Southbound and Down is kind of a special episode of Archer to me, because in it, the team travels to my home of Travis County, Texas. Unfortunately, it fails to capitalize on this chance to explore new terrain, hinting at undelivered payoffs but instead spending the bulk of its time on any given southern highway. It's kind of a lousy thing to criticize an episode for not being what you expected it to be, but I truly feel like they missed an opportunity here. Archer has been all over the world, and a lot of the fun of the show is seeing the characters in changing cultural extremes. There is a ton of material that could have been generated from seeing Archer indulging in Austin's bevy of food trailers and microbrew pubs, listening to live music and berating hipsters. Instead, the episode is essentially something between a remake of and homage to Smokey and the Bandit. There's one other way the episode is a tease. Krieger turns Ray's legs back on in the cold open and then controls him with a remote. "It's not supposed to be funny," is probably the funniest line of the episode, delivered in response to Ray's protesting that Krieger making him goosestep around isn't funny. But the two are hardly in the episode but for these brief moments, which is sad because this storyline is far more interesting than the A plot.
What the episode does have is a lot of the famous Archer dialogue snappy and hot-tempered arguments between all of the characters. While it's the show's dialogue that makes it among the very best, this episode is good proof that it isn't enough on its own. Here, the bickering actually gets on my nerves. It's high on yelling and caustic exchanges, but much shorter on wit and substance. Related to that, the episode's villain is a biker who is hounding the team for the 50 kilos of cocaine Archer smuggled along, but he doesn't have a single line of dialogue. The character design is interesting enough to give the bikers personality, but there's not even any attempt to flesh these characters out. It all ends up feeling a bit claustrophobic, with nearly all of the dialogue happening in and between the Firebird and bus. Which is not to say that the dialogue is bad it's just that most of it is only standard Archer fare. Pam is still addicted to cocaine, and it's still the biggest source of the team's problems. But there are plenty of funny lines. Standouts for me include Malory's anti-public television rant, Lana's "Colonel Mom Parker" pun (after Tom Parker, Elvis's famous manager) and Archer's explanation of irony he's in desperate need of a gun while being chased down a road littered with gun stores. His Bo Darville costume is also hilarious.
The supporting cast has been gaining in importance, particularly as of the fourth and fifth seasons. This is great, because they're all great characters and actors, but it's a noticeable change. In the first three seasons, Archer, Lana and Malory were clearly the most important characters, with each periphery character taking center stage for about one episode per season. The show has really turned into an ensemble cast, but it isn't always working. Particularly in this episode, Archer taking so much grief from Pam who is more or less his equivalent here is somewhat shocking, and not the best change for either character. Maybe it is the espionage setting that I'm missing. Having the team switch to drug dealing seemed like a funny idea. Having them suck so badly at it is a little less funny. Before, Archer's supreme cockiness was the show's biggest draw, due largely in part to the fact that he could back it up. Now, he's giving away cocaine left and right and the team hasn't had a real success in five episodes. I'm not sure what's missing, but something isn't working. It's almost there, and there's still so much unexplored possibility that I'm going to hang on particularly to see what happens next with Krieger and Ray but it saddens me to say that Archer Vice has thus far let down my expectations.
Kyle Schmidlin is a writer and musician living in Austin, TX. He manages the news blog at thirdrailnews.wordpress.com. Follow him at facebook.com/kyleschmidlin or twitter.com/kyleschmidlin1.
