“What don’t you understand?”
“The core concept, obviously!”
While the episode was great overall, the best line (that nobody ever seems to appreciate) is Archer in the background:
“Hooray for metaphors!”
-Joe
James Bond meets Arrested Development (in fact, three of the voice actors are from AD).
Basically, Archer is an sarcastic, assholeish, narcissistic, womanizing, alchoholic, douchey and somewhat idiotic spy in the world’s worst spy agency that also happens to be run by his overbearing and equally self-centered mother. Although most of his sarcasm seem justified given how idiotic and spiteful most of his coworkers are. The one exception would be his ex-girlfriend, Lana, who is sort of the “straight man” Michael Bluth character in the group. Basically, like AD, they are treated as a sort of comedically dysfunctional family.
Much of the show involves the characters bickering. Usually due to Archer’s thoughlessness making situations far worse before he is inexplicably able to resolve them (usually by doing something awesome like shooting a shark in the face). It also pokes fun at a lot of spy movie tropes. For example, Archer making fun of Rip Riley’s 30s adventure film stock character look and his “wildly impractical” Catalina-ish seaplane by calling him “Sky Captain of Yesteryear” and telling him in a 30s movie voice to “watch out for that bad egg Hitler”.
Four. David Cross was in the last episode.
-Joe
So I think last night’s episode was definitely better than the first. Less exposition, more whoring. Excellent cameo voicework by David Lo Pan.
“Your three-fifths of an opinion is noted.”
Hah! So it was Lo Pan. I figured, but even though I’ve seen the guy in a million movies I can never remember his name to look for him in the credits.
Still not enough of the supporting cast. And I still think that Brock Ripley will be another father candidate - something like he’ll have had amnesia that wiped out 20 years of memory or something.
I also loved how Ray and Lana got captured. Sooooooo stupid.
-Joe
It’s actually James Hong, but he’ll always be David Lo Pan to me.
Me too. I just can’t ever remember the “James Hong” part.
And I can’t believe they passed up a chance to use Danger Zone once Lana got led into the cell!
-Joe
Oddly, he showed up in the regular cast list, not with the “Guest Starring” list of David Cross and Patrick Warburton. So maybe Bucky will become a regular?
Well, the seperate page for the guest stars is new - didn’t used to be there.
Maybe Cross and Warburton have better agents than everyone else? I actually didn’t see Cross’s name the first time I looked for him because it wasn’t on the page with everyone else.
-Joe
“She literally vomited from anger.”
Last night’s was kind of a dud with me. I laughed a couple times ("…and rice!") but if I had to pick an episode I was never allowed to watch again, this would be the one.
Speaking of, Cheryl/Carol looks different to me. Like she’s drawn differently but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Am I just insane?
Something is subtly different. It’s almost like her colors are bolder. Other than that, her hair was disheveled.
-Joe
“I never realized how heavily dependent we are on idioms!”
Guessing from Mallory’s insistence that Carol/Cheryl stay by the phone in case Archer or Lana calls, I’d say that C/C has been awake, with maybe short naps/dozing in her chair, for a period of time measured in days instead of hours. Disheveled hair, as noted, plus her eyeshadow/coloring around her eyes seemed slightly more pronounced – meant to represent sunken, sleep-deprived eyes? Yeah, reaching, I know. Like this show is that cerebral. 
I don’t know that I’d ever call it cerebral (though how many shows demonstrate the importance of idioms outside of Sesame Street?), but they do have a good attention to detail.
-Joe
I don’t know, a show with a Chekov’s gun joke about a gun called Chekov is pretty cerebral.
She was specifically drawn to look tired, like she had been at the office without rest for days.
Last week’s episode didn’t do much for me but this week’s had the old magic.
“‘Dungeon-us’ crab?? Just kidding… Crab rangoon.”
“Hello?? Columbia House?” (made better by the first time sounding like just “Columbia” if you weren’t paying attention)
It’s an idiom!