin and the twins, although he ends up trapped by the sisters, so, he is powerless and Cyril has to step up and save the day, after all he has the gun.
At first, it seems that Cyril failed to kill Spelvin, but he wasn’t aiming at him, instead he destroyed the servers that hosted ISIS’ cover lists and threatens to kill the bad guy, whom of course doesn’t want to die and calmly lefts the building. Cyril saved the day, yay! I’m sure there’s a lesson in there somewhere about taking responsibility of yourself and self-esteem, but—
5. Krieger and his holo-girlfriend
One of the most hilarious scenes here is when Lana, fed up with Krieger’s disinterest, kills his holo-girlfriend and he delivers Charlton Heston’s line at the end of Planet of the Apes. Of course, he eventually repairs her and she becomes a regular joke in the series. And I want to take the time here to talk about Archer’s digital characters.
Continued belowBack in 2015, the creative team made a Scavenger Hunt for the fans of the show during season six, and here we discovered that Krieger’s girlfriend is named Kimiko. Then, they upped the ante and made an even harder Scavenger Hunt for 2016, and it was revealed that the mastermind here was the sentient pirate virus from this episode! As a gift, they gave a .stl file to 3D print your own Pirate Virus! For that impressive task, they won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Media – Multiplatform Storytelling two years in a row! That proves the dedication of the team and the fans for this show!
Joke of the week: Krieger: “Nooo! You maniac! You blew her up. Oh, damn you! Goddamn you all to hell!”
And that’s it for this episode, overall, it had a lot of development for the most “boring” character of the show and awesome jokes. What did you think of this episode? Leave your comments below and join us next week for our take on episode 207, the season finale, “Movie Star”.
