Mole Hunt

Sterling Archer, a suave agent from the spy organization ISIS, partakes in a torture training exercise, but causes it to be terminated after complaining about fellow agent Krenshaw's fake-torture tactics. The following day, while trying to get members of the organization to smell his dry cleaning due to its strangely curry-like odor, he is called into the office of Malory, his mother and boss, where he is chastised for misusing his ISIS-run expense account. He seeks assistance from Cyril Figgis, a member of the organization and his ex-girlfriend Lana Kane’s current boyfriend, to clear his account, but he refuses. Attempts to get access to accounts with a made-up "Mole Hunt" also meet with failure, because only section heads (Krenshaw, Cyril Figgis in accounting and Pamela Poovey in human resources) have access to the mainframe, and none of them wants to help him. Archer tries getting secretary Cheryl to leave the mainframe open that night, allowing Archer to easily slip in and clear his account, but she too denies his request.

Without any outside options, Archer is forced to manually break into ISIS's mainframe. Though he initially thinks that this will be an extremely difficult task, he discovers that actual security is appallingly terrible and he easily figures out the password to hack his account after the first try. While trying to transfer all of his excess expenses from his account to Krenshaw, the agent enters the room and holds a gun up to Archer's head. He reveals that he is actually a Russian spy named Kremenski and fears the agency has started to realize that he is a mole, so he plans on stealing $50,000 from Archer's account and fleeing from the country. Just then, however, Lana arrives and pulls a gun on Kremenski. She and Archer begin to argue and the mole is able to escape.

They pursue him outside, where Cyril and Malory have already arrived. Kremenski grabs Malory and threatens to kill her if they do not let him leave; Archer tries to turn the tables on him by grabbing Lana and threatening to do the same, but Kremenski does not care about her well being. When Lana proclaims that Archer is getting an erection (caused by picturing Malory being dead), Kremenski lets go of Malory in disgust, allowing Archer room to shoot him several times in his chest and once in the head, killing him.

Despite his previous actions of breaking into ISIS and hacking the mainframe, Archer is excused from his expenses after Cyril comes to the assumption that Kremenski had been stealing from Archer's account the whole time. Malory notes that she would have known if there was a mole at ISIS, her earlier phone call interrupted by Archer, was shown to have been with Nikolai Jakov, head of the KGB. She changes the subject when questioned, and rather complains that someone left donuts on the floor attracting ants.

"Mole Hunt" was written by Archer creator and executive producer Adam Reed, while the series' animation director Mack Williams directed it.^[1] Reed had been known for his creation of several Adult Swim animated television programs that he worked on with Archer co-executive producer Matt Thompson, such as Sealab 2021 and Frisky Dingo.^[2][3][4][5] In 2008, while walking along the Via de la Plata in Spain, Reed conceived the concept of Archer.^[2] Being a longtime "rabid fan" of FX Network and its original programming,^[6] he pitched the concept to the network and they accepted it, ordering six episodes of the series to be produced, along with an additional four scripts.^[6]

The pilot episode was produced at Reed's Floyd County Productions studio in Atlanta, Georgia,^[3] over the course of approximately one month.^[7] Animation took place at Radical Axis Studio, also located in Atlanta.^[8] The artistic style of the series was designed to be as realistic as possible, so the character designers used as much reference material as they could. In order to create consistency between the separate animators, the artists take photographs of each actor and utilize Adobe Illustrator to trace over them as a base for each actor's character. As Chad Hurd, the lead character designer for the series, noted, the result resembles "a 1960’s comic book come to life."^[9]

FX originally planned on pairing the premiere of Archer with the fifth season of the network's situation comedy It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia on Thursday nights in the fall.^[7][10] However, the network learned of the long, month-long production length it would take to create the needed six episodes and realized that there was not enough time to have all of the episodes ready before Philadelphia began its new season.^[5][7] FX then decided to reschedule the series and start airing it in January 2010,^[11] and replaced Archer with The League as Philadelphia's companion show.^[7] Despite this, FX also decided to air a sneak airing of "Mole Hunt" following the season five premiere of Philadelphia on September 17, 2009. The network did not promote the sneak peek, nor did they feature it on any program listings, and merely informed select television critics.^[5][7][12]