All’s well that ends well this week – Archer returns to the office to hear that he may just be able to have a role in raising Abbiejean, and Ken returns home to the family he had missed out on for decades. It seems unlikely that he’ll show up again, though I for one would love to see The Continued Adventures of Archer and Ken.
Over in the B-plot, Mallory has a breakdown over the discovery that her office is exactly the same as she left it, but you don’t feel too bad for her, especially once a conversation with Lana uncovers that using Archer’s “goop” to conceive Abbiejean was Mallory’s idea in the first place (“Prove it,” she barks at a horrified Lana). Longtime viewers will recall Mallory telling Archer to accept Seamus as his child because “sometimes the most unexpected things can turn out to be the most important things in the whole world” back in season 2’s “Stage Two,” but this is a different, far creepier thing entirely.
It’s just a matter of time before Archer finds out that his domineering mother, as always, is pulling the strings, but at this point in time, it’s hard to predict what his reaction will be. For now, he’s content to make her blood boil by revealing that he was “on the planning committee” to keep the office exactly the same, not being “a huge fan of change.”
Change appears to be in the air this season, though, whether Archer likes it or not. CIA overlords lurk in the background, Lana and Archer have a kid to raise and Pam… well, Pam doesn’t seem to have been changed by her cocaine binge whatsoever, though she does seem pretty satisfied with the secret hot tub she and Krieger have installed inside a seemingly normal storage closet.
“The Holdout” is a funny but also deceptively thoughtful episode that can be read, in part, as a meditation on what has been happening to Archer over the last year. I’m talking, of course, about ISIS, not just the show’s inept spy agency but also the ruthless, radical network of terrorists that has forever erased any drop of humor from that acronym. Like the titular holdout, a Japanese soldier whose entire world Archer casually shatters, Archer had existed in its own little bubble until, suddenly, the outside world interfered.
Nothing can be the same – Reed and his co-creators understand that Archer can’t keep on keepin’ on with an acronym that now conjures images of beheaded journalists and other atrocities, and so they’ve altered an integral part of their series. So what is Archer without ISIS? Like Ken, who is being faced with a brave new world, Archer has been forced to adapt to something that it had in no way prepared for. Whether we’ll see more commentary on that later down the line remains to be seen, but especially because the plot built around that central theme of interference goes so well with the traditional Archer structure,”The Holdout” is a solid note on which to open the season.
Stray thoughts:
- The ISIS sign is seen being wheeled away in the episode’s opening minutes. Fare thee well.
- “Thanks, jungle. Eat a buffet of dicks.” – We’ve missed you, Sterling.
- Pam’s pubic hair is groomed to resemble a lightning bolt and spells out the letters TCB (Taking Care of Business). How she finds the time, we’ll never know.
- Archer trying to console Ken about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: “I’m sorry that you had to see that, that it happened in the first place!” *Receives brutal kick to the stomach* “Sneak attack, typical.”
- “We need a minute, Captain Shitnuts!”
- Everyone, give a warm, even toasty welcome to Milton, the newest addition to our currently unnamed office. Unlike Mallory, I’m a big fan of the little guy. Let’s see if he can get through the season without ending up on the wrong end of Archer’s gun.
