Warning: Spoilers ahead.
Sunday night’s excellent Season 2 finale of Brooklyn Nine-Nine brought two long-simmering story lines to a boil; both the romantic tension of Jake Peralta and Amy Santiago (which originally came to a head after Jake confessed his love for Amy in the first season finale), and the game of chess Holt has been playing with Kyra Sedgwick’s bureau chief Madeline Wuntch all season long.
In the former, Holt assigned Peralta and Santiago to work on a case together to track an identity thief who was about to sell a stolen briefcase full of social security numbers, which required them to go undercover together at a fancy restaurant playing a newly engaged couple. It was a bit heavy-handed, yes, as the set-up required them to gush about what they saw in the other to the thief and his lady friend himself, and make out as a cover up on more than one occasion, which was about as anti-climatic as finally getting to kiss your high school crush on a dare.
After the episode wrapped up, however, it kind of felt like smoke and mirrors in relation to the plot regarding Wuntch and Holt, whom she was having reassigned to head of PR for the NYPD and effectively driven out of the precinct. As with most of the threats Wuntch has posed over the past season, Holt immediately came up with a plan in the form of Gina and Terry digging up an incriminating letter to effectively blackmail her out of transferring him, so it didn’t seem too serious. Gina and Terry were successful in finding the letter, however after a couple of extended scenes which involved Wuntch creepily feeling up Holt to check him for wires (which was still not the most disturbing thing that happened on TV last night), Wuntch responded to the blackmail by counter-threatening to basically disband the entire Nine-Nine precinct.
It was at that point Holt concedes to defeat, and announces to his staff that he’ll be leaving effective immediately. Captain Holt can’t really be gone though, right? We don’t get to see who the new guy (or lady) is, but I can only assume that they’ll have this wrapped up in the first few episodes of Season 3, a la Jake going undercover with the mafia at the end of Season 1.
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However, it was Holt’s announcement that led to the other cliffhanger of the episode, with Peralta and Santiago finally, finally giving in to their feelings for one another.
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On a final note, the sub-plot involving Boyle helping Nick Cannon plan Rosa’s surprise birthday dinner was nice, as the second season of Brooklyn Nine-Nine has thankfully distanced itself from the creepy, mismatched obsession that Boyle had with her in the first season. All in all, it was a solid season that left a decent setup for Season 3.
