Espionage ensemble comedy shifts from drug dealing back to spying
“The Holdout,” the first episode of Archer’s new season, opens with two characteristically Archer moments. First, we see Sterling Archer “up to his eyeballs in Cobra whiskey and hookers” somewhere in Southeast Asia, instead of helping Lana with their new baby, Abbiejean, and second, we see the rest of the gang anxiously arriving at their newly renovated office. An elaborate hologram prank orchestrated by Cheryl/Carol nearly gives Malory a stroke as the office turns out to be exactly the same as seen in the show’s first four seasons, save for a secret Japanese bath accessed by the janitor’s closet. The latter joke is a sort of indicator of where the series is headed – more of the same, warts and all. But hopefully fans will welcome the sameness more warmly than Malory does.
In “The Holdout,” Archer is sent to destroy an American spy plane that crashed in the jungles of Borneo and recover its computer. In searching for the plane, he discovers a Japanese soldier, lost since the Second World War, who believes Japan and America are still at war. Through pictures and videos on his smartphone, an explanation of the Cold War (in which Soviet and Sino-U.S. relations ended up “kinda weird”), and an emotional phone call to the soldier’s family, he slowly convinces him that years have passed and the war is indeed over. The two manage to blow up the spy plane, retrieve the computer, and escape the island.
The show certainly returns to form in a welcomed way; Archer’s arrogant and hilarious interactions with the CIA and other agencies (“I don’t do dossiers,” he boasts to two CIA pilots before getting thrown out of the plane), and the show’s vague historical setting (contemporary technologies with a pervasive retro-spy aesthetic) are both staples of the show’s style, and “The Holdout” certainly capitalizes on these staples already.
Where Archer: Vice ran its course, the sixth season brings back the familiar in a way that just feels natural.