Archer Vice: Palace Intrigue Recap

[youtube=http://youtu.be/xOPo1QETVeU]

Archer Vice: Palace Intrigue, Parts I and II (5×10-11)

Summary: The former ISIS crew heads to San Marcos in an attempt to sell their weapons to President Gustavo Calderon, who happens to be obsessed with Cherlene. Archer has sex with his wife Julianna and attempts to cover it up. Krieger meets his clones.

Rating: ?????

Holy Shitsnacks, you guys. The ISIS team should have gotten into arms dealing sooner because this episode played out so much better than the last few episodes. I mean, I guess it’s because we’re getting towards the end of the season and we need to roll the ball towards that, but if I wasn’t laughing while watching this episode, I was grinning.

It certainly doesn’t hurt that the two parter opens with the team debating over who’s who in terms of members of the Breakfast Club and Malory being completely confused by what’s going on. It does make me sad that Lana takes being compared to Ally Sheedy as an insult, but I might just be saying that because I identified with Allison a lot when I was sixteen and just discovering John Hughes.

Part of the reason this episode hits so much is that it lets the characters be completely balls to the wall crazy while sticking together. It’s been a while since all eight characters have been all in the same remote place for a mission at once and here, they get to go completely weird as Calderon’s (voiced by Fred Armisen) regime starts to fall apart around them.

Well, Krieger isn’t there with ISIS for too long, but I think he gets away with it because he ends up bonding with his clones. 

Yeah, you read that right. Remember when Krieger’s backstory of being a biological clone of Hitler was revealed? Well, it turns out that there are MORE clones of Hitler out there and they’re all Krieger. They’re also working on what appears to be a nuclear device. Uhhhh… That bodes well for everything. Still, I think getting to hear Lucky Yates voice act with himself was my favorite part of the episode.

Second is a tie between Archer trying to justify having anonymous sex with the maid as not being anonymous when it turns out the maid was Calderon’s wife Julianna (voiced by Lauren Cohan), the slapping running gag, and Cherlene threatening to go Jerry Lee on Julianna’s ass. Oh, and the sinister gay cabal. Really, the jokes in this episode are some of the strongest hitting from this entire season that I feel like I’d be spoiling them if I did a traditional recap. At least “Phrasing” is finally back!

As we head into the final two episodes of the season, ‘Palace Intrigue’ is definitely a high hitter of the entire Archer Vice concept. Will the last two episodes continue that streak? I certainly hope so because I want to see how the end is going to justify them going back into the spy business next year. Because it looks like arms dealing may not be their business either.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22Gy5FjzFLY]