“Archer,” the FX series about a super spy with a load of issues, returned recently for a three part story arch that involved pirates, as well as the perils of drunken embezzlement. Unfortunately the rest of the new season doesn’t air until January.
The three episodes, entitled “Heart of Archness” Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 concerned Archer’s attempts to deal with the murder of his Russian fiancé Katya at the hands of his ODIN nemesis Barry. Spoilers follow.
Months later, with now Archer to be found, his mother Malory, the head of the semi-private spy organization ISIS, has started to worry. So she sends a professional man hunter, Rip Riley, a khaki glad adventure with whom Malory has some sexual history, in search of her baby boy. She may have been a neglectful mom, but she will her son out of a jam if necessary.
However, Archer is not in a jam that he wants to be out of. He is living on a South Pacific island resort, having grown a beard, and is working through his grief by tending bar and ruining marriages by galloping every newlywed bride he can. Rip finds him, coerces him on his sea plane, and take off.
Of course Archer, though his odd combination of skill and bungling, manages to crash the sea plane near an island filled with Malaysian pirates. He kills the pirate king and takes his place, which is just fine with Archer because it is good to be the king.
Malory then sends Lana and Ray off to find Archer and Rip, budget being no object. Ray rather abuses the privilege, renting an expensive boat and a boy who does foot massages, among other things. The upshot is that Lana and Ray are captured and thrown into a dungeon with Archer, Ripley, and an anthropologist named Noah who had been a prisoner of the pirates for a long time.
Cyril and Pam, back at ISIS headquarters, are trying to find out the password to the Swiss bank account where Cyril embezzled ISIS’s funds while drunk, put out that he had to redo the budget because Malory had blown it on the hunt for Archer. It seems they need a considerable amount for the ransom.
It seems that Archer’s idea of being a pirate king is to gallop every native girl in sight, hold a karaoke night, and form a lacrosse league. Actual pirating offends his sense of propriety, which means that there is a cash flow problem. This results in an attempt to replace him as pirate king, which Archer resolves by shooting that man who will kill him to do so in the knee cap. Then a mutiny takes place, which disposes Archer and makes him a prisoner.
The bulk of the third episode involves a lot of bickering, followed by mayhem. Ray, who has already lost an eye, gets shot accidentally in the stomach. Rip also loses an eye. Lana gets shot in the leg but this only makes her more irritated. In any event, they escape, though Ray is now in a wheel chair and is not talking to anyone.