Season Two Premiere Review
“Swiss Miss” Airing January 27, 2011
ARCHER Thursdays at 10 PM EST beginning January 27 on FX
January 26, 2011
By Lena Lamoray
FX PRESS RELEASE: Archer is an animated, half-hour comedy that revolves around the spy agency known as the International Secret Intelligence Service (ISIS) and the lives of its employees. Although their work of espionage, reconnaissance missions, wiretapping and undercover surveillances is daunting and enigmatic, every covert operation and global crisis are actually unmitigated occasions for the ISIS staff to undermine, sabotage and betray each other for personal gains, pleasures and prosperity. The series features the voices of H. Jon Benjamin as the highly skilled yet incredibly vain master spy “Sterling Archer”; Aisha Tyler as fellow agent provocateur “Lana Kane”; Jessica Walter as Archer’s domineering mother and the rapacious CEO of ISIS, “Malory Archer”; Chris Parnell as the easily intimidated comptroller of ISIS, “Cyril Figgis”; Judy Greer as Malory’s loquacious secretary, “Cheryl”; Amber Nash as the discordant director of human resources for ISIS, “Pam Poovey”; and George Coe as Archer’s elderly and always exploited butler, “Woodhouse”.
ARCHER “Swiss Miss” Season Two Premiere Review, Airing 1/27/2011
Get ready for your journey directly into the DANGER ZONE with the season two premiere of ARCHER. If you enjoyed the first season, the second season is going to blow your mind. Adam Reed has really outdone himself this time. I have seen the first seven episodes and I can not get enough of Sterling Archer and his warped, but oh so amazingly awesome assessment of his significance.
“Swiss Miss” In yet another attempt to secure funding for ISIS, Malory drags her agents to the luxury winter resort town of Gstaad to protect a Swiss billionaire's daughter from a kidnapping threat. But Archer soon finds out the real threat is his protectee: an underage nymphomaniac who will stop at nothing to bed the world’s greatest spy.
Malory (Jessica Walter) wants to cut some costs and she has a few suggestions that are not very welcome. Archer (H. Jon Benjamin) has the perfect comeback to his mom’s demands, “Do we have to supply our own lids?” Trust me, you will laugh, hard.
In order to conserve money, the agents are forced to share rooms. You know only good things are going to come out of that. Everyone meets “dirty sexy” Anka and poor Archer is doomed from the get go and isn’t even given a chance to explain himself. As you can imagine, Archer becomes irresistible to Anka and she torments him with skin and geography, since she hails from “the Alabama of Europe”. One of my favorite lines in this episode is Archer’s greeting, “Hello razor, Welcome to the party.” That scene is a joy for all except Archer.
We get to find out an interesting tidbit about Ray’s (Adam Reed) bronzed past. You would think Archer would be excited about his friend’s accomplishments, but wait, we are talking about Archer. He dances on his delight by issuing the following statement, “You lost Ray, get over it”. What a buzzkill.
Pam (Amber Nash) and Malory spend some quality time together and a new drink is invented and enjoyed. You are probably not going to want to give the drink a go, since there will be no coming back.
Archer has to do some crafty, “totally McQueen”, snowmobile maneuvers in order to save Anka. Of course, Anka is not appropriately dressed for the pursuit and Archer is forced to lend her a hand or two. Lana (Aisha Tyler) is not buying Archer’s innocence.
I loved “Swiss Miss” and I think it is a fantastic episode to open the season with. It is the raciest ARCHER to date and it really rips the door off the hinges on what to expect from the rest of season two. Don’t miss the premiere of ARCHER, Thursday night at 10 PM EST only on FX.
