A Tribute to Archer's Malory, Master of the Withering Put-Down

In season three’s “Lo Scandolo,” we get a flashback explaining exactly why Malory doesn’t enjoy running into her apartment building superintendent. After he humbly asks her for a Christmas bonus, she instead hands him a potato, snappily remarking “So once again you’re left with the classic Irishman’s dilemma: do I eat the potato now, or do I let it ferment so I can drink it later?” The camera pulls back and we see the man’s Tiny Tim-esque son, destined for an early grave thanks to Malory’s cruel stinginess.

“Why was I dressed as Hitler?” Archer mused about this Halloween memory, which pops up as a flashback in season two’s “Jeu Monégasque.” As Malory recalls it, it was the only time she’d ever seen Archer, as dedicated a tippler as she is, barfing-into-the-toilet drunk. “Can’t play cards, can’t drink... what the hell good are ya?” flashback Malory slurs at her son, while present-day Malory also wonders “Why was he dressed as Hitler?” Her Elvira costume, however, is exceptional.

In season seven, the agents—after being blacklisted by the CIA—head to the West Coast and form “The Figgis Agency” (also the episode title), working as private investigators. Malory’s not a fan of the career change or her new city, since the fact that you can buy liquor at the grocery store in California is “literally the only thing about Los Angeles that doesn’t make me want to vomit.”

In season six’s “Edie’s Wedding,” there’s an amazing aside when Malory starts to give her granddaughter, A.J. a loving little pet, then stops short to ask A.J.’s mom, Lana (Aisha Tyler) if her “boobs are full of corn syrup, because she feels chubby!” After further calling A.J. “a fat widdle baby” (in baby-talk voice), she sighs, “Fast-forward to me buying her liposuction for graduation.” Who dares fat-shame a six-month-old? Malory Archer does, that’s who!

Season four’s “Sea Tunt, Part II” gave us the immortal sight of a thirsty Malory guzzling some of Pam’s (Amber Nash) moonshine and cheerfully giving it her blessing: “God bless corn subsidies.”

Season one gave us “Job Offer,” in which Malory—distraught that Sterling has taken a job at a rival agency—gets progressively more and more inebriated, to the point of making the drunkenly emotional decision to send out a worldwide “Burn Notice” on her own son...and later hysterically regretting it...then gleefully gloating when it gets him kicked out of the rival agency.

In season five—the Archer Vice season—“Smuggler’s Blues” shows Malory fall prey (again) to another of Archer’s signature voicemail pranks. She actually calls Ray’s phone, and looks incredibly worried when Ray picks up, only to start yelling and get cut off amid a hail of gunfire. Then when the punch line is revealed, all thanks to an elaborate Sterling scheme he details in the next scene, the groaning noise of disgust she makes is epic. Jessica Walter’s delivery is everything, and she doesn’t even need words to get her point across.

In season five episode “Southbound and Down,” Malory let us know how she really feels about PBS, in a speech that sums up her political point of view both accurately and hilariously: “It’s public television. They don’t pay anything! All they do is suck money in. They take our taxes...” (Lana breaks in to add “or donations” before Malory continues.) “Of pre-tax dollars! From pot-taking, Bolshevik lesbian couples! Then PBS mixes it all in with their huge NEA grants, launders it in inner-city methadone clinics, and pumps it right back out to pro-abortion super-PACs!”

Season 10—Archer: 1999—sent the gang to space. In the previous “coma seasons,” Malory appeared as a crime boss named “Mother” (Dreamland) and a morally shifty South Pacific hotelier (Danger Island). The uneven 1999 season, however, gave her the best alter ego: the sentient AI on the spaceship where almost all the action takes place. Sometimes she appears as a ball of light; other times, as a futuristic (but still hard-drinking) version of the Malory we know and love.

Surprise! Malory isn’t a (delightful) bitch all the time. When Sterling finally wakes up from his three-year coma, not only is his mother right by his side, we’re shown (in the season 10 finale “Robert De Niro”) that she’s been basically camping out in his hospital room the entire time. Then comes an entirely uncharacteristic Malory speech: “I wanted to be here when you woke up ... The important thing is that you’re back and we’re together. After all, the real story has always been about you and me. Which, when you think about it, at its heart it’s really a love story. It’s true.” Aww.

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