Review: ‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’ – ‘Sal’s Pizza’

A review of last night’s “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” coming up just as soon as we stop home for my pizza bib…

“Sal’s Pizza” was another episodethat didn’t quite have Jake dialed in right, but that worked anyway because the supporting characters have become so rich so quickly. So even though Jake was again being a little kid – even his motivation for chasing the arson investigation came from childhood (which did not, as I briefly suspected, turn out to be a lie to shut up Marshal Boone) – Charles’ foodie habits, plus Patton Oswalt being Patton Oswalt(*), were amusing enough to carry the A-story.

(*) After “Article Two” on “Parks and Rec” and now this, how long before Mike Schur creates a show for Oswalt?And now that he’s played a constable on “Justified” and a marshal here, what other olde-timey law-enforcement rank can he have next?

I wish we were getting more of Terry and Captain Holt, as Terry’s indignation about giving candy to babies was the funniest thing in the episode, but the cast (including minor characters like Hitchcock and Scully) is so deep that I know it’s a balance. Santiago is turning out to be much more than the disapproving straight woman, for instance, and I enjoyed seeing her struggle with jealousy of Diaz.

And I’ll be curious, as always, about the reactions to Gina, who remains the show’s Rorschach test, where people (including me) either see her as a treat, or as the worst part of the show by far. Because Captain Holt is always right, you knew there would be a method to her madness – and I suspect most of you knew that Savant would wind up with the IT job – but it was fun seeing her be so seemingly inappropriate with the candidates.

What did everybody else think?

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