Warning: This article contains spoilers for Archer Season 14 Episode 3.
Summary
Pam’s attempts at an English accent sets the tone, with hilarious results.
Lana compromises her convictions to gain the curator’s respect for her daughter’s education, leading to a funny and sad dynamic.
Archer takes a trip across the pond for Season 14, Episode 3, “Plaque Removal,” which finds Archer, Zara, and Lana providing muscle for a British museum that needs its artifacts protected in transit. There’s a notorious thief on the loose who’s stealing sacred items and one particular acquisition, a sacred gold Nigerian plaque, is suspected of being the next target. The curator thinks that the gang has what it takes to stop them should the worst occur, but the possible curse associated with it puts everyone on edge, particularly Archer.
The banter between Archer and Interpol agent Zara Khan, which created some of the funniest moments in season 14’s first episodes, continues throughout the episode and provides a crackling energy. Lana is the straight woman for most of their shenanigans, but it’s great to see her back in the field and bonding with another strong female agent. Naturally, there are jokes about British culture, and even a few nods to the Indiana Jones franchise with the stolen artifact, but for fans who think all the fun is happening on the continent, Pam, Cyril, and the rest of the office gang have plenty of hijinks assessing the new staff.
10 Pam Trying To Learn An English Accent
Right out of the gate, Pam affecting an English accent sets the tone for the episode, with her exaggerated attempts at replicating the way English people speak with stereotypical phrases like, “Top o’ the mornin’ to ya, guvna!” Zara takes offense at being reduced to a single archetype, and explains that English people sound different regionally. Archer, with casual cruelty that doesn’t miss a beat, responds to her indignation with, “It doesn’t count as offensive when it’s from a really white country,” a statement which questions why Archer is still allowed to go on international missions.
9 Archer Failing To Hit On The British Museum Curator
Shocking no longtime fans, Archer immediately gets to flirting with the curator of the British museum who’s contracted their services. Rather than being impressed with her intellectual curiosity or the fact that she’s classy and cultured, he can’t stop wondering what she would look like without glasses, noting that without them, “she’s a British 8, which is like an American 5, and a Canadian 10.” Needless to say, she isn’t impressed, and while she does give in to a little flirtation of her own later in the episode, it’s only to get what she wants from Archer and then leave him high and dry.
8 Pam, Cheryl, and Cyril Assessing The New Employees
While Archer, Zara, and Lana are protecting the artifact, Pam has been tasked with actually taking her role as HR Director seriously and assessing the new employees. When confronted with the stack of paperwork this entails, she recruits Cheryl and Cyril to help her with conducting employee interviews and reviews. Hilarity ensues as none of them have any template to work with, so all of their interview questions and criteria are wildly different, and to top it off, they only get through a fraction of their task list.
7 Lana Using The Mission To Get Her Daughter Into A Posh British School
While having Lana on the mission is fun for the fans, she has a strong motivation for gaining the respect of the curator for the British museum; they’re on the board of the posh British school she wants her daughter to attend. Abbiejean “A.J.” Archer has really become more of Lana’s child than Archer’s – all he wants to do is train her so she can follow in his footsteps, while Lana wants her to get an education. Watching Lana compromise her convictions to suck up to the curator is equal parts hilarious and a little sad.
6 The Indiana Jones Reference In The Transport Truck
Sure enough, while Archer and the curator are in the transport truck with the plaque, the thief gains entry despite Zara and Lana following behind on motorcycles. When the agents confront him, he informs them that he’s taking the artifact back to Nigeria because “this does not belong in a museum” and cracks his bullwhip. The quote and whip are a direct reference to whenever famous globe-trotting archaeologist Indiana Jones would purloin a treasure and declare that it “belongs in a museum” rather than in the hands of the culture that created it.
5 Archer’s Take On The Law Of “Finders Keepers”
The thief ends up duping Archer and the gang by making off with the plaque and leaving them with a fake, prompting a discussion about “finders keepers” at a local pub as they lick their wounds. While Lana and Zara have a serious discussion about colonialism, imperialism, and the British Empire’s notorious reputation for pilfering artifacts from countries it conquered, Archer finds a random pint of beer and wonders if the law about “finders keepers” applies. He decides that it does, and drinks a stranger’s drink despite the protestations of his companions.
4 Archer Wondering If Hobbits Are Real
While at the pub, Archer’s mind is blown when the curator invites him up to one of the rooms above the pub. To him, it’s a match made in heaven, and he wonders about all the other fantastical things that could be possible in England, known for a medieval period filled with mythical creatures like unicorns and dragons. While this might not rank among the best episodes of Archer, it’s hysterical to listen to Archer make the leap that if bedrooms exist above bars, then the Hobbits from J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy series The Lord of the Rings must also be real.
3 Archer Blaming His Bedroom Issues On An Ancient Curse
After Archer and the curator share a night of passion, it becomes apparent that he wasn’t able to perform in the bedroom as well as he’d hoped. He blames this on the artifact’s curse, even though he’d been skeptical of its power previously, and uses it as an excuse. This compels him to find the Nigerian plaque with even more urgency, so that he can rid himself of the perceived affliction and get back to being the stud that he thinks he is, but no one around him seems to validate.
2 The Return Of Beauregard The Dolphin Puppet
After eventually assessing all the new employees, Pam decides to give everyone a raise despite the fact that Lana already did that the previous week. Cyril reminds her that with great power comes great responsibility, and as the HR Director, she’ll need to be the one to break it to them that the raise isn’t happening. To help her in this uncomfortable task, Pam decides to rely on her most trusted tool for HR mediation – Beauregard the dolphin puppet, because nothing softens the blow of finding out a raise isn’t coming like hearing bad news from a tiny talking dolphin.
1 Archer Admitting If Curses Aren’t Real, He’s Just Impotent
Once Archer and Co. corner the thief, they ultimately decide to let him go, only later realizing that the curse might have just been an invention used to get the artifact safely returned to Nigeria out of fear over its incredible powers. Lana and Zara point out that if curses aren’t real after all, then Archer’s issues in the bedroom can’t be blamed on the supernatural. In true fashion, Archer decides that curses are indeed real, on a case by case basis, and only as they pertain to him and impotence, which is the sort of irreverent logic that only makes it more unfortunate that Archer is ending after 14 years.
