Archer's "Training Day" (14 January 2010)
Sterling Archer: Oh, my god! You killed a hooker!
Cyril Figgis: Call girl!
Sterling Archer: No, Cyril!
[Cyril: She was a call-]
Sterling Archer: When they're dead, they're just hookers. God, I said the cap on the poison pen slips off for no reason, didn't I?
Cyril Figgis: But I just assumed that if anything bad happened...
Sterling Archer: No, do not say the Chekhov gun, Cyril. That, sir, is a facile argument.
Woodhouse: And also woefully esoteric.
Sterling Archer: Woodhouse...
Woodhouse: Fetching a rug, sir.
Sterling Archer: Now he's fetching a rug. Happy, Cyril?
Cyril Figgis: No! No, I'm not happy!
Sterling Archer: Well, guess what? Me neither! I mean, big picture, I wouldn't say I'm a happy person.
Woodhouse: Sir, I have fetched the rug.
Sterling Archer: Plus, now I'm out of a rug.
Why is the Chekhov gun both a "facile argument" and also "woefully esoteric"?
Anton Chekhov, the Russian dramaturge, outlined the principle of his eponymous gun on at least three occasions.
- "One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it."
- "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there."
- "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."
The Chekhov gun, however, does not kill the call-girl turned hooker, but we, the viewers, are misled by Archer's highly specific "hypothetical" situation explaining his need for an "underwear gun" (i.e. the Chekhov gun). Thus, Archer has transformed the Chekhov gun into a red herring so as to be esoterically comical.
