“For everything that Archer Vice has lacked thus far, it has done a fantastic job asserting the insane quality of its ensemble.” — Warren Zhang

Archer Vice continues its somewhat problematic relationship with serialization in the nevertheless often hilarious “Southbound and Down”.

The episode mostly concerns itself with the gang’s ill-fated road trip to Cherlene’s first gig: a performance at a public radio station in the middle of Texas. Possibly as a side effect of the mind control chip implanted last episode, Cherlene refuses to fly, which provides enough reason for Archer to buy a bus and a car, don his Burt Reynolds ‘stache and go full Smokey and the Bandit.

Archer, being Archer, decides to load up Cherlene’s bus with about 100 pounds of cocaine while Pam, being Pam, accidentally blabs about the cocaine at a truck stop. Cue another outlaw biker gang.

The effect of the season premiere’s closing trailer are still felt in “Southbound and Down.” Given that context, coupled with the episode’s lax attitude towards plotting and tension, “Southbound and Down” can’t help but feel like a minor road bump.

Trouble is, the same could be said for pretty much every episode of Archer Vice since the first. As funny as the show manages to be, Archer Vice feels padded. It’s still not clear at all (outside of the trailer) how the ISIS gang will sell its cocaine nor is it clear how the ex-ISIS spies’ constant mishandling of their stash is going play out.

The season just feels insubstantial without the characters facing any legitimate consequences to their terrible behavior.

It’s not all bad, though. For everything that Archer Vice has lacked thus far, it has done a fantastic job asserting the insane quality of its ensemble. Splicing the ISIS gang into a weird gumbo of country music and dunce cap Scarface hasn’t felt jarring in the slightest but has offered so much opportunity for the characters.

Watching Cheryl (now fully subsumed by Cherlene) get excited about being kidnapped by some outlaw bikers is both totally in character and something that probably wouldn’t have happened if Cheryl were still confined to the walls of the ISIS headquarters.

Archer Vice has rejuvenated Cheryl and, to a lesser extent, Pam by giving these characters a stake in the overarching narrative. Instead of being the largely reactionary characters they were in previous seasons, Cheryl and Pam now drive their own respective subplots.

The difference between these two characters is that Cheryl’s Cherlene routine is almost entirely a welcome development, while Pam’s addiction to coke was handled a little too broadly. The show never quite found the right balance between playing her constant consumption of cocaine – cupcakes in this episode – for laughs while also suggesting that the cocaine addiction is messing up Pam’s health.

Fortunately, Archer’s mid-car chase heart to heart probably means the end of Pam’s insane coke addiction, though I’m not sure how exactly she’s going to figure in the rest of the season without it.

Archer is and has always been surprisingly good at delivering dramatic character moments, especially for a show usually tuned to constantly hurling post-modernist guffaws. Last time, it was Archer and Lana’s conversation in the basement and Ron Cadillac splitting up with Mallory.

This time, it’s Archer giving Pam some slightly backhanded, but mostly genuine (I guess), moral support in a weirdly moving conversation. On the other hand, the revelation that Pam has been binging cocaine to lose weight is less convincing.

Past season 1, Pam was always defined by how little self-awareness she had, which allowed her to do reliably awesome stuff in the fringes (yakuza, underground fighting…bear claws) but also be uncouth and pretty disgusting at times.

To suggest that Pam’s zealous addiction to cocaine was motivated by some burgeoning self-consciousness felt, to me, like a small betrayal of who she is. It does make some sense in context, but it’s not a terribly elegant way to wrap up Pam’s coke habit subplot.

But it’s still a resolution, and I’ll happily take it.

Tidbits:

  • I hope that wasn’t Woodhouse’s blood all over the stairs.
  • “He was 30!”
  • Archer Vice relies a little too much on the explicit callbacks for my taste. This time, we get a review of Cheryl’s adventures in that blimp.
  • “She said, single and pregnant. Oh wait.”
  • “It’s not supposed to be funny.”
  • “I believe there was some mention of bone-throwing?”