If you follow me on any kind of social media, you already know how I feel about this week’s episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine: it is valuable and wonderful simply because it demands that Terry Crews act like a complete asshole to cute kittens. This is why I watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Hell, it’s why I watch television. I’ll spare … Continue reading
“Guest stars have been a thing for Brooklyn Nine-Nine since the very beginning, when Stacy Keach, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, and Patton Oswalt showed up for one-offs, and Craig Robinson, Marilu Henner, and Kyle Bornheimer each stepped into limited but recurring roles. (Remember: Doug Judy is still around!) But after season two took several paces back … Continue reading
“There are so many stray observations worth making about Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s latest installment that figuring out where to start is like ice-skating uphill. Stephanie Beatriz deserves to be cast in an action movie so she can kick asses full time; only Joe Lo Truglio can over-enunciate “phở” with devastating comic effect; we don’t actually know … Continue reading
“Talking about “The Cruise” without talking about Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s fondness for referential and self-contained franchisement is impossible. First, we had “Halloween III,” where Santiago brought the series-long All Hallow’s Eve prank war fought by Holt and Jake to a decisive end; then we had “Yippie Kayak,” where Boyle became subsumed into Jake’s Die Hard … Continue reading
“What gift should you buy for the Diehard-obsessed NYPD detective who has everything? How about this: don’t buy him a gift at all, just let him wander into a real-life Diehard situation so that he can live out his John McClane fantasy. By the time “Yippie Kayak” ends, you half-expect someone (probably Boyle) involved in … Continue reading
“Everything’s been coming up Rosa lately, hasn’t it? It’s been a few episodes since she broke up with Marcus and subsequently broke down with Holt, and only a couple since Terry taught her a valuable lesson in compassion and forgiveness, despite a cavalcade of oopsies and screw-ups; after the season’s decidedly Rosa-light first half, she’s … Continue reading
“Watching the cast of Brooklyn Nine-Nine come together either in the pursuit of shenanigans or the performance of their jobs is standard routine for the series. In Season Three, we’ve seen whole precinct skive off work in the midst of Holt and Jake’s annual prank war (“Halloween III”), and unite over Captain Dozerman’s passing (“The … Continue reading
“Like many sitcoms, Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s chief traits are the relationships between its characters. Whether it’s Boyle’s unfaltering loyalty to Jake, Jake’s odd couple professional bond with Holt, Holt’s mentor-mentee rapport with Amy, or Amy’s socially imbalanced encounters with everybody in the office, Brooklyn Nine-Nine best thrives when the writing creates a space where these characters … Continue reading
“The worst thing about “Halloween III” is that it’s predictable. The best thing is that the predictability doesn’t matter. In this, Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s third annual All Hallow’s Eve showdown between Jake and Holt, the episode’s madcap essence is what matters most, though there’s plenty worth cheering about as regards the substance of the story, too. … Continue reading
“If you’ve felt that Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s third season has underused Amy Santiago and Rosa Diaz, now we know why: They’re too busy passing their juicier cases on to Major Crimes and putting together The Vulture’s social events for him. The former ignominy, at least, is one the entire squad suffers, but “The Oolong Slayer” treats … Continue reading
“What do you want out of your sitcom? Twenty two-ish minutes of escalating hilarity that, in the end, ties everything up as neatly as a bow knotted by Martha Stewart’s own fastidious hands? Do you want to invest yourself in the characters, or is pointlessly chuckling your chief concern? Are you interested in material with … Continue reading
“Boyle is back, baby! Okay, maybe the resuscitation of Charles Boyle’s latent dating life is, in the grand scheme of things, Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s least important third season development thus far, but after last week’s “New Captain,” there hung in the air a question as to what the show intended for him in a post-Jamy world. … Continue reading
“Talking about “New Captain,” the first episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s third season, without disclosing the particulars of its more delightful surprises isn’t easy. If you’ve seen TV promos for the premiere, then Fox has already done the grim task of spoiling [actor]’s appearance as [character] for you, and, rightly, you’re probably a little bummed. But … Continue reading
“How long have we gone without Brooklyn Nine-Nine so much as hinting at the simmering romantic tension between Jake Peralta and Amy Santiago? In the grand scheme of things, only recently: the last time the subject of Jake courting Amy came up we were celebrating the joyous matrimony of “Boyle-Linetti Wedding,” an episode that categorically … Continue reading
“We now break our usual third-person omniscient mode in service to a desperate first-person plea: Can somebody please make me a pair of .gifs of Rosa’s and Holt’s amazing mid-episode reaction shots during their ill-fated double date with Marcus and Kevin? Stephanie Beatriz and Andre Braugher are both great at wry humor and articulating hilarity … Continue reading
“Every once in a while, it’s nice to be reminded that the non-principal cast members on Brooklyn Nine-Nine are people too. Last week, the series drilled down on Jake Peralta and did a lot of work to flesh him out as a complex human being with more layers beyond “clown” and “slacker”; this week, “Sabotage” … Continue reading
“How good is Brooklyn Nine-Nine when it comes to nailing guest casting? Sure, fine, Nick Cannon hasn’t really made much of a splash in the daily adventures of the Nine-Nine squad, but that might be a case of the writers not quite knowing how to use him, or a sign that his big moment is … Continue reading
“Where’s the line between lazy referentialism and delightful homage? It’s somewhere in the script of “Windbreaker City,” the latest sequel installment in Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s second season; nearly the entire episode is built on nods to Die Hard, but it makes so many of them at such a rapid clip that the effect conveys enthusiasm rather … Continue reading
“After a brief absence and a criminally unfunny opening sequence, “Defense Rests” gets Brooklyn Nine-Nine on the right track, with a trio of overarching plot developments… but man is that opener a letdown. Seriously, ants? That’s what we get after skipping a Sunday in the dead of winter? Ants? What, are rodent infestations just too … Continue reading
“Amazing how Brooklyn Nine-Nine can go from being a sitcom to an earnest cop drama with a single line of dialogue. “Payback” isn’t about the NYPD’s longstanding record of institutional discrimination, but when Captain Holt regales Santiago about his first partner in the force (such as Holt can regale anyone about anything), we hear the … Continue reading
A Constant Visual Feast 