It’s morning round-up time, with brief thoughts on last night’s “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” and “Trophy Wife” coming up just as soon as I know the Papa John…
I didn’t get to review last week’s “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” while out in California, but that one and this one continue the late season roll the show’s been on, and now I’m sad we only have one more to go before the season’s over. (That’s the downside of FOX trying to avoid repeats.) “Unsolvable” had a perfect opening, with Holt teasing Peralta with the hula hoop information no one else would believe, and a perfect closing, with a very drunk Jake and Terry finally joining in on a Salt ‘N’ Pepa sing-along with Charles. In between was pretty swell, too. Terry and Jake are a combo the show hasn’t used that much, simply because the show has such a wealth of supporting characters, but Terry’s exasperation at Jake’s antics is very funny in a different way from, say, Santiago’s exasperation (and provided an excuse for Terry Crews to juggle his pecs on-camera, as he likes to do). The secret bathroom of Babylon gave us the unexpected spectacle of Hitchcock and Scully being good detectives, and Holt’s cold “I have to say, I feel like you deserve this” response to Santiago’s dental problems was another outstanding use of Andre Braugher’s comic deadpan. When the show won the Golden Globe, I mainly felt happy because it might buy Schur and Goor time to work out the remaining kinks, but at this late stage of the season, if “Brooklyn” isn’t the best comedy on TV, it’s awfully close.
Meanwhile, I haven’t checked in on “Trophy Wife” in a while, but “The Wedding – Part Two” felt like a platonic ideal of the show. It gave every member of the ensemble a moment to shine (Bert and Warren’s disgust at being called “adorable” was my favorite, as you might expect) while also making excellent use of guest stars Megan Mullally, Florence Henderson and Bob Gunton, and staging a genuinely sweet and surprising wedding on the flight to Portland. I ask, again: why on Earth is this show not getting an audition after “Modern Family,” given that it is perhaps the most compatible sitcom to it that ABC has premiered in the last five years? And, yes, I know the answer is “Paul Lee has terrible taste in comedy and is bad at scheduling,” but still.
What did everybody else think?