Review: Archer ‘Once Bitten’ – Tourniquet The Taint

What begins as a regular spy caper gone wrong in ‘Once Bitten’ turns into an existential journey for Sterling Archer, continuing the trend of recent seasons to deconstruct the world’s coolest spy for the insecure, lonely child-man hiding inside. Although it makes a lot of what is going on around it feel like a distraction, the few moments where Archer sinks its teeth into its main character are as satisfying as the always are.

It’s certainly strange: after he’s bitten by a snake, Archer finds himself in a purgatory-like state with James Mason, visiting a few moments in his past. The first of the two scenes Archer enters is a recreation of a scene from The Natural, drawing the obvious parallels between Roy Hobbs and Sterling Archer. But while many will attribute it as a movie reference, it’s most certainly more in tune with Malamud’s novel – in the book, Hobbs doesn’t redeem himself by winning the home run, he does it by failing. Hobbs falls victim to his own chase for glory, too naive to see his external desires were just covering up a man who was insecure and lost, because he never reconciled with his father.

I’ve written a lot about the father/son reconciliation and how important it is to characters like Sterling Archer and Jeff Winger – and by framing the first dream scene in the context of the novel, the second half of his fever dream executes the idea perfectly. Archer’s father visits him when he’s six, and gives him an alligator for his birthday. For Hobbs, the game of baseball connected him to his father – and in the book after he’s shot, he runs away from the game for a long time. For Archer, that baseball is alligators – and it not only defines why Archer hates alligators so much, but why he’s felt so alone in his life.

The rest of ‘Once Bitten’ is largely forgettable – I found it amusing how Ray’s bionic legs only made him more useless (and basically had him paralyzed again for the rest of the episode), but the office material wasn’t really firing on all cylinders. Making fun of Lana is always amusing, but when Cheryl bugs out and parses down Lana to her deepest fears and regrets, it feels like material that deserves its own episode, not just a few throwaway jokes surrounded by “Lana clods around with her big feet” humor. Still, the Sterling/The Natural material was a highlight of the series, and elevates an otherwise average episode of the show.

Grade: A-

Other thoughts/observations:

– the names of everyone from Turkmenistan are great.

– best joke of the episode: Pam re-grinding ground meat in sausage casing.

– “Who am I, Lewis and/or Clark?”