Quick Take: Archer, "The Limited"
"I'm looking for a terrorist and and ocelot, not necessarily in that order." - Archer
Review: Archer, "The Limited"
(S0306) Archer is a show that I don't watch on a weekly basis. I enjoy it, but for whatever reason I never keep up with it. I pop in for an episode here and there, laugh at the jokes, pretend I'm following the more serialized portions of the plot, and then promptly forget about Archer for another month. I don't know why I'm not more loyal to Archer. I can think of a dozen shows that I like less, yet watch more often.
I picked a hell of an episode to decide to pop in on. "The Limited" had it all: trains, fights on top of trains, train cars with little ice skating rinks in them, radical Nova Scotian separatists, an ocelot, Royal Canadian Mounties. Did I mention trains?
It's the kind of show that sets up jokes and stories early in an episode, and builds upon them throughout. Archer shows up at the train station to escort Kenny Bilco, a Noca Scotian freedom fighter, back to Great White North and announces that it's a lifelong dream to fight a bunch of guys on the roof of a train. So less than five minutes into the episode you know that at some point Archer is definitely going to be fighting on the roof the train. The show doesn't play coy with the viewer because it doesn't need to. Do you think anyone at home groaned when Archer told everyone about his train-roof-fighting-dream? I doubt it. Because train-roof-fights kick ass.
Ditto with Babboo, the ocelot. The second Babboo showed up, was there any doubt that "The Limited" would end with him spraying urine on someone? Not in my mind. As Archer and the rest of the ISIS gang chased Babboo and Bilco around the train, were you thinking to yourself, "You know, what's the one thing that television needs LESS of? Ocelots." Of course you weren't. Because ocelots kick ass.
"The Limited" featured a bunch of non-train, non-ocelot-related running gags, as well: Bilco assuming that Archer and Malory are racist, Cyril's incompetence, Cheryl's family of railroad magnates, and on and on. By the end of the episode, all of the jokes paid off. Bilco is captured, Archer gets his roof-fight, Cheryl's train is destroyed, ISIS is humiliated, and Archer is arrested by Canadian police for various exotic fish and wildlife violations. Oh yeah, and Babboo sprays the back of a cop car with urine.
Am I going to tune in to Archer next week? Probably not. But I'm certainly glad I did this week.
