Get ready to be bummed, gang: This is my last Brooklyn Nine-Nine write-up. For now! For now. Easy there, you didn’t let me finish. This is my last Brooklyn Nine-Nine write-up for now, as I’ll be unable to cover the rest of the season (ending on the 23rd). But it’s all good! You can still tune into … Continue reading
I know neither how nor why I have managed to forget to share my review of last week’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine. For as long as I’ve been writing about this show, my write-up for “Moo Moo” stands out as one of my favorites, much as “Moo Moo” itself stands out as one of the best episodes in the … Continue reading
Spoiler alert: The title of this week’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine is a lie. Just thought I should tell you that upfront, because there is just no way anyone could have guessed that on their own, no sir. (This is my shorthand, smartass way of saying that I dug “The Last Ride” in spite of its predictability, because … Continue reading
Honest admission: I’m not sure if my critique of this week’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine is fair or if I’m just reaching for something critical to say about a pound-for-pound solid episode. It is a little bit of a bummer that the real dramatic “stuff” of the episode is shunted to the side to make space for an A-plot … Continue reading
I say this a lot, particularly whenever Brooklyn Nine-Nine returns to air after its mid-season break or its season ender, but: Brooklyn Nine-Nine is back, baby! Just like Gina Linetti! I failed, in my recap of “The Audit” for Paste Magazine, to properly salute Dirk Blocker for his perfect delivery of that exact line upon Gina’s return … Continue reading
And again with the Brooklyn Nine-Nine reviewing, over at Paste Magazine as always, in which Charles Boyle taps into his inner mommy strength and goes sickhouse on a gang of gunrunners, all in pursuit of giving young Nikolaj the perfect (first) Christmas. (Content warning: Joe Lo Truglio’s chest hair.) A good way to break for a … Continue reading
Don’t let the score on this review fool you: “The Overmining” is likely going to end up being one of the funniest episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine‘s fourth season. Take that to the hilarity bank. But it does come up short as far as making a cohesive narrative, and that really frosted my cake, so I was … Continue reading
I say unto thee: “BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONE!” If you haven’t seen this week’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine, this will have no special significance for you, but if you’re reading this you probably have, so go to Paste Magazine for my full thoughts on the matter of Captain Holt’s sex life.
Ho-man! Can you think of a better guy to cast as Amy Santiago’s father than Jimmy freakin’ Smits? Forget how hard I laughed at Brooklyn Nine-Nine‘s turkey jokes this week, not the least because there’s a rafter of turkeys that’s staked out turf at the parking lot at my day job (and they stare you down … Continue reading
…oh, thank god Brooklyn Nine-Nine is back. This is a nail I hammer home often, but for the most part any Brooklyn Nine-Nine is good Brooklyn Nine-Nine, even the Brooklyn Nine-Nine that isn’t as good as the best Brooklyn Nine-Nine; it’s even better when Brooklyn Nine-Nine hasn’t been on the air for a while, whether because the season is over or … Continue reading
I’m starting to sound like a broken record with Brooklyn Nine-Nine – “Predictable! Predictable!” – and it’s not just in the show’s fourth season. “Predictable” is exactly how I described the show’s Halloween episode back in 2015, too! The thing is, predictable isn’t the same thing as bad, and so, just like with last year, predicting … 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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“There is no actor more perfect to play Joe Lo Truglio’s dad than Stephen Root; and there is no actress more perfect to play Chelsea Peretti’s mom than Sandra Bernhard. So an episode explicitly named for the marital union between Lynn Boyle and Darlene Linetti attains perfection on at least two different planes, which gives … 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
A Constant Visual Feast 