And now, an episode of Archer in which Matt Berry plays an extremely horny walking doomsday device
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I was inclined to like “Mr. Deadly Goes To Town” even before an overly polite, sentient bomb voiced by Matt Berry came scrolling onto the set—this being the second Archer: 1999 episode scripted by Mark Ganek, who also penned “The Leftovers,” my favorite installment of the season to date. Adding Berry (and Thomas Lennon, whose sudden appearance as half of the the space-based versions of assassin duo Charles and Rudy was another happy and unexpected shock) just elevated my expectations even higher—expectations that “Mr. Deadly” thoroughly lived up to, I’m happy to report.
Berry—presumably on loan from his wonderfully hammy vampire gig on Archer’s sister network, FX—is a natural fit for voice acting, capable of drenching pretty much any character in rich, warm waves of smarm. (Born 20 years earlier, he could have gone toe-to-toe with Tim Curry and Tony Jay for the “deep-loud-fun-British school of kids’ cartoon villain voice acting.) He actually dials it back a bit as ever-hopeful walking apocalypse Mr. Deadly, never going full “You shut the fuck up, Clem Fandango” with his performance, and instead keeping the character detached—fitting for someone whose only goal in “life” is to kill himself in as big an explosion as possible.
“Talking bomb who wants to explode” is one of those extremely niche-but-still-classic sci-fi tropes, popping up most famously in John Carpenter’s first feature, the space-slacker comedy Dark Star. (A.k.a. that other other Dan O’Bannon script about hapless astronauts trapped on a run-down spaceship in close proximity to a hostile alien.) It creates a fun “villain” dynamic for tonight’s outing, in so far as the focus isn’t on stopping or impairing Mr. Deadly—who can’t initiate his own detonation phrase anyway—but in keeping him away from anybody who would. (Cue the best plot beat of the episode, when the crew of the Seamus immediately reacts to this revelation by dog-piling Carol/Cheryl to stop her from giving the fatal order.)
That puts most of the burden for doing the “right thing” (or whatever) on Lana, of course, who spends most of the episode trying to teach Mr. Deadly the value of life outside of solar system-destroying self-immolation. Meanwhile, Malory is just trying to offload the problem for as much cash as possible, which is how perennial backstabbers Charles and Rudy—now rendered as a space orc and a Thundercat, apparently—enter the mix, attempting to make off with the doomsday device for themselves. In the end, it’s Lana’s willingness to sacrifice herself (rather than ice cream, butterfly profanity, or fucking) that convinces the bomb that life is worth living—a schmaltzy conclusion that’s lightened considerably both by the fact that getting shot on his behalf sends his benefactor into a chemically-induced kill frenzy, and his forced detonation just a minute or so afterward.
Shaggy dog stories are de rigueur for Archer at this point, so it’s really just a question of how much fun we’ll have before the poor space-pooch (aw, Laika) inevitably gets shot. In the case of “Mr. Deadly Goes To Town,” that answer is “Quite a lot”; between Pam’s love of pasta-based resort vacations, Archer’s fear of black holes, and Berry’s politely insistent requests to explode, this episode has a lot of moving parts, and almost all of them work. Even the Malory-Krieger arms dealer plot (which would normally run smack into my distaste for Krieger-sells-out-the-crew sorts of stories) is fun as hell, from Krieger’s love of highly impractical weaponry, to the epic saga of his and Pam’s promotional mixtape. (“Sometimes you want to have fun! Sometimes you just need a gun! Ka-kow!”)
With two episodes under his belt, Ganek has made it clear that he understands what makes these characters, and this world, both functional and funny, enough that I’m honestly disappointed he only wrote two episodes out of this season’s complement of eight. (Case in point: The way each character gets an uncrowded little arc, from Archer’s fear of black holes, to Ray and Cyril’s aspirations to competence, to Pam’s efforts to ingratiate herself to the baddies as a sort of assassination intern.) Archer’s later seasons have opened the show up to occasional accusations of coasting; “Mr. Deadly Goes To Town” might go downhill with a quickness once the shooting and the exploding starts, but it never lets you forget that the chaos is firmly under control.
Stray observations
- Pam making dead-guy-ash angels is a GIF waiting to happen. “Bring me the biggest goose in all of London!”
- Archer, as Cyril chokes on dude-dust: “Now I kind of wish we’d worn helmets.”
- Mr. Deadly is a very fun visual design, and the running jokes about his struggles with body language never failed to get a laugh out of me.
- Berry practically purrs on “fiery apotheosis.”
- “Don’t just stand there gawping like stunned space elk!”
- “Let’s go get this bomb drunk.”
- Malory and Lana discuss the ethics of intergalactic gun-running: “We can’t be held responsible for the actions of the people we sell weapons to!” “Why not?” “Because we’d have to stop doing it!”
- Androids can’t dream of electric sheep, but they sure do think about them a lot, Dick.
- Archer’s not sure whether the billions who would die at Mr. Deadly’s hands count as “sunk cost” or “arbitrage.”
- “Thanks, Lana! It’s been a…delay?”
- Mr. Deadly and Cheryl, post-death-fetish-assisted-sex: “I’m sorry, what was your name again?” “Ugh, there’s some debate on that.”
- I’ll go to bat for any episode that traps Pam, Archer, and Lana in close quarters. The extended “Spaghetti Vacation” riff was a delight.
- Charles and Rudy (or Tav and space cat, or whatever) don’t get a ton of shading, but Lennon’s reading on “Is that a kimono?” was very funny.
- Obscure reference alert: Look, if the show is just going to spell out the whole Tycho Brahe-metal-nose thing in the text, I don’t even know what I’m doing down here. And if that mixtape cover was a deliberate reference, I’m not cool enough to catch it.
- Ray: “Give me a minute! I think i was just dead a little!”
- Lana’s rage-hyped read on “DON’T CALL ME LAAAAAADY” is some amazing Aisha Tyler work.
- Line of the episode: Carol/Cheryl, after Mr. Deadly starts talking about his feelings. “Ugggggh, it’s going to be one of those.” (Although Archer’s “Why not just give us an ancient horn that summons Cthulhu’s older, shittier stepbrother” is also a strong contender.)
- Between the return of Brett earlier this season, and Charles, Rudy, and Stirfriday tonight, I’m just going to keep my fingers crossed for Space-Conway-Stern and Space-Uta and Mannfred to show up before the season’s out.
- Sorry this Stray Observations was so long. What can I say, it was a funny damn episode of TV.
62 Comments
Who’s this ‘Brent’ you speak of?
They’re good dogs, Brent.
Get your hands out of your pants. BRENT.
Those are big pants
“You and he were mmmbuddies, weren’t you?”
“So what happened between you and this Renwick customerah?”
Listen. When I first joined this hospital I was strictly soeloe. You were first real buddy I ever had. mmBut if you and he wish to be best buddies again, I won’t stand in your wheeey
Not my fault! Monkey bastard hands!
Ok, holy christ! I just watched this episode and it’s probably one of the—if not the most—funniest episodes of the entire series. I had to pause it a few times I was laughing so much.
Right down to the weaponry! I giggled at the quarterstaff(although Rudy WISHES he was as hot as Cheetara), but I was howling when he whipped out the nunchucks.
“You have a gun!” really got to me.
For the Matt Berry fans out there, he is currently starring in Year of the Rabbit on Channel 4 in the UK. It’s good! The cast is great! Taika Waititi did a tiny cameo in the most recent episode!Available for viewing in the USA right now via the regular unethical methods.
Its actually garbage. The worst thing I’ve seen Berry in.
It has strong women characters and a racially diverse cast for a period piece, and the focus isn’t necessarily Matt Berry’s character. I can see how it would be divisive.
As a huge Matt Berry fan going back to my introduction to him in Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place, I’m in. Even with “Gurls” in it!
The show is not divisive for the reasons you’ve cited – it just second rate for other reasons The main problem is that it is a toothless parody of a period police procedural like Ripper Street (among others). It was clearly not written with Matt Berry in mind, and his casting appears to have been an afterthought or is merely incidental. It makes little attempt to cater to his off the wall (and over the top) sensibilities and keeps grounding his performance in shitty genre tropes. The show would work just as well (or badly) without him.
I wholeheartedly disagree. Nobody can say ‘Shit Squad’ like Matt Berry does
I have found it fun and enjoyable all around.
Episode 3 was awful, but episode 4 was easily the best episode in the season so far. Let’s hope the final 2 are equally as good (or better).
It’s also going to be on IFC…eventually?
This recap is incredible. Although I’m likely biased, as I’m firmly in the “best episode in quite awhile” camp, too. Judy Greer’s abilities are fantastic… The “there’s some debate on that” slayed me.
This episode confirmed for me that Judy Greer has been the MVP of this season: both “ugh, it’s gonna be one of those” and “there’s some debate on that” were two of my favourite lines of the episode. But my absolute favourite line and delivery of the episode was after he calls the sex world-shattering: “did the world shatter for you in the first ten seconds, the second ten seconds, or, huh, no other options”. Also, yeah, funniest visual gag was definitely the entire crew turning to look at Cheryl and then jumping on her right as she inhaled.
The crew all tackling Cheryl got the biggest laugh out of me in all of the last two seasons.
Sounds good, but I hope they didn’t just purloin the ending of Dark Star.
Take it nobody in the US has been watching Year of the Rabbit yet then?
You got your “Frisky Dingo” reference this episode, right? “KA-KOW!” and/or BOOSH!
There HAS to be an appearance from Killface coming up, or at least an ersatz version thereof buried somewhere deep in the background.
I would not be disappointed to learn that “Frisky Dingo” was itself one of Archer’s coma hallucinations. It would be pretty clumsy, I grant you. But it would also give them an opportunity to see what happens when Killface’s domineering mother shows up and … holy hell, does Archer see himself as Killface?Also of note, Simone appeared in “Archer” once, so it could be that “Frisky Dingo” is her hallucination. (Mr. Ford showed up too, but he can go literally anywhere, which presumably means he can enter people’s minds. Do not cross Mr. Ford.)
His ass IS everywhere.
Somebody say “Please detonate”
“We can’t be held responsible for the actions of the people we sell weapons to!”
“Why not?”
“Because we’d have to stop doing it!”
Line of the episode for me. 😀
Obligatory
YEEESSSS!!!
Eh, I didn’t like it quite as much as William did, I thought Matt Berry was superb and his scenes were consistently funny but Malory and Krieger as arms dealers fell a bit flat, and the ending was a bit disappointing too, for anyone interested I’ve just posted a full review here: https://comedytowatch.com/2019/06/27/tv-review-archer-season-10-episode-5/
If this show is allowed to continue without Adam Reed, and Mark Ganek doesn’t take his place at the helm, it will be a crime, because right now he’s doing a better job than the creator with his characters.
That’s where I’m at and given that he wrote 1/4th of the season’s episodes it’s pretty clear this seems to be a test run to let Reed take off and maybe kill off Ray so he can be completely free to go on to his next project. Reed has a weird itch about sticking around a good thing apparently…
Best episode of the season
I am a very big fan of this slow and steady assimilation of Matt Berry into the American tv consciousness
I am a very big fan of this slow and steady assimilation of Matt Berry into the American tv consciousness
This was the best episode of the season, and definitely one of Stephen Toast’s best voiceover gigs. Way better than his GPS.
I would trust this writer to take over for further seasons, if possible. But maybe this should be the last hurrah. I dunno. But I hope we get some kind of moment in the ‘real world’ to find out if Archer wakes up from his coma.
This season screams ‘Episode 8 is Archer waking up’ by just ignoring everything else and going with completely separate stories. If he doesn’t, I’m not really sure why he came back to do this and end the show on a funny but otherwise extremely sour note.
Interesting, I find this season a lot less sour than the Dreamland season.
Denying Archer closure after more or less declaring each follow up season is him in a coma is painfully sour.
I think Dreamland suffered due to Coe’s death and sort of revolved around that in a sort of tragic way, impacting their writing since it would line up with them writing the season and his death.
Krieger was all like, “Ka-kow!”
(boosh)
“And if that mixtape cover was a deliberate reference, I’m not cool enough to catch it.”That would be a reference to the most recent triple disc record by Rae Sremmurd.
I’m gonna go so far as to say that this is probably the best ep of the past few seasons. Fuckin hilarious.
Guess I’m the only one that thought Berry was James Mason-ing it…
Until I read this review, I could have sworn the bomb’s voice was Peter Serafinowicz, who would have made a welcome return to the show.
Ha, the first thing I did after this episode ended was check if Matt Berry had played cut-rate James Mason.
Huh I thought it was Spelvin at first
Yes, that who I thought it was, too. Serafinowicz doing a reprise of the George Spelvin character from Tragical History. Spelvin and Mr. Deadly seemed to share the same approach to things…
i do love peter’s voice.
Has Matt Berry ever played a character who is not extremely horny?
Ray: “Give me a minute! I think i was just dead a little!”
Line of the night for me. I had to pause for laughing so hard. That delivery was perfect.
We… don’t know that was us
So the robot ISN’T the ODIN agent who became a Soviet cyborg just to kill Archer? Because I swear he looks like that guy.
This has been my favorite of the season and I’ve been really enjoying this season.
So you’re saying that Tycho Brahe reference was a little… on the nose?