The Rock

The Rock
Series Information
Series	Archer
Season No.	1
Episode Information
Episode No.	8
Original Air Date	March 4, 2010
Written by	Adam Reed Boswell Cocker
Directed by	Mack Williams
Production Code	AR01008
U.S. Viewership (Millions)	0.72
Episode Navigation
← Previous	Skytanic
Next →	Job Offer

"The Rock" is the eighth episode of the first season of Archer. It originally aired on March 4, 2010.

Plot

Synopsis

After ISIS loses yet another lucrative contract to rival agency ODIN, Malory assigns Archer and Lana to embarrass ODIN by stealing a priceless diamond from their biggest client.

Summary

Shhh!

In San Marino, Archer and Lana break into a large palace to reveal flaws in the security. Malory gave them the mission with the hope that ISIS would then be hired as security consultants by the principality. At a critical juncture, Malory calls Archer and then berates him for having his cell phone on. This interrupts their theft of a very large diamond in which they use several types of sophisticated equipment, including a code cloner and night vision goggles.

And you're gonna give her that if she says no?

At a bar where a wake is being held for an ISIS agent, Pam is drinking heavily. Cyril shows her a ring with a small brown diamond and announces that he's going to ask Lana to marry him. Pam belittles Cyril for the poor quality of the diamond and how low his pay is.

At ISIS Headquarters Archer, Lana, and Malory are sitting in the Office of Malory Archer awaiting a call from San Marino. In the break room, Pam recovers from a hangover and almost blurts out Cyril's plan to marry Lana until he stops her. Just then Cheryl walks in and Cyril lies about Pam eating his muffin, to which Cheryl tells him to punch her in the gut which causes Pam to vomit (spitting out a key in the process). In Malory's office, their client, Captain-Regent, announces that he's hiring ODIN instead. ODIN's director Len Trexler is with the client and flirts with Malory. 

Who's with me on the picket line?

Malory then tells Archer and Lana to break back into the palace to steal the diamond. Decrying their poor pay and benefits, Pam and Cyril decide to unionize the ISIS staff. In the ISIS armory, Lana and Archer can't find the equipment they need for their mission as the support staff have vanished. They are in front of the ISIS building, picketing.

So, you'd rather die in there than give us a cost of living adjustment?

The ISIS employees then drive Malory into the elevator, where she is trapped. She refuses to bow to any pressure, including having the heat turned up and spilling all her gin, and still she refuses they're demands. In San Marino, Archer and Lana are discovered outside the palace by ODIN agents when Lana loudly berates Archer for droning on about Burt Reynolds. The two come under heavy fire and Archer is temporarily blinded when a bright light hits the night vision goggles he's wearing. Lana has to carry Archer and try to escape.

Who do I remind you of?

Desperately calling for extraction, the ISIS staff refuse to help while they negotiate with Malory. She finally gives in to a raise on the condition that Archer and Lana give up their bonuses. Dr. Krieger and Bilbo build a Sat-Com Link that tracks Archer and Lana's location and send in a helicopter that rescues them. However, the link destroys Cyril's brown diamond.

Cast

• Starring :
  • H. Jon Benjamin as Sterling Archer
  • Judy Greer as Cheryl Tunt
  • Chris Parnell as Cyril Figgis
  • Aisha Tyler as Lana Kane
  • Jessica Walter as Malory Archer

• Guest Starring :
  • Jeffrey Tambor as Len Trexler
• Co-Starring :
  • Amber Nash as Pam Poovey
  • Adam Reed as Ray Gillette
  • Lucky Yates as Dr. Krieger
  • Adam Reed as Bilbo
  • Jane
  • Bryan

Cultural References

• When Cyril hits Pam in the stomach, she vomits up a key. He then mentions that getting hit in the stomach was how Harry Houdini died. Houdini's trademark way of escaping was to swallow the key beforehand and control his gag reflex later to retrieve the key. When Pam says, "Houdini died of AIDS", This may be an allusion to Paul Michael Glaser, who played Houdini in a TV movie. His wife and child died of AIDS, after a contaminated blood transfusion while giving birth to their first child. A lot of people thought "Starsky" had infected them and the dimmer people assumed he also died of it. Pam would fit in with that group.
• The humming in the background of Cyril's speeches to Pam and later the ISIS employees is to the tune of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", but in the context is more likely to be the song "Solidarity Forever", a socialist, pro-union anthem with the same tune, popularised by Pete Seeger.
• Archer refers to Lana as Eugene Debs while she is carrying him away from the blown robbery attempt. Debs was a prominent socialist and union organizer in the early part of the twentieth century.
• When Malory does away with the cleaning ladies, she retorts "How's that for bread and roses?" "Bread and Roses" was a possibly apocryphal slogan associated with the Lawrence strike of 1912, in which immigrant female workers struck for better wages and working conditions, which they mostly got. The strike is most famous for its invention of the moving picket line, used to this day, to prevent the strikers' arrest for loitering.
• The opening scene is a calque of the theft of the Pink Panther diamond in the opening scene of The Return of the Pink Panther (1975), starring Peter Sellers. In the film, the thief uses a crossbow to shoot a cable across the room and then uses the cable to slide across the floor to get to the diamond. The gem Archer and Lana are stealing resembles the Pink Panther diamond, although larger, and emits a similar pinkish hue.
• Burt Reynolds is referenced along with two of his movies: Deliverance (1972) and Gator (1976).

Running Gags / Callbacks

• Mulatto Butts - Archer leaves his cell phone on while breaking into a San Marino palace.
• 934TXS - passcode to access the San Marino diamond.
• Phrasing - Archer uses phrasing during Malory's conversation with Len Trexler.
• Lana's Hands - Several references to Lana's large hands are made by Archer and Pam.
• Man Crush - Archer shows obvious admiration for Burt Reynolds while referencing several of his movies.
• Pam Cam / Blog - Pam films Cyril for her website.
• Cyril, Cyril, Cyril! - Instead of annoying Lana as usual, Archer screams at Cyril.
• Neck bones - Pam's insult for Cheryl.
• Kreepy Krieger - His sexual sadism emerges.

Continuity

• Len Trexler is voiced by Jeffrey Tambor who had previously voiced Torvald Utne in Killing Utne (s1e4).
• Archer says the strike against the cleaners is curry fury. This may be a reference to the episode Mole Hunt (s1e1).
• Archer is shot once again during an episode, this time by ODIN agents while fleeing the San Marino Palace. He was also shot in Skorpio (s1e6) and Skytanic (s1e7) making this the third episode in a row taking bullet wounds.

Trivia

• "Flammable" and "inflammable" do mean exactly the same thing... easily burns. Apparently, Archer had to learn this the hard way.
• San Marino is an enclaved microstate surrounded by Italy. Its government is lead by a Captain Regent and as Malory states is very small, covering only 24 square miles making it the third smallest country in Europe.
• Malory is calling for Carol over the intercom before remembering she has changed her name ( again ) to Cheryl.  Archer later also refers to her as Carol.
• During the meeting to discuss unionizing, there is a bin over Cheryl's shoulder labeled Pinchers of Peril, a reference to Data using them in The Goonies. When Cheryl says, "I have to make my own tampons", there's a rather quiet line from Pam, "That's where my yarn's been going", meaning that she makes her own tampons with Pam's yarn. When she says “That’s why I say no union”, Krieger replies “Yes! Confederacy forever!”, mistaking a labor union for the Union of the Civil War. This might explain why his narco sub is a copy of a Confederate Civil War sub. He also doesn’t know what a tampon is.
• During the strike, after Archer and Lana's mission is botched, when Malory says "Not at the number you quoted me," to which Archer responds, "Mother!". However, this one single line doesn't sound like it comes through the radio like the rest of his, so it's likely a sound mixing error during production of the show.

Locations

• San Marino
• ISIS headquarters
  • Office of Malory Archer
  • ISIS training and break room
  • ISIS Situation Room
  • ISIS armory
  • ISIS Applied Research Laboratories
  • Four-Five-Six Laundry

First Appearances

Characters

• Len Trexler

Quotes

Malory: "If we show San Marino the flaws in their palace security they've agreed to hire us as security consultants. And I'm sure I don't need to remind you that we haven't gotten one of these jobs since your Uffizi fiasco."

Archer: "And yet you always do."

Malory: "Because you learned nothing from it."

Archer: "I learned that 'flammable' and 'inflammable' mean the same thing."

Lana: "Wait, what?"

─────────────────────────

(Pam sees Cyril's minuscule diamond ring.)

Pam: "But is it supposed to be brown?"

Cyril: "It's not brown, Pam. That color is called 'Champagne."

Pam: "And why do you have it?"

Cyril: "Because I am going to ask Lana... to marry me!"

Pam: "And you're gonna give her that if she says no?"

─────────────────────────

Trexler: "Ooh, Malory! Even on-- What is this, 1080p?-- you look as supple and as sexy as the day I first laid eyes on you."

Archer: "Where, in a wax museum?"

─────────────────────────

Malory: "This is the last time you make me out a fool, Len Trexler! You wanna play me hard?"

Archer: "Phrasing."

Trexler: "You know I do."

Malory: "Well then you better nut up!"

Archer: "Phrasing!"

Malory: "Because I swallowed just about as much as I can take from you!"

Archer: "Hey! Phrasing!"

─────────────────────────

Malory: "They're not picketing the cleaners, they're picketing ISIS!"

Lana: "What's their beef?"

Malory: "Oh, the same entitled crap as always. 'I can't make ends meet.' 'I'm on food stamps.' 'My child died because I can't afford new bone marrow.' Just 'ME! ME! ME!'"

Lana: "Jesus, whose kid died?"

Malory: "Oh, who remembers. Check Pam's blog."

─────────────────────────

Archer: "Frickin' ODIN, I can't believe this."

Lana: "How many are there?"

Archer: "About a jillion."

Lana: "Dammit."

Archer: "A jillion gay little copycats

Lana: "What?

Archer: "I mean, I didn't invent the turtleneck Lana, but I was the first to recognize its potential as a tactical garment."

Lana: Awww...

Archer: "The tactical turtleneck Lana..."

Lana: "Archer..."

Archer: "The... "Tactileneck.'"

─────────────────────────

Pam: "Come on, Ms. Archer, you been in there ten hours. Meet us halfway and Krieger will let you out of there."

Krieger: "Or else he will crank up the heat again!"

Cheryl: "I love that you know how to do that."

Krieger: "And I love that I have an erection... that didn't involve homeless people."

─────────────────────────

(Referring to the destruction of the diamond he bought for Lana)

Cyril: "Oh God Pam, two months salary..."

Pam: "Cyril, you can't put a price on good pussy."

Gallery of Images

There are 38 screenshots and images from "The Rock" on this Wiki, visit the category page for a complete gallery.

External links

• "The Rock" on IMDB