100 Favorite Shows: #26 — Brooklyn Nine-Nine
“A walk in the park, how romantic. And I know where all the murder spots are.”
Ahead of its September 17, 2013 debut on Fox, few series were as big of a surefire hit as Brooklyn Nine-Nine was. A workplace comedy blended with a police procedural at Brooklyn’s “99th” precinct created by Dan Goor and Michael Schur and starring Andy Samberg as juvenile detective Jake Peralta and Andre Braugher as stoic Captain Raymond Holt? That’s a guaranteed success. Fortunately, it lived up to lofty expectations to the tune of seven seasons (and counting). The first five of these seasons ran on Fox until it was canceled in the spring of 2018, only to be promptly brought back to life by NBC, where a finale season is planned for this autumn. For a cop show airing in the modern era, Brooklyn Nine-Nine has built its devoted fan following and award-winning base on a progressive sensibility. Not to mention its compelling story arcs and whip-smart sense of humor.
(There’s spoilers for Brooklyn Nine-Nine and The Simpsons in this essay, ya jags!)
In the season three finale of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, “Greg and Larry,” there exists a moment that remains as close to a perfect distillation of the series’ identity as any other from the extended 142 episodes. While attempting to flee a hospital from the murderous goons of Jimmy “The Butcher” Figgis’ (Eric Robert) mafia empire, each character plays a crucial role in the escape. Jake’s initial idea for leaving the hospital unnoticed is to “dress up like babies,” before the team decides to collaborate on a better idea. With Charles Boyle (Joe Lo Truglio) and Amy Santiago (Melissa Fumero) en route to assist, the Nine-Nine audibles by splitting their group into disguises of nurses and psychiatric patients. The nurses include Jake, wearing his nurse “hat” in an extremely floppy manner, and Terry (Terry Crews), who is “stuffed” into scrubs that adhere to his buffed muscles. Jake remarks on how attractive Terry looks and Terry attributes it to diet and exercise, which sound “hard” to Jake. This, in turn, leads to Holt remarking about how he used to play doctor as a kid (by telling his stuffed animals to get their affairs in order) and Jake tricking Holt into making a reference to What About Bob? With the plan finally in motion, the team wheels out one of Figgis’ cronies, Bob (Dennis Haysbert), by positioning him against Gina (Chelsea Perretti), typically a self-absorbed assistant in the precinct (but always game to pitch in when she’s needed), who claims to be Serena Williams. The entire episode is filled with rich character dynamics, but this particular scene shows how hilariously the characters play off one another with their trademarks and traits zooming at the audience in an assault from all directions. It also shows how well the Nine-Nine works as a team.
What made the Nine-Nine’s efforts so effectively collaborative was largely because of how much trust they placed in one another. When Jake and Rosa (Stephanie Beatriz), framed for a robbery, end up in prison between seasons four and five, Jake endured the experience by knowing that his companions wouldn’t stop until they released two of their best detectives — and friends. The more they learn about one another throughout Brooklyn, the better they’re able to understand one another.
Jake doesn’t know the difference between “liking” jazz and “being fond of” jazz when faced with the stoic connoisseurs of fine art Holt surrounds himself with, but the fact that he knows there’s an implied difference at all shows how he’s grown more attuned to Holt’s particularities over the years. In tandem, Holt learns more about Jake’s own childlike interests. Captain Holt may call a wrestling belt a cummerbund or interpret a reference to Nickelodeon’s Guts as a reference to Tantalus’ fruit, but he still makes the effort to understand something like “Funky Cold Medina.” It isn’t jazz or the opera, but it’s still music. That’s enough to build a bridge between two intelligent, hard-working officers with different perspectives on the world.
Over time, we, as viewers, were able to understand each character more. Like how Jake is really unsure of how to be an adult. His car window is a shower curtain, he understands the rules of eating raw cake batter, he doesn’t drink water, he finds fresh air to be insane, and his biggest nemesis is Wario. Holt describes Jake as having a “boyish face” and a “goofy grin” that remind him more of a children’s cereal mascot than an intimidating detective. And he’s not wrong. I mean, who would have thought the guy from “Iran So Far Away” would have played the lead detective on a network series? Yet, it’s a testament to Samberg’s performance that he can slide back and forth between empathetic/goofy and determined/savvy.
“TV and cake were my parents,” Jake remarks, somewhat distantly, when lamenting that Terry’s daughters, Cagney and Lacey (Kelsey and Skyler Yates and Dani and Dannah Lockett), refuse to eat cake for dinner while he babysits. Jake’s abandonment issues are ever-present on Brooklyn Nine-Nine, but they’re never milked for sympathy and tears. Instead, Jake Peralta is inherently easy to connect with, which is again due to Samberg’s turn in the role. He’s an endlessly charming actor, but his sense of humor in each delivery suggests that he’s always letting the audience in on the joke along with him. (I’m most frequently delighted when Jake’s responses to other characters border on concern and genuine hurt. Like in “HalloVeen” when Amy threatens Jake that their love is the worst mistake he ever made and he mutters, “Cool. Fun take on our relationship.”) It’s why he can sing “I Want It That Way” with a lineup of criminals and then make the audience feel like he’s genuinely apologetic about harmonizing Backstreet Boys in the presence of a woman whose brother was murdered. He just means so well.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine has always had some of the best cold opens of all-time. From this a capella rendition to Hitchcock (Dirk Blocker) strangling himself, the cold open is often my favorite part of each episode. Perhaps none was more memorable than the one that taught us a bit more about Captain Holt at the outset of season two’s “Jake and Sophia.”
By this point, the characters of Brooklyn were specifically crafted enough to allow for a bit of fun shake-ups to typical expectations ascribed to them. In this cold open, the precinct gathers around to make bets as to why Amy was a few seconds late to work. Captain Holt reckons she’s late because of a hold-up at the bank and when she does admit to this, he claps his hands together in a gleeful, “Hot damn!”
What’s even better about this abruptly-cut moment is that it was completely improvised by Braugher and the smash cut to the opening credits is because the entire cast burst out in laughter immediately afterwards. Could we have seen such a moment from the earliest episodes of Holt? Probably not. But what made the characters most delightful was when they deviated from their usual personas. For Holt, this came in exclamations of “Hot damn!” and “Bingpot!” and even a simple “Rah!” as he sprinted into action. However, he was just as fun when he was placed into scenarios that unraveled more and more of his idiosyncrasies, like how his one trigger is etymology, his favorite part of vacation is “reviewing the charges,” and his favorite color is tan.
Often, Holt’s impassive facial expressions (akin to novelty t-shirts ascribing various emotions to Bill Belichick) provide much of his ironic humor, like when a blank, unchanging face speaks the words, “I’ve never been more shocked.” But we know Holt well enough to know that shock is not something he’d lie about and the cast knows it, too. Over time, they grow to detect the slightest flicker of difference in Holt’s looks because it’s occasionally the difference between solving a case or losing a team member. Even though Holt’s demeanor makes the Nine-Nine think that he’s most comfortable in “index card factories” and “accounting museums,” they’re still aware of how he makes them better police officers and better people, too.
That’s a crucial aspect of Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Holt’s alternative methods could have been the central source of conflict on the series, but instead, his effective leadership allowed each character to grow beyond their initial potential. After all, we learn more about Amy Santiago (who is promoted from detective to sergeant) over the course of the series. Like Holt, Amy has an affinity for short answer questions and an obsession with Melvil Dewey, but she’s also more outwardly expressive of her feelings than Holt tends to be. The best way to sum up Amy Santiago is from a moment in “Greg and Larry” when she asks Boyle, “Were you stern?” regarding an airline giving them the runaround. “Amy, you know I wasn’t,” Charles replies, subtly hinting that Amy needs to be assertive for the both of them. Amy doesn’t hesitate to advocate for the two of them because Amy is like the friend in the group who will advocate for others when their order at a restaurant comes out incorrectly or when someone cuts them in line. She is the living embodiment of the strong corgi meme.
This is a moment that also tells us plenty about Charles. He doesn’t have it in him to be assertive when interacting with someone who’s just trying to do her job. (He later goes out of his way to apologize for yelling at a flight attendant.) On occasion, Boyle speaks like Tobias Fünke (“Where does my nose belong if not inside of our parents?”), but his lack of self-awareness is sweeter. He crafts and wears a mask of Gina’s face. He nicknames his heist team “The Tramps” because Amy knows exactly how to instill the idea within him. His fingers are too wet to snap, but he’s unphased by it. And the only thing he loves more than films like The First Wives Club and 27 Dresses? His son, Nikolaj (Antonio Raul Corbo), of course. If more fathers were like Boyle, the world would be better off. Charles Boyle is just unabashedly himself and always trying to act with kindness towards everyone he meets (except for when he downplays Terry’s massive physique).
The size of his pecs, biceps, and every other muscle is an important of Terry because fitness is vital to him. However, Terry’s best muscle is his heart. When he’s furious at Jake for losing Cagney’s toy, Moo Moo (obviously, more on this later), he can’t help but end the phone call with “I love you, too, Jake,” after Jake plays the trump card for getting Terry back on his side. A nerd who sports his fandoms proudly, Terry is still a shy, nervous kid underneath his intimidating frame. It’s what leads to him shattering Holt’s hard drive in a moment of doubt as to whether or not he can lead the precinct (the only one who doesn’t trust Terry is himself). With the support of those around him (and the forced swallowing of tracking devices in yogurt from them), though, Terry thrives. On paper, he could be a one-man wrecking crew like Luke Hobbs or Luke Cage or Luke Evans. But in reality, Terry is only as capable as the amount of support he receives from those he loves.
The rest of the precinct is just as fun to follow, too. Gina is a rascal, but would never jeopardize someone’s health and happiness. Rosa is stern and moves apartments (read: Bat Caves) whenever her friends and colleagues visit, but she does put in a ton of work to open herself up to the trust and assistance of others. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern avatars Scully (Joel McKinnon Miller) and Hitchcock follow their hungers over their smarts and guess Mean Marge’s (Kate Flannery) name to be “Marge Mopbucket,” but they do show the random flash of detective brilliance. No character is entirely one-note on Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
Admittedly, I was worried they would be at first. Brooklyn had such a strong pedigree that it couldn’t possibly fail, but I did see it as slightly derivative of Parks and Recreation, another Schur-Goor production. The characters had the classic Schur blend of competence and gentility to the point where I saw Scully and Hitchcock as another Jerry, Gina as another Tom, Rosa as another April. Over time, the shades of nuance between them all became more apparent as Brooklyn Nine-Nine uncovered its more authentic identity.
As a procedural series that bridged the gap between detective work and workplace hijinks, Brooklyn easily excelled to the point where it seemed almost effortless. What set the Fox-turned-NBC sitcom apart, though, was how the show was open to obvious improvements to make, rather than feeling the need to double down on imperfect character arcs, simply because the show was deemed so perfect right out of the gate. In Goor’s hands, Brooklyn carried on the natural progression of Schur’s M.O. of kindness and empathy on Parks. There was an obvious commitment to diversity on the series both in front of and behind the camera (Brooklyn remains one of network’s best champions for featuring prominent voices from the LGBT community and people of color). But there was also a commitment to a progressive and conscientious voice for characters like Jake. In the past, Jake’s open-mindedness would’ve been enough for a leading white man. On Brooklyn, though, he considers all feelings, from rooting for the survival of endangered bees to asking Amy’s father to marry her without needing his permission, but still trying to be respectful.
The progressive sensibility of Brooklyn Nine-Nine has seen the show experience dalliances with topics like gender bias, sexual harassment, and transgender rights. However, the story decision most closely tied to the series itself was the early decision with Charles Boyle’s character. Initially, Boyle was set up to be one who pined after Rosa, refusing to take no for an answer at every turn. Fairly quickly, this creepy character trait was abandoned in favor of a more wholesome relationship. Yes, Brooklyn could’ve dug its heels in and kept the Boyle-Rosa dynamic afloat and they probably wouldn’t have suffered too much for it. Instead, they recognized that it was not only a failing story, but a problematic one, and they wisely pivoted away from it. Rosa’s life is interesting enough without Charles stalking her and Charles is way more fun as someone who is overly invested in Jake and Amy’s relationship.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine also made a stellar pivot in the characterization of both Amy and Jake. At first, Amy seemed like an uptight character who was only traditionally intelligent. In many series, Amy’s archetype would be the one that stands firmly in the mud, refusing to let anyone else have any fun, even when they time and again prove themselves to be better detectives. Not Amy Santiago, though. Yes, she’s bookish and devoted to perfection, but she’s also willing to embrace entertainment (the Amy of season one would be unrecognizable to the later Amy who calls her colleagues “jags”). Furthermore, she’s so obviously the character who deserves promotions and the show actually gives them to her because it’d be unrealistic to think anyone was more qualified.
At first, it seemed like the goal of Brooklyn was to position Jake as a Shawn Spencer-esque hotshot who played by his own rules and got into some trouble along the way. Instead, Jake became a much kinder, more caring character. He still wanted to be right (as any good detective would be), but after the first few episodes, it never felt like that desire would ever come at the expense of jeopardizing a case, a criminal, some semblance of justice.
Much of the sound development for Jake and Amy comes from their dynamic with Captain Holt. Like Homer when he gets the crayon removed from his brain and forges a bond with Lisa on The Simpsons, Amy sees the ability to relate to Holt for his similar interest in grammar and academia. The teacher’s pet within Amy is activated whenever she’s around him and she always has a strong want for his approval (of which she claims she’s only “barely scratched the surface of”).
Conversely, Jake sees Holt as more than a mentor. Having never had strong male role models in his life, Jake projects the role of a father figure onto Holt, delighting in being referred to as “son” by his captain and in being commended and welcomed for his abilities by Holt and his husband, Kevin Cozner (Marc Evan Jackson). (This differed from a show like, say, Scrubs, which always kept Dr. Cox’s approval of J.D. an outstretched, hug-wanting arm away.) Over the course of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Holt and Jake’s connection becomes even stronger and even more believable, due in large part to the growing rapport between Braugher and Samberg, too. Frequently, the pairing is electric, but it was never better than in season five’s “The Box.”
Frequently, Brooklyn tends to lean into high-concept, one-off episodes built around a famous guest star (season seven’s “Dillman” enlisted J.K. Simmons, fresh off shooting Palm Springs with Samberg), but “The Box” was the best example of this. In “The Box,” Sterling K. Brown came to the precinct to play as Phillip Davidson, a dentist suspected of murder. It’s a bottle episode built around Phillip’s interrogation with a “ticking clock and everything on the line.” Holt and Peralta need a confession from Phillip to have a chance at providing justice to the victim, but Phillip proves to be a match for them, resulting in myriad bait and switches as the cops think they have Phillip in a corner, only to watch him wriggle free.
The episode (shot in a cinematic style by director Claire Scanlon) is marked by the opposing styles of Holt and Jake in their policework. Holt prefers to present traditional interrogation dynamics to Phillip, with Jake serving as “the dumb one.” (He asks Phillip directly if he killed him, only to groan, “If you said yes, I’d have had you.”) Jake, on the other hand, gets caught up in Phillip’s story about watching Jimmy Fallon slow jam the news on Taxi TV and then strums a guitar while screaming in his face.
Ultimately, neither tactic works because Holt and Jake are fighting Phillip’s ego with their own. Holt wants to prove he’s still a great interrogator and Jake wants to prove he’s an amazing detective to the man whose opinion he values most. After all, Jake can’t help but feel humiliated when Holt claims Peralta is one of the Nine-Nine’s best detectives, but never makes decisions founded in this belief. Ultimately, the answer to breaking Phillip is found when Jake attacks the ego of a criminal who orchestrated the “perfect crime” and he prods Phillip into confessing, even when he was only minutes away from the clear. No matter what Holt said, Jake wouldn’t be able to rest until he proved himself capable of wringing a confession from Phillip because Jake needed to impress himself, too. On Brooklyn Nine-Nine, the characters’ opinions of themselves mattered just as much as those around him.
Episodes like these are when Brooklyn is at its best. Whether it’s celebrating the Twitter crew that treasures the series (Seth Meyers, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Sean Astin, Mark Hamill, and Guillermo Del Toro), making fun of the fire department, or centering installments around rival Madeline Wuntch (Kyra Sedgwick), scamp Doug Judy (Craig Robinson), or sweetheart Captain C.J. (Ken Marino), Brooklyn thrives when it leans into the classic, Cheers-esque episode conceits that fans love the most. But no tradition is as beloved in the borough’s bureau as the annual Halloween Heists.
Honestly, man, the Halloween Heists are just so fun. Miraculously, the series manages to keep devising new methods of tackling the annual holiday installment that pits the characters against one another for innocuous fun to determine who is the “Ultimate Detective/Genius.” They’re fun for watching impossibly ingenious plans unfold, but they’re also fun for bringing back fan favorites who turn up rarely, like Holt’s dog, Cheddar (not the common bitch), and Boyle’s lookalike, Bill (Winston Story), who is embroiled in prostitution and multilevel marketing. Personally, my favorite heist is season five’s “HalloVeen,” which subverted my expectations with an ending so tear-jerking, I didn’t think it possible.
“You’ve lost the ability to surprise me,” Amy says to Jake during the heist shenanigans and it’s almost like she’s talking to us, too. Five seasons in and Brooklyn Nine-Nine couldn’t pull off an even greater Halloween Heist, right? Not so. In this edition, no one wins the heist because it ends with Jake (who has long since ditched his pigtail-pulling persona) proposing to Amy. Technically, he decided to propose after she noticed a typo in a crossword puzzle, but we had no idea it was coming when Amy turned around from the cummerbund and saw her boyfriend on one knee. The proposal meant so much more when it came as a result of the series’ greatest tradition. It had genuine meaning, especially since it allowed us to reflect on all the heists that’d come before. (Personally, I watched them in a library at my university and had to hide my tears in a box of General Tso’s chicken from the other learners.)
By the time Jake and Amy were prepared to go on their honeymoon, the series had shifted networks, but it was fortunately just as hilarious. (It also allowed for an all-time joke when Amy said to Jake, “This B wants a C in her A.” She meant, “This babe needs a coconut in her arms.” He thought she said, “This bitch needs a cock in her ass.” The bleeps make the joke even better, but Fox would have never allowed bleeps.) On Brooklyn, though, a romantic honeymoon getaway is too simple. The conflict of the episode comes from Holt staying at the same resort to escape his depression over being passed up for the commissioner position in favor of John Kelly (Phil Reeves), another “mediocre, old, white man.”
It’s delightful to watch Braugher don a number of atonal tank tops (“What’s Up Beaches?,” “DTF: Down to Fiesta,” “Slut” with a pineapple in a thong), but by this “Honeymoon” point of season six, his role in the episode is kept afloat by the emotional bonds he possesses with Jake and Amy. During his apathy, it becomes their duty to be there for him, as he was there for them. After a few choice words exchanged between them, Holt eventually snaps out of his funk, thanks to Amy’s upfront diatribe. He’s headed back to the precinct, hellbent on implementing changes to policework in Brooklyn by not giving “a hoot” about the rules anymore.
This, I believe, will be the ultimate legacy of Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Yes, it’s funny, charming, and altogether wonderful, but one of the series’ best episodes, “Moo Moo,” addresses the need for structural change on a systemic level. Not just within the NYPD, but within the country’s police forces, as a whole.
As aforementioned, Jake and Amy babysitting Terry’s daughters, Cagney and Lacey, results in Cagney losing her Moo Moo toy. When Terry steps outside to search for it, he runs into a cop, Officer Maldack (Desmond Harrington), who immediately weaponizes racial profiling against Terry. He degradingly calls him “buddy,” he commands Terry to “lower [his] voice,” he kicks his legs apart and frisks him. The episode aired in May 2017, but it’s tackling a theme that is all too familiar, decades ago, three years ago and, tragically, today.
Because it’s a mostly lighthearted comedy series on a network, Terry was never in any real danger, but so much is known about the deep, institutional ties between police in the United States and racial profiling, it was hard not to catch my breath as I watched Terry helplessly forced to submit to Maldack’s whims. (And I’ve seen this fictional episode before!) As Terry later explains to Holt, all Maldack saw him as was as a black man. Not a cop, not a man looking for his daughter’s toy; all Maldack saw was “a threat.”
Thankfully, in Terry’s case, he was able to play the “police card” and Maldack let him go once he checked the NYPD database for his identity. But should Terry be “thankful” for this? After all, when he meets with Maldack, the racist cop tries to blame Terry for not having his badge on him in the first place. All Maldack apologizes for was not knowing he was a cop sooner.
When Terry moves to file a complaint against Maldack, Holt resists. Reflecting on his own experiences in the NYPD, Holt warns him about blowing the whistle on another cop and seeing it backfire. Instead, Holt suggests rising up over discrimination (as he did) and changing the system, not yet realizing that, as a supervisor who was once alone in his battles, Holt has to rise to the occasion and support Terry, even if it costs him a promotion. Both perspectives have validity to them, but Terry can’t shake the thought of his daughters getting stopped by a cop like Maldack, who’s out on the streets in the present day. A complaint won’t stop racial profiling, but it results in just a small victory for the precinct and the two black men leading it who had differing opinions on the matter, but were given the platform to voice them on national television.
The concept is tackled, of course, through humor (Terry’s kids ask about racism and orgasms. Jake acknowledges his own privilege like when a cop didn’t stop him from breaking into his friend’s apartment), but it’s still addressing a pervasive issue in the United States that has only grown in the interim, as it now spearheads movements like #DefundThePolice. “Moo Moo” remains a seminal episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine for its ability to deftly tackle the most pressing subject regarding the series’ overall subject matter. And it does so with open-mindedness, sincerity, and genuine concern. All credit due to Phil Augusta Jackson, the episode’s writer.
After the summer of 2020, Brooklyn has a crucial moment ahead of it. Between episodes like “Adrian Pimento,” which make light of psychopathic police work from the undercover Pimento (Jason Mantzoukas) and overarching backgrounds like Jake Peralta’s, which saw him become a detective and involve himself in a secret mafia commitment because he wanted to be a bad ass cop like Die Hard’s John McClane, there is a clear celebration of police work’s many faults on Brooklyn Nine-Nine. I’ve seen many suggest that the series should, without explanation, change the setting to the USPS or just get cancelled altogether. I think this would be a mistake. Episodes like “Moo Moo” show that Brooklyn is the most conscientious police series of all-time, tackling difficult diatribes with authenticity akin to Scrubs’ medical accuracy.
The future of Brooklyn may be in flux, but the series is equipped to address the exposed nerve twitching directly at it. Just like how Holt recognized that he must support Terry now that he’s risen to a position where he can change the system that worked against him, so too must Brooklyn recognize its position. As the last bastion of clever network comedy, Brooklyn is uniquely equipped to handle the future of policing in the U.S. Explain the truth behind the #DefundThePolice movement to mass audiences! Explore the systemic racism behind every institution in the country! Gives us understanding and empathy, justice and accountability! “Moo Moo” shows us you don’t have to sacrifice laughs when you get real. And refusing reality has never been present on Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
