7x10 Deadly Velvet (2)

7.8.10. Better than pt. 1, if only for all the robot humor. Krieger referring to his bots as "Milkly" and "Coply" is delightful, and all the humor about the Turing test and the opposite of the first law of robotics warmed the cockles of my nerdy heart. The best scenes in the whole episode centered around those bots' appearances and the sort of rapid-fire farce that the show does so well in the aftermath. Plus, pairing Archer up with his own double is an amusing stunt, and seeing the two characters trade backslaps and do things like fart on robo-Cyril worked quite well.

The murder mystery stuff didn't click quite as well for me. The fact that everyone was washing their hands anyway (or in Pam's case, getting an excuse to continue not washing them) was amusing, but the whole shtick with Lana and the cop and her being framed wasn't especially funny and didn't really go anywhere. And the fakeout with Archer in the pool is kind of ruined by the fact that so many characters on this show have come back from life-threatening stuff, so I look forward to cyborg Archer or second robot Archer or clone Archer or however else they'll do it, but it makes the cliffhanger part of it feel kind of silly.

Overall, the Veronica Dean plot was kind of a letdown. (Which the show at least semi-acknowledged.) The fact that it was all just a big insurance scam (with a side of sex tape) and not some bigger reveal or connection beyond Shapiro nursing a crush made it feel like a whole lot of fuss over nothing, but I still like the idea of some kind of continuing storyline to juice the show a bit in its middle age; they just need to figure out a more entertaining finish to it all. Still, a definite improvement over last season with lots of funny bits and solid-at-worst episodes.