Edie's Wedding

Template:Episode infobox "Edie's Wedding" is the fourth episode of season 6 and the sixty-sixth episode overall of Archer.

Plot

Pam takes Archer to her sister's wedding.

It's a more or less typical day as Archer tries to bypass a crying Pam to Irish up his coffee. However, his curiosity prevails as he asks Pam what's wrong. She explains that her sister Edie is getting married, and apparently Pam was passed over for the position of maid of honor in favor of a woman who stole her old boyfriend, which upsets her greatly. Archer decides he might as well be Pam's plus one and accompanies her to Wisconsin. But they're spotted in the airport along the way by none other than Barry Dylan, primed for murder.

Back at the office, Lana searches for Archer to look after A.J. while she spends the weekend at SERE school. Cheryl informs her of where Archer went, much to Lana's chagrin. Lana then asks Malory, but she refuses, as she has romantic plans with Ron Cadillac, their marriage repaired and stronger than ever (or so Malory would have everyone believe).

At a hotel in Wisconsin, Archer and Pam get dressed up for the rehearsal dinner, while Barry, frozen from hiding in the wheel well of their plane, watches and waits. Suddenly, Archer and Pam are visited by the infamous Edie herself. It doesn't take long for the two sisters to start fighting, as Archer watches on.

Meanwhile, Lana bumps into Ray, whom she asks to babysit A.J., when the elevator door closes on her. Ray is unable to (or more accurately, couldn't be bothered to) stop it from closing, flimsily claiming the elevator to be sentient.

Back in Wisconsin, as Pam and Edie manage to stop fighting, Edie upsets Pam further, causing her to storm out of the hotel. As she walks away, she's ambushed by Barry. After kidnapping Pam, Barry takes her hostage in an abandoned farm building used for grain storage and calls Archer to rescue Pam, so that he can murder Archer when he arrives. When Archer can't convince Edie to go with him to save Pam, he knocks her out and puts her in the back seat.

Meanwhile Lana visits Krieger to ask him to babysit AJ and immediately changes her mind when she finds him working on his recent gadget. She then runs into Cyril who is surprised that she wanted to ask Krieger to babysit but not him and suggests that he checks in with AJ in a motel near the training camp so she can check up on them... all with the intention of "hitting that again."

When Archer and Edie arrive, Barry instantly attacks him while Edie proves less than helpful to Pam by verbally "cutting her down" until Barry insults her. Pam breaks free and takes Archer's shotgun just as Barry is mid-way through choking Edie to death, at which point Archer announces that he acquired explosive ammo.

Pam blows a football sized hole in Barry's abdomen, and removes half of his face revealing a very terminator-esque endoskeleton. Barry then falls into the grain chute, is then buried in grains by Pam, and then the building is torched by Edie with a molotov cocktail. After they leave, Edie finds out her husband received a blowjob from the maid of honor (who, ironically, did the same thing to Pam's childhood crush, Arn) at her rehearsal dinner that she missed, much to Pam's contentment and Archer's delight. Meanwhile, Barry's heavily damaged, now skinless endoskeleton crawls out of the wreckage, only to be hit by an ambulance (being driven by Arn) and briefly powers down.

However, Barry's torn terminator-like body wakes up after the initial shut down, at which point he starts laughing hysterically, suggesting that he has now completely lost his mind.

Trivia

• This episode marks the return of Barry Dylan, who was not seen in Season 5.
• It is revealed that Katya has broken up with Barry and is now dating Boris.
• Pam suggests that Archer use the alias "Gordon Shumway", which is ALF's real name.
• Archer thinking Edie dumped pig's blood on Pam during the prom is a reference to the film Carrie.
• Pam's attire and hairstyle for Edie's wedding make her resemble Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch.
• As Barry sets his trap for Archer, he yells "Boosh!", an expletive frequently uttered in Frisky Dingo.
• Edie says to Archer "You drive like a... egg." This is verbatim what Burt Reynolds told Archer in The Man From Jupiter.
• This marks the first time Barry's cyborg body is damaged, due to Archer now using explosive shotgun shells.
• There are several references to the Terminator franchise in this episode:
  • Archer uses a flower box to conceal his shotgun like the T-800 during the mall scene in Terminator 2: Judgement Day.
  • Barry's cyborg body is similar to that of T-600's and T-800's without human skin.
  • Pam being tied up is similar to how Marcus Wright was tied up in Terminator: Salvation.
• Barry repeats his version of the famous line from The Warriors, "Archer, come out and play," which was first used in Space Race: Part 2.
• The use of 934, 934TX, and 934TXS: Pam and Archer board flight number 934.
• Archer's remarks about his rental car is a loose reference to the boatlike handling qualities of the Lincoln Continental Mark IV; this has even been proven on a Top Gear special, in which two of the show's three presenters try to find the worst car ever produced, with the Lincoln included for nomination.
• The scene with the ambulance pulling up to the grain elevator with Barry emerging from the explosion where the drivers says " Is that a man? Yeah you're damn right it is!" was a reference from the movie The Right Stuff when Chuck Yeagar was emerging from the wreck of his NF-104 aircraft.
• The song that plays at the end of the episode is the theme song from Fargo (TV Series), which also airs on FX. Guest star Allison Tolman (Edie) starred as Deputy Molly Solverson in the first season of Fargo.
• When Lana tells Krieger that A.J.'s poopy diaper was not likely caused by his K-9000 Infrasonic Pulse rifle and that it was probably a coincidence, Krieger retorts, "That's what they said about Tesla's Death Ray!". This is a reference to a conspiracy theory that the Tunguska Event, a massive, unexplained explosion that leveled 800 square miles of forest in Tunguska, Siberia on June 30th, 1908, was accidentally caused by Nikola Tesla's experiments with wireless energy transmission that took place on or around the same day. Supporters of the theory point out that Tesla predicted the weaponization of this technology ("Death Ray" being a term coined by the New York Times), and if you draw a line from Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower over the North Pole to the center of the Tunguska blast the line runs through, or very near, Ellesmere Island- the intended destination of the transmission. Opponents point out there is no evidence or hard science to support the theory, and thus this was most likely a coincidence.

Quotes

Archer: "Wait, no, I don't need a backstory!"

Pam: "Yes you do. Shut up. You're Gordon Shumway, and you own a 500-acre dairy farm in upstate New York, with 600 Holsteins and two Herringbone milking parlors."

Archer: "Okay, A, that's Alf's name, and two, what's more impressive, a pathetic cheese farmer or the world's greatest secret agent, A.K.A., me, Sterling Archer?"

Pam: "Oh, yeah."

Lana: "If you wake this child, I will climb inside you with my shoes on!"

Lana: "I hope you do burn this place down."

Cheryl: "She (Malory) said not to. *Gasps* She said try not to!"

Archer: (Looking at Pam in her dress) "Oh my God, Pam. You look amazing."

Pam: "Really?"

Archer: "I mean, you know, relatively."

Pam: "Shit-ass! But you've got to pace me, I'm sewn into this sumbitch. So for every ounce that goes in, an ounce gotta go out." (Swallows some pills)

Archer: "So... diuretics?"

Pam: "And laxatives. There's a sundae bar."

Archer: "What could possibly go wrong?"

Barry: "Is it Barry? Does that mean Barry possibly, literally froze his nuts off in the wheel-well of a 747 so he could murder the shit-eating Archer? Yes it does, other Barry. Oh, yes."

Ray: (Holding the elevator door open) "Yeah, come on. You coming?"

Lana: "No, but hey, I know it's late notice, and I really hate to ask, but would you mind keeping A.J. for the--" (The elevator door closes.)

Ray: "What? I'm hitting door open. You can't see it, but I really am. Oh, my God, it's just like Maximum Overdrive!"

Lana: "Ray!"

Ray: "Lana! On Monday let's talk about how scary this was for me!"