Archer: "Blood Test"

Once I determine just how 8 gills make a liter, I'll offer up a review of tonight's episode, after the jump...

I think I have finally figured out what Adam Reed's goal is in this second season. He is trying to expand that world of Archer, to flesh out the roster of supporting players in order to both mine fresher veins of comedy and to give the show more creative options in its storytelling. The past three episodes have all contained Ray, Barry has been present in the past two, and tonight saw the return of Trunette, the prostitute we met back in the early going of season one. Yet while this world-building in and of itself is an admirable goal on the creative level, it become harder to admire it when the episode itself seems to suffer just a bit.

The biggest flaw in tonight's episode was that I saw the fact that Cyrill was the father coming from a mile away. Admittedly, I at first thought it was going to be Whodehouse (and how funny would that have been?), since he was the first face we saw after Mallory suggested switching out the blood, but by the time they were conspiring to steal Cyrill's blood, it had to be obvious to everyone what the outcome was.

(The only other flaw in this episode was that it took a little while for the jokes to really start flying, but that's happened before, so I guess I'm just going to have to accept that.)

Yet the action around all of this was golden, especially as the show once again used one single thing (this time, the baby) to show us how all of the characters would react to a given situation. While I bought Carol's fear of baby germs, and Kreeger's weird thing with breastmilk, I wasn't as enthralled with Lana's sudden catching of baby fever. It was a weak moment from a strong woman (not to mention the most sane character on the show), and I found this to be a misstep in the show's characterization department.

But overall is was a very funny episode, and sometimes that's all we can ask of it. (You'll notice that my reviews for this show are going to be brief from here on out. It's just that kind of show.)

What did everybody else think?


Additional Thoughts:

“Oh, he'll hate that. I'll come.” “Ohhhh, I think I just did.”

“Barry, does it hurt? Cause it looks like it hurts.”

“I'm still unclear on the liter thing, vis-a-vis the unit of measure thing...”

“I guess he would be half-gay then”

“I do know that a liter of mellon-ballers can't replace a liter of blood.”