'Archer' Season 11 Episode 3 Review: Archer's selfishness both ruins and saves the day in a high-stakes heist
Spoilers for 'Archer' Season 11 Episode 3 'Helping Hands'
Sterling Archer (H Jon Benjamin) has always managed to be both the best and the worst spy in his agency, the kind they need on every mission but hate the fact that they do. With the injury that remains after having woken up from his coma, his team has more of an excuse than ever to go on missions without him. Archer, of course, is having none of it, and he's going to go on that mission no matter who it endangers. And endangering his colleagues is indeed the very first thing he does.
While infiltrating the mansion of brilliant inventor Hands (D'Arcy Carden) for a strength-enhancing exosuit, Lana Kane (Aisha Tyler) and Cyril Figgis (Chris Parnell) have everything going smoothly, at least until Archer shows up on a mission he wasn't invited to, with none of the intel necessary to avoid all of Hands' various booby traps. It's not long before his magpie-like need to touch everything shiny gets the three of them locked in Hands' vault, allowing Archer to vent his post-coma frustrations on Lana while Cyril works out to calm himself down.
The B-plot sees Mallory Archer (Jessica Walter) vent her frustrations to Cheryl Tunt (Judy Greer) after Archer messes up Mallory's plan to distract him from the mission with a lunch date that he stands her up for. Mallory's outrage and not-so-new, not-so-better Cheryl's outrageously bizarre responses are absolutely the highlight of the episode. A close second is the moment when Doctor Krieger (Lucky Yates) and Pam Poovey (Amber Nash) decide it's time for them to suit up and come to the rescue, hilariously matching Lana and Cyril's perfect infiltration beat for beat but doing it as the clumsy, incompetent, untrained field spies that they are.
The episode introduces two new elements that may have a big role to play in the season to come. First is the rival spy organization, Janus, who cropped up while Archer was away. Second, is Hands, the morally murky inventor that Doctor Krieger is crushing on, is a fascinating new character that we hopefully haven't seen the last of. She puts on the face of a charismatic, fun woman who gets Archer in a way that none of his colleagues do, but the episode is also sprinkled with red flags galore, with a picture of her meeting Stalin, her professed innocent motivations behind an immensely destructive weapon, and, of course, her attempts to convince Archer that he should leave his friends to die.
As selfish as he is, however, that's not something Archer is about to do. He's not going to let them die, especially if he can use the exosuit to force them to admit one more time that they need him. It's especially apparent how difficult this is for Lana, who made a life for herself while Archer was away and has been doing pretty well for herself, but as she's reminded when a trapdoor leaves her stuck with Cyril, things are somehow worse when Archer is away. Once again, Archer's selfishness somehow manages to save the day, and that, more than anything else, really proves that Archer is back and things are just the way they used to be.
The next episode of 'Archer' airs on September 30 on FXX.