TV Review: ‘ARCHER’ – “Some Remarks on Cannibalism ” (Season 9, Episode 6)

Connor Bynum // Film Critic

ARCHER: DANGER ISLAND – “Some Remarks on Cannibalism”

Season 9, Ep. 6
aired on FXX on May 30

Creator: Adam Reed
Voice cast: H. Jon Benjamin, Eugene Cordero, Judy Greer, Amber Nash, Chris Parnell, Adam Reed, Aisha Tyler and Jessica Walter

Although not quite as enjoyable as last week’s outing on DANGER ISLAND, this week’s episode of ARCHER still brought the laughs and is looking to build up to a great conclusion.

For starters, Lana (Aisha Tyler) actually got to do something this week! After her parents (guest stars Keone Young and Kelly Hu) discover that she’s aided Fuchs and the Germans in finding their legendary idol, without even so much as a down payment, Lana rushes out to stop them before crashing into Malory (Jessica Walter), Charlotte (Judy Greer) and Ray (Adam Reed). Naturally, Malory commandeers Lana’s car and demands her assistance in finding the idol before Archer. It’s nice to see that after only being given a single scene, Lana finally got to leave her palace and join the rest of the gang, even if it was against her will.

However, before they can even get the car packed with Mallory’s crates of gin (and vermouth) Crackers (Lucky Yates) shows up to tell them that Archer (H. Jon Benjamin) and Pam (Amber Nash) are stuck in quicksand. But as we remember from last week, the dynamic duo have already fallen into an even stickier situation after being rescued by cannibals. Leave it to Pam to be captured by cannibals and only be concerned about whether or not she’s going to taste good.

Covered only by some clever character placement, Archer and Pam wind up tied to stakes completely naked, with the locals rubbing in some seasonings. And just when I thought DANGER ISLAND had run out of ways to reference older seasons, they bring back Noah (David Cross), the Anthropologist from the Season 3 Heart of Archness trilogy. It was great to see character once again unable to catch a break with the locals, as this time they’ve eaten one of his arms. As a side note, it’s also nice to see Pam still ripping on Archer for his unexpected proposal from last week.

Back with Malory and the gang, Charlotte proves to be kind of awesome at tracking as she determines exactly what happened to Archer and Pam based off of the footprints in the area. It was a fun gag, but hopefully wasn’t just a one-off excuse to keep the characters busy. As for Fuchs and his goons, they don’t get too much screen time outside of shooting a mommy howler monkey out of the trees for fun. It was a particularly dark way to open the episode with the baby monkey crying over his mother’s body, but I suppose the show runners really want us to hate the Germans.

Episode 6 wrapped up nicely with Archer saving the cannibals from one of the Germans, thus securing their friendship with a big feast of what is likely to feature the German he killed. Things are really starting to move for everyone now as we look to be approaching a pretty fantastic conclusion. Let’s see if they can maintain this momentum for four more weeks.

Grade: B+

A preview of the episode: