Archer
“Into the Cold”, Season 14 Episodes 9-11.
Note: Wikipedia et al. list this episode as being in three parts, in which case the final episode should by rights be “Into the Cold: Part III”. However, the three episodes are streaming on Hulu as a single hour-long special, so I’m considering the entire thing the series finale.
What do I know about this series going into it?
It’s an adult-themed, animated James Bond parody. I know Archer is the main character and his codename is Duchess.
While clicking through to the episode, I couldn’t help reading that the plot involves the UN banning spy agencies. That sheds some light on the title of this episode, “Into the Cold”, a reversal of John le Carré’s “The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.”
Recap
The first thing I learn is that Archer’s spy organization is a private one, not sponsored by any government. Interesting. The head of the UN is on TV, announcing that such organizations are being banned. (So much for the only spoiler I had.) We zoom out to see a blond man and woman sitting on a couch watching this; a British woman comes into the room, calling random people trying to find a new job.
Their boss, voiced by Aisha Tyler and identified by captions as Lana, calls them over Zoom. She says the vote will never get passed, so just ignore it. But go get Archer from the other room; they have a mission. In the other room (it looks like a hotel suite), Archer is in bed with two topless women.
“What’s the mission, and what country is this?”, Archer asks.
Opening credits.
They’re in Brazil. The US government is hiring them in secret to bring them a bunker-buster that was developed by the Chinese, stolen by gangsters, and will soon be sold to an unknown terrorist organization. The handoff is taking place in a warehouse owned by Brazilian mobsters; they need to steal the bomb and bring it to a helipad. (This whole time the British woman is still calling people.)
We’re at the warehouse. Archer and the blonde woman, identified by captions as Pam, are on a walkway above the gangsters, spying on the Chinese and Brazilians guarding the bomb. The buyer hasn’t shown up yet. Archer spots a crate of extremely rare whiskey and decides to go get that instead of the bomb.
Back at the office, a mad scientist, an accountant, and a crazy woman are sitting in the kitchen.
The fridge is talking to them; it’s got the consciousness of a guy named Barry in it for some reason. The scientist is the one who put Barry’s consciousness in the fridge, weeks ago, and never bothered to take him out.
Lana comes in and tells the four of them (including the refrigerator) that if they help clean out the office, including dead bodies shoved down the elevator shaft, she’ll split the cleaning deposit with them. But she still totally believes what she told them about the UN vote not passing!
Back at the warehouse. The buyers haven’t shown up yet, and the Chinese and Brazilian gangsters are arguing. The team proposes that Archer and Pam pretend to be the buyers, but Archer instead uses the acoustics of the warehouse to fire his gun such that there will be echoes everywhere; this starts a shootout between the two groups and they all die. Archer does a victory lap, saying he’s awesome and doesn’t need anyone else on the team.
They dress up a vehicle as a Carnival float and drive out with the bomb, using the parade as camouflage. But Lana calls: the Chinese are staking out helicopter pads, so the team will need to change the rendezvous point and meet in a mountain clearing.
Back at the office, the crazy woman (named Cheryl) has found a set of keys in the elevator shaft that say “Do not lose! $$$$” on them. Lana orders the group to find out what the keys belong to; if it’s valuable, they can split the money.
To get Barry to stop complaining, the scientist transfers Barry’s consciousness to a vacuum cleaner instead.
They go to clean out the armory. But it’s mostly empty; turns out Lana has been selling the guns to make ends meet for the organization. The accountant is shocked, but Lana asks him what he expected; all the bribes and secret purchases an organization like theirs needs to make will of course not be in the books. They’ve been financially strapped even without the impending UN ban.
Cheryl finds a clipboard with the same handwriting as the note from the keys. It says “Tom Sawyer”. The scientist says that’s a song by Rush, but he can’t remember how it goes. He can’t remember how it goes! Between that, and these weird scars he offhandedly mentions keep appearing on his skull, something is clearly wrong. They have to search his lab for clues. (This subplot is incredibly disjointed and increasingly nonsensical.)
Archer and his friends have reached the clearing. The helicopter they’re supposed to meet lands there, and a man comes out of the shadows. Clearly we’re supposed to recognize him.
He works for the CIA and collects the bomb from them. But somehow the good guys aren’t happy with this – they feel like they’ve somehow lost the mission, even though they just did what they’re supposed to do. Is he really the person they were supposed to deliver the bomb to? Didn’t he create some disastrous embarrassment for the CIA recently? British woman calls one of her contacts; turns out this guy Slater was in fact disavowed by the CIA last month. So now they need to get the bomb back.
Back at the office. The accountant finds a secret door in the scientist’s lab. It leads to a room with a mysterious glowing orb inside.
I have no idea what’s going on there, and I get the feeling that’s deliberate: this feels like a random-events B plot that just goes from irrelevant thing to irrelevant thing, just to keep this set of characters busy while Archer’s team handle the A plot. I bet we won’t even find out why the scientist lost his memory.
Back in Rio. Archer says he’ll handle this himself like always. He takes out a jetpack he had found at the warehouse (at the time Archer had said he found “the most awesome thing” but I didn’t write it down because I assumed he was just talking about the whiskey). He can’t catch up to Slater’s helicopter - but that’s okay, he knows Slater will turn the helicopter around just to gloat.
Slater in fact does this, and this gives Archer the opportunity to fly into the back of the helicopter and fight Slater’s goons, tossing them out of the helicopter and often into the propellers. Pam uses her nose mirrors (established earlier) to blind the helicopter pilot, who loses control and crashes into the Christ the Redeemer statue, cutting off its head. The head lands on a beach; Slater parachutes out and lands on the same beach; Archer takes the bomb and jumps out, landing on the same beach beat-up but alive; the helicopter then crashes into the beach too. But Archer has won! “This is the best moment of my life!” he shouts while being filmed by random tourists in the area, surrounded by the ruins of the helicopter and the Christ the Redeemer head.
Slater, however, doesn’t act like he’s lost. He still gloating. Why? Because a blonde woman named Katya, whom Archer is in love with, comes out of the downed helicopter. She kisses Archer, then shoots him in the chest point-blank.
It’s later. Archer regains consciousness. His wound has been dressed, but he’s chained to a wall and is going to be tortured – nay, interrogated – by Slater and by a guy with a Russian accent, using a train battery attached to his nipples. After a few zaps they throw him in a jail cell without even bothering to ask questions, so it seems it’s just torture after all.
Katya visits Archer. She and Slater apparently have a difference of opinion: He wants to kill Archer, while she wants Archer to join their secret organization of retired spies. They’re called Silverwolf, and they want to bring back the Cold War because it gives them all jobs and gives the world a sense of urgency and purpose.
It’ll save Archer’s job too, so will he help? She leaves him while he considers.
Meanwhile the UN has seen the tourist videos. It’s now even more certain they’re going to ban the spy agencies.
Archer finds a fax machine. He sends a fax to headquarters, but it’s not to call for help; he mocks them and tells them he’ll get everything done himself as usual. (Though he belatedly tells them he’s in Sochi, Russia.) Archer escapes the rest of the compound, killing more henchmen on the way.
It’s actually surprising that Archer is so hypercompetent; in a show like this I’d have expected his arrogance to be entirely unjustified. Normally this type of character is hyperincompetent yet constantly succeeds by accident, or receives credit for successes that are actually secretly completed by a subordinate. The fact that he is arrogant and justifiably so is a fresh take on this type of character.
When they receive the fax, the rest of the team flies to Sochi. This is everyone we’ve met: Lana the boss, Pam, Cheryl the crazy person, the British woman, the blond guy, the accountant, and even the mad scientist bringing Barry’s consciousness connected to the mysterious orb. During the flight the scientist says offhandedly that he’s been taking shady side jobs and drugging himself to forget them, which I suppose explains his memory lapses but not the scars on his skull.
They meet up with Archer at a safehouse, which is decrepit for lack of money. The team decide to split up: Archer, Lana, and the British woman (identified by captions as Zara) go to a casino; I’m not sure why. Meanwhile, Pam and the accountant and Cheryl go to the secret Silverwolf base. Blond guy will steal a car, and the mad scientist will stay in the safe house with Barry.
At the Silverwolf base, the accountant goes through the books, while Pam fights the KGB guy to a draw.
At the casino, Lana finds a letter planted on Archer by Katya in case he escaped. Katya wants him to kill Slater so the two of them can run Silverwolf together as partners. This is everything Archer ever wanted: his lover, his job, a purpose in life – but is restarting the Cold War worth it? Lana tells him she knows he won’t do it, but he’s unsure. But when she isn’t looking, Archer vanishes from the casino.
Now without Archer, the team regroup and meet in the car stolen by the blond guy. Lana has somehow figured out that Silverwolf is planning to blow up the Sochi dam to kill these Russian and Chinese generals that she saw at the casino. They’ll frame America for it and restart the Cold War. They have the bomb, now all they need is the engineer who designed the dam. (Why? Just to tell them where to put the bomb?)
Then there’s this:
Let’s ignore that. Anyway, to stop Silverwolf’s plan, the good guys go to kidnap the engineer before Slater can do it. But as they’re leaving the building, Slater’s team arrives and begin shooting at them. This was part of his evil plan: the good guys (Americans) are the ones seen kidnapping the engineer, not Slater.
Archer rescues the team from the ambush, having picked them over Katya, but Katya intercepts them and does this.
She grabs the engineer and skedaddles. So now Silverwolf has both bomb and engineer and is ready to blow up the dam. The good guys can’t just call the dam to warn them; Slater’s been calling in bomb threats for six months to inure them in advance to the real one. So they’ll have to go to the dam themselves. Here’s the plan:
Most of the team will head to the dam. They’ll pretend to be inspectors to gain entry, and bring tranquilizer darts as backup in case they’re made. How will they stop the all-powerful Katya? The scientist is going to use the dam’s power to jump Barry’s consciousness into her robot body, fighting her from within.
Pam and the accountant will go to the shantytown below the dam, telling the people to evacuate.
The plan goes wrong immediately: the dam employees are suspicious that a group of dam inspectors arrive only ten minutes after another group. Turns out Slater’s team had just come in with the same disguise. The dam employees start shooting at them (why do they have guns?), and they shoot back with tranquilizers.
Meanwhile, Cheryl breaks into a jewelry store to distract the Sochi police.
Once the good guys get past the dam employees, the scientist hooks up Barry to the dam’s turbines. Aha, I misunderstood: Barry is going to be transferred into a prototype Barry body, not into Katya’s body. The scientist, who I finally learn is named Krieger (they’ve said his name often but in the flood of characters I didn’t absorb it until now), does the transfer. Barry has a new, very tiny, robot body!
Katya shows up.
She’s surprised to see Barry – she apparently likes him. She asks what happened? The response is very confusing: Barry turned evil, killed Katya, became many people, then got split into good and evil, then became a refrigerator. He and Katya fight, but of course tiny Barry loses immediately. Luckily, blond guy has… robot legs? His name is Ray, I learn, and he kicks Katya through a wall, but it won’t be enough to defeat her.
Meanwhile, in the shantytown, Pam and the accountant discover that the dam workers have a massive secret bank of computers mining cryptocurrencies. The workers refuse to leave, but the accountant makes them a deal: if they agree to leave, he’ll extract the money in useful form. The spy organization will even get a cut of the money out of this! While he’s working, Pam heads back to the dam to help the team.
Katya ties up Archer, Ray, and Krieger. Archer says he can’t believe she’s evil enough to wipe out a village – but it turns out Katya didn’t know about them. (The murder robot cares about innocent people now?) To stop her from changing sides, Slater zaps her and presses a button on her neck. She’s conscious but can’t move. Slater mocks Archer and leaves them all, including Katya, tied up in the dam to die in the explosion.
On top of the dam, Zara and Lana figure that Slater will leave via the upper entrance, not the lower one. They set up an ambush, with the intention of grabbing the detonator so he can’t set off the bomb. But Slater is being collected by helicopter, which bypasses the ambush. Just in time, Cheryl arrives from the city on motorcycle, jumping off it as it goes off a cliff, hits the helicopter, and both explode. Slater grabs the edge of the cliff to climb back down to the dam.
Inside the dam, Pam arrives and unties everyone, having entered the dam from the lower entrance. Katya feels bad for Barry and opens up her head; “Grab onto my CPU!” she says, and uses the dam’s electricity to merge his consciousness into her body. So I was right after all! The merged Barry and Katya (“Katbar”) don’t exactly have good coordination, though.
The freed team exit the dam up top, where Lana has tackled Slater and is demanding the detonator. But he doesn’t have one; he used a timer, obviously. And it reaches zero.
Seeing this, the accountant down in the shantytown calls up the one of the generals to warn them to flee the oncoming flood. (Couldn’t they have done this in advance?). Meanwhile on the dam, Slater uses the distraction to flee, but Archer chases him down and they fight. Slater loses and ends up clinging on the edge of the dam. He tries the old “I know who your father is and if you let me die you’ll never find out,” but Archer looks at his team and says he doesn’t need to know. Slater falls to his presumed death.
It’s later, at presumably a different casino or hotel bar. The UN vote passes. Their organization is outlawed.
The team is dismayed, but at least they stopped the new Cold War (which makes no sense - see “Unresolved questions” below). And they have the millions of dollars from their cut of the cryptocurrencies! No wait, the currency crashed, they have only a little bit of money. Lana gives an inspiring speech about how they don’t know what they’re going to do next but they should be proud of what they’ve done.
Archer disappears in the middle of the speech. He's having sex with Katya, at first annoyed but then aroused by the fact that Barry’s consciousness is in her body too.
Three months later: A guy with a British accent meets Lana. He’s from a joint CIA-MI6 task force. He wants to hire Lana in secret to find Archer, because Archer’s doing rogue spying against the UN law. She says she’ll think about it. After he leaves, though, she goes to the next room – it turns out she and Archer have a kid. Who’s eight or twelve years old, far more than the three months that have gone by. What? Where has she been the whole episode? How long ago did this happen? Are they married? Were they married?
Lana says she’ll take the job and pretend to hunt Archer for three days so they can get some money, then bring him in for real. What, so he can go to prison? I’m so confused.
On his way out, Archer runs into Pam. He had messaged her pretending to be Lana, and is offering to work with her. He’s discovered he needs a team after all. So they’re headed to Tangier.
Unresolved questions
Oh, lord, where do I begin.
What the heck is Barry’s backstory?
Are Archer and Lana married? For how long? Where did the kid come from? What is their relationship exactly and how does Katya figure into it?
Why didn’t blowing up the dam restart the Cold War? Didn’t literally everything in Slater’s plan succeed other than his own survival? Or was the entire thing was averted solely by the accountant’s phone call near the end?
What exactly is Ray’s role in this organization? Just the car-stealing guy? Why does he have robot legs?
What was up with that mysterious orb? What was up with the keys? Who’s Tom Sawyer? What was up with Krieger’s memory loss and skull scars?
What the heck is going on with Cheryl?
What events in previous episodes prompted the UN to consider the ban on private spy agencies?
There are a lot of holes in how the good guys uncovered Slater’s plan. Why did they go to the casino? What was that irrelevant scene in which Lana told a general she wanted to have sex with him? Did she actually learn anything from him? Why did Slater need the dam engineer if the bomb was so powerful; surely he could have just put it anywhere? How did Lana find out that Slater’s been calling in bomb threats?
What exactly is Katya’s morality? She cares about the mission so much that she’ll kill the man she loves for it, but not kill the villagers or Barry? Why does she like Barry so much if he killed her?
How much more confused would I have been had I watched only the last third of the episode?
Ratings
Story: 4/10. While a show like this is intended to mock spy genre cliches, there were a few played stupidly straight. Restarting the Cold War to give spies job security is a 90s-era evil plot; it’s laughable in light of events in Ukraine, Hong Kong, and Israel. And the good guys do some massive jumping to conclusions when they figure out each piece of the bad guys’ plan (“this random guy whose name I found must be important” - was he literally the only human being mentioned in any of the files in the room?). The Krieger subplot was nonsensical and went nowhere, and I knocked off a point or two for that. But let’s not be too negative: the plot was skillfully executed; there were unexpected twists and turns; and even though it was obvious from the start the UN vote would pass in the end, that subplot running underneath it all provided depth.
Writing: 8/10. There was a strong theme of running to the past vs. embracing the future. There was a weaker theme about Archer not needing a team, which is unsatisfyingly resolved offscreen. Not all of the jokes were my cup of tea, but I loved pretty much every line Cheryl said, and I also loved the show’s use of cuts from scene to scene.
Production: 9/10. Extremely high-quality animation. I was particularly impressed by the helicopter crash on the beach. Top-notch voiceover work.
Characterization: 10/10. I won’t pretend to understand any of the characters yet, but I loved almost all of them and I want to learn more about them. Archer and Slater clearly have a rich backstory; same with Archer and Katya. Cheryl is awesome and I desperately want to know more about her. Barry and Zara and Lana... I know almost nothing about them and yet the show did an excellent job of making me feel like I know them well. Really the only character who falls flat is Ray.
Clarity: 5/10. This is very difficult to score. As with the characterization, I understood so little about the plot and yet simultaneously felt like I understood it all. The basic storyline is easy to understand but there’s clearly a lot going on around it that flew over my head.
Closure: 10/10. The end of the spy organization is a natural endpoint to the series, and we’re given a small taste of “And The Adventure Continues…” so it doesn’t feel too sad. They did an excellent job striking the balance between comically pulling the rug out from under them (“We’re all millionaires... no wait, sell, sell, sell!”) and not being too mean to the characters (“We all have a little money.”) A lesser show would have had them all completely broke at the end, and I salute them for not going all the way there.