Review: Archer ‘Vision Quest’

Spoilers Below:

When shows attempt a bottle episode (one restricted in scope and setting, using only regular characters) it’s a risky venture. Seinfeld’s “The Chinese Restaurant,” Breaking Bad’s “Fly,” and Community’s “Cooperative Calligraphy” are several successful examples (and the latter was purely meta). Other times, especially when the show breaks from its regular tone, a bottle episode can fail. The dramatic (and disgusting) “Brian & Stewie” Family Guy installment was, in this writer’s humble opinion, a big diaper full of shit.

This week, Archer tested the bottle episode waters with “Vision Quest.”

It began with the gang (Sterling, Lana, Cheryl, Pam, Cyril, and Krieger) packing into an elevator to head to a 7am meeting. It stalled, and they all became trapped. They panicked, rationed their food, fought, made up, bonded, and then fought once again. Eventually Malory showed up to free them.

That might be the shortest recap I have ever written for this show.

In Case You Missed It:

1) Krieger is up to some swarm-related plan.

2) Can the colorblind still become secret/CIA agents?

3) Krieger installed a radio jammer on the roof of the elevator “so people would stop looking at their phones and talk to each other.”

4) Nice Silence of the Lambs reference by Sterling.

5) Driving to and from a bar and having sex with a prostitute is the most adult thing you can do.

6) Another Krieger Clone mention, this one courtesy of Cheryl. Also, when the group mentioned Malory, Krieger said, “Oh…that person.” Although if he’s seen both Pam and Lana’s va-jay-jays…

7) Pam: “Well, we tried.” Good to see she was invested in Cyril jacking it.

8) Sterling called Cheryl “Sylvia Browne,” who was a sham psychic that preyed on and exploited people when they were most vulnerable for her own personal gain.

9) “What is this, Soviet Russia?”

10) Elisha Otis, the inventor of the elevator safety device, died of diphtheria – hence Cyril’s comment.

11) Bring. Phrasing. Back. “You’re torturing me!”

12) When FX prefaces an episode with a nudity warning, it’s kind of like a spoiler. Ruins it.

Speaking of spoilers: this episode was a success. Plain and simple.

The end.

Nah, nah, I’m kidding. I’ll analyze it. I will.

So, once again we find Archer trying something new. They had the same kind of unofficial spy agency plotlines for four seasons, then they tried something totally new with that drug smuggling thing last year, and after a semi-return to form with this CIA business, they’ve attempted a bottle episode five weeks into the season. But while the approach was different, the reasons it succeeded were quite familiar.

Despite the limited amount of characters (only the seven main ones, and Malory didn’t even come in until the very end) they all shined like their usual selves, with Sterling drinking, Lana worrying about her baby, Cyril being made fun of, Pam being gross, Krieger making vague references to weird experiments and possibly possessing a thermos of “human being soup,” and Cheryl being…dumb.

Then again, maybe she’s not so dumb. She correctly identified that Sterling wanted to drink (durr), Lana wanted to lecture everyone, Cyril wanted to masturbate (because he may or may not be addicted to it; like that’s a thing), Pam wanted another bear claw, and Krieger didn’t want everyone to find out that he’s a clone. That was met with a nervous reaction by the doctor.

Yet, despite their unique personalities, the group has an uncanny chemistry with each other. Everybody riffs on everybody, they gang up, they have free-for-all fights, they tolerate each other a surprising amount, sometimes they bond, and – as this episode showed more than once – they often talk at the same time. This is a gag that really lends itself to repeat watches, adding further to the episode’s stock.

On the same subject, probably the funniest scene of “Vision Quest” was when Sterling fired his gun in the cramped elevator and everyone started saying “mawp” in unison over and over again. So different, yet so similar.

And finally, doing a bottle episode like this is incredibly difficult. You need 22 solid minutes of dialogue. No explosions, no chase scenes, no fights (okay, maybe one little one), and no detailed landscapes to distract the eye. It was six people trapped in an elevator for an entire show, and the writing (credited to both Adam Reed and Ben Hoffman, in a somewhat rare event) and characters/actors carried it. It might leave something desired for the action-seekers, but fuck ‘em.

It was a risk, and it paid off.