Archer Vice: A Debt of Honor.

The Archer gang is all together in Cheryl's mansion this week, trying to unload all the counterfeit money they got in Miami. Of course, it quickly goes south when Pam uses the money to buy a gym bag full of amphetamines, which probably tasted a little sweatier than usual. When the Yakuza discovers the cash is worthless (though the right buyer would probably pay fifteen cents on the dollar) they come to the mansion so that Pam can become a nonconsensual blood donor.

Pam

C+ Pam's plotline is starting to worry me. A show like Archer has to walk a fine line. The characters say such unabashedly terrible things and I suspect it only works because the creative team consistently reveals a sympathy towards the team. It's important that the show's voice be distinguished from those of its characters. It's how we know Vince Gilligan isn't cooking up more than plot twists in his writer's room.

Pam has been fleshed out (whoops) over the years into the most badass character on the show. She put herself through school by murdering underground fighters with her bare hands, is a great drag racer, and appears to have the most impressive sexual prowess of any living human. To put a cherry on this wonderful woman sunday (ew), Pam has a stanza of Lord Byron's "Destruction of Sennacherib" tattooed on her back. That says a lot about how highly the writers think of Pam, not to mention the dimensions of her torso. She was one of the show's strongest and funniest characters, now she just yells "cocaine" and makes munchy noises. She deserves more, writers.

Archer, Mallory, Lana & Cyril

B+, B, B & B These folks, usually the show's bread and butter, take the metaphorical backseat this week. (Which is a good thing, because Archer left skull blood all over the literal backseat in Miami.) Mostly, they bicker about buying guns and getting rid of the counterfeit cash. While I usually enjoy watching these characters argue, their dialogue lacks the snap it had in earlier seasons. This might be a byproduct of having to deliver more exposition than usual in the new Archer Vice setting, but it could also just be a natural byproduct of the show being in its fifth season. It's hard to come up with consistently funny material (ask anyone who reads my recaps), and a show as joke-dense as Archer is bound to run out of gas at some point. On the bright side, Mallory offering Lana a drink was really funny: "I guess that depends on what kind of mother you want to be..."

Ron Cadillac

A- Hey look everyone, it's Ron Cadillac! This week, Ron Cadillac says some unintentionally offensive things about other races!

I really just like Ron Cadillac's name. And Ron Cadillac's voice. And pretty much whatever wonderfully backwards things that come out of Ron Cadillac's mouth, like his opinions on the offensiveness of the word "Chinesey."

Cheryl

A- Thank God for Cheryl. The moment she joins the A-Plot, the show starts to really feel like Archer again. She singlehandedly reinvigorates a mediocre episode with Archer's signature cocktail of madcap energy, bizarre pop-culture references, and casual racism. I tried to list her best lines in the Extra Credit, but there's no way I caught everything. That's a testament to how funny she was.

"Archer Vice: A Debt of Honor"

B+ Up until its midpoint, "A Debt of Honor" was slow and not particularly funny (unlike my sex life). For the first half, I was really starting to worry about the future of the show, pondering whether this whole Archer Vice thing was a mistake or if the show had just run out of great jokes to make.

However, when George Takei and the Yakuza show up, the episode kicks into gear and recaptures some of the old Archer magic. The characters start bouncing off one-another, people start shooting, and silly complications just pile up until Pam and Cyril are carrying a gut-shot Ron Cadillac through a set of secret tunnels Cheryl's ancestor built in 1980 to catch runaway slaves because he thought the the Underground Railroad was literally subterranean. (His plan may have involved dressing up as a ghost).

Meanwhile, Archer tries to negotiate a deal with the head of the Yakuza before the amphetamines wear off and the bourbon kicks in. Because of aforementioned amphetamines, his plan is simply to fire what looks like a sawed-off shotgun from the Age of Sail inside a limousine until he gets what he wants.

If that plot summary doesn't get close to classic Archer, I don't know what classic Archer is.

Extra Credit

• The ridiculously long note Pam left on her door was hilarious.
• "I don't get all pissy every time you mistake a Dutchman for a Swede."
• "Wait didn't you shoot that guy"
   "Oh who remembers."
• "The guy who sold them to me won't be playing the violin any time soon. [...] Because a violin would probably dissolve in the  same big drum of acid they dissolved that guy in."
• "Since I can't write a genre-defining country song with you out here screaming about a bunch of Chinese daylight vampires who are probably scuttling up the drainpipes even as we speak, go out there and kill them."
• "Cheryl, build a fire and get some pokers hot." is a callback to one of my favorite Cheryl moments:

Demerits

• What the hell was going on with Woodhouse this week? Having him stuck under a medicine ball for the entire show is far too much setup for a gag about Archer stealing his phone. It's funny conceptually, but not so much in practice.
• As I suspected, Pam eating the amphetamines was much funnier without any context.
• What did you think of the cutaway to Ray losing control of his bladder? Too much?

I think Archer Vice is finding its legs. Now that we've seen more than one episode, what are your initial impressions?