Needless to say, there are spoilers ahead. If you haven’t already watched Episode 1 of Archer Season 6, you should be doing that right now. Seriously. It’s one of the funniest shows on TV and you’re going to want to get on that. Otherwise, please enjoy reliving All the Best Parts of Archer.
After a season-long adventure trying to get rid of a (literal) metric ton of cocaine, Archer and the gang are back in the spy business and the world is a better, funnier (if slightly less safe) place. Lana has had her baby (Abbiejean) and the office has been restored to exactly the way it had been before it got blown up – right down to Brett’s blood stain on the carpet! The only difference (besides the addition of Milton, the 6-slice toaster/copy machine) is that ISIS is now controlled by CIA overlords… the very ones the gang got entangled with last year in all that unfortunate South America/cocaine business… which is perfect timing really since the name ISIS has taken on a distinctly unfunny real world connotation between seasons 5 and 6. As the episode begins, Archer has disappeared on a 6-week self-pitying Southeast Asian bender as a result Lana forcing him into parenthood against his will last season. Luckily, the CIA overlords are able to track him down and, right away, Lana chews him out for bailing, but for once he has a comeback and a not entirely unreasonable point:
Archer: The next time you decide to use somebody’s sperm to impregnate yourself, then maybe that decision SHOULD INCLUDE THAT OTHER SOMEBODY!
Lana: Who? That other somebody who runs away at the thought of responsibility and, as we speak, is up to his eyeballs in cobra whiskey and ladyboy hookers?
Archer: Hah… that is… ha… that is… YOU DON’T KNOW ME!
No time for family squabbles though! Archer’s got a mission to track down a crashed jet in the jungles of Borneo and recover the jet’s computer system before the local rebels can get their hands on it. Yeahhh. Jungles. Not Archer’s favorite habitat. Luckily, this time there are no crocodiles (or any other “apex predator that lived through the K-T extinction, physically unchanged for a hundred million years because it’s the perfect killing machine: a half ton of cold-blooded fury, the bite force of 20,000 Newtons, and stomach acid so strong it can dissolve bones and hooves”) but there are mosquitoes which have probably been around longer and are super annoying and super disease-y:
Archer: God, is one last non-malarial hurrah before I go home too much to ask? Ow! Thanks jungle. Eat a buffet of dicks.
Before he can get to the plane, Archer runs into a Japanese soldier named Sato who doesn’t know World War II isn’t a thing anymore and who refuses to surrender. At this point I’m thinking “Hell in the Pacific with Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune?” But no, that’s not quite right… It’ll come to me. Anyway, dialing up the internet on his fancy space phone, Archer tries to explain to Sato the last 70 years of history between Japan and America:
Archer: Here’s you guys signing the surrender on the USS Missouri… Here’s all the VJ-Day parades in America…. Here’s The Bad News Bears Go To Japan. That’s Lupus and Tanner… Oh and here’s a link to the episode of The Six Million Dollar Man about this exact thing we’re doing right now!
Yes! That’s it! Season 2, Episode 14 of The Six Million Dollar Man: “The Last Kamikaze.” Man, that is just like scratching an itch inside your brain.
Anyway, Sato isn’t buying it and the tables are turned when Archer falls into a tiger trap and spears his foot on a bamboo spike… but then they’re turned again when the rebels show up and give chase, forcing them to cooperate.
Meanwhile, back at the office, Pam sneaks through a secret access way where she finds Krieger taking a dip in a Japanese bath… for reasons that will perhaps be explained in a later episode… maybe Pam and Krieger just thought a secret Japanese bath would be a nice addition to the new/old office? I don’t know. Anyway, she strips down to Krieger’s visible horror which she assumes is because all of the weight she gained back since last season’s cocaine binge:
Pam: Look, my therapist says everybody’s got a hole that needs to be filled. Some people fill it with drugs. Some fill it with work. Some fill it with between-meal snacks and liquor and their therapist’s cock!
Krieger: Um… I was actually looking at your pubic hair.
Pam: Oh. Yeah. It’s a lightning bolt. But I guess the letters could use a touch up. It’s supposed to say “TCB.” Takin care of beaveness!
We’re dangerously close to Too Much Information territory here, but really, where do you even draw a line like that with Pam?
Meanwhile, back in the jungle. Archer and Sato are still on the run from the rebels and Archer’s still trying to explain the current geopolitical situation while knocking back vicodin covered in candy (“I call them Mike n Vics”):
Archer: America’s not your enemy. Japan has no enemies. You’re like… ha, ha… I want to say a platypus but I’m not sure if that’s an accurate analogy.
As Archer gets increasingly high, the subject of Lana comes up and he realizes he’s ready to “parent the shit out of that kid.” Maybe he overdoes it, or maybe his system is still off from his 6-week cobra whiskey/ladyboy hooker binge, but Archer winds up passing out. Sato grabs his phone and takes a little walk down Recent World History Memory Lane.
The next morning, Archer wakes up just as Sato is getting to the part about those little atomic bombs we accidentally on purpose sort of dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Archer apologizes, but Sato kicks him in the chest, busting a couple ribs (“Sneak attack… typical!”). No time for being in pain though. The rebels are still hot on their trail, so the wounded Archer and Sato track the plane down, grab the computer, destroy the plane and make their way to the extraction point. Sato, believing the world has moved on, decides to stay put. To talk him out of it, Archer dials up Sato’s wife and daughter and Sato speaks to them for the first time in 70 years. It’s a genuinely moving Archer moment and I almost shed a little cartoon tear.
Mission accomplished, Archer returns to civilization and to the warm if still kind of mad embrace of Lana, Abbiejean and his vain, selfish, lying and possibly alcoholic mother. And that ladies and gentlemen is Archer Season 6, Episodoe 1: “The Holdout”
I cried like a bitch during the phone call at the end.