Review: ‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’ – ‘The Ebony Falcon’

A review of last night’s “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” coming up just as soon as we play Wife or Dog…

The previous episodes had done a good job of pairing Peralta with a lot of different characters: most often Santiago or Boyle, but Diaz or Holt enough to make an impression. The one cop he hadn’t been teamed with yet was Terry, in part because Terry began the series on the sidelines, dealing with his fear issues. That’s a funny idea for a big, imposing guy like Terry Crews to play, but it also kept one of the show’s funniest performers out of the orbit of its central character.

Terry’s back in the field now, and his undercover operation with Jake and Charles was worth the wait. Shifting the panic from Terry to Jake was a nice twist, allowing Terry to be a superhero again while leaving room for other laughs. Usually, when Jake screws up a case by acting like a little kid, it’s annoying; here, at least it came from a generous impulse. (I also enjoyed his emotional reaction to seeing the crayon drawing Terry’s girls made for him.) Boyle getting too invested into his undercover job as gym manager felt amusingly Boyle-ish, and Terry punching Jake in “my lucky face” was the kind of thing I imagine most of the cops in the 99 have dreamed of doing.

The Gina subplot introduced what I hope will be a recurring character in gross private eye Leo Sporm (perhaps the first character on the show whom Holt clear dislikes more than Peralta), but I don’t know that it entirely worked. Gina’s a weird character, and what’s made her distinctive and funny to this point is the idea that she may genuinely be a sociopath – not in an “I’m going to ritualistically murder three dozen people” way, but simply lacking in basic empathy and interest in her fellow human. I assumed she would be softened eventually, but this seems too soon; Santiago and Diaz helping assuage her fears is sweet, but I think it would have been funnier if Holt’s theory was incorrect, and Gina was screwing with them because it’s simply the thing that she does.

But the Ebony Falcon – or, possibly, Ebony Antelope – was back in action, for what will hopefully be the first time of many. And that was swell.

What did everybody else think?

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