A quick review of tonight’s “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” coming up just as soon as I draw the wrong lessons from the fall of Addis Ababa…
“Jimmy Jab Games” is a pretty straight lift of the plot of “Office Olympics” from “The Office” season 2, but I’m okay with that for a few reason. First, Mike Schur wrote “Office Olympics,” so if he wants his writers here to import the nine-year-old idea into the “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” universe, more power to him. Second, this episode expanded on the idea by incorporating more of what we know about the ensemble and their gifts (like Scully’s opera singing) and by acknowledging all the weird toys a bored detective squad would have to play with. Third, the tone is different, because most of these people like their jobs and get to do exciting things with a badge, so the Jimmy Jab Games are presented as a means of letting off steam rather than a method of surviving years of drudgery. And fourth, it did a good job of advancing Jake’s feelings for Amy without beating us over the head with the idea. Jake figuring out why Amy kept screwing up was very insightful, and suggested how much he’s been thinking about Detective Terrible Detective, and Amy’s awful victory dance happening right as Captain Holt returned from headquarters was a nice confluence of both the episode’s two storylines and her ongoing attempts to suck up to the boss.
The Holt/Wuntch rivalry remains a treat – I could listen to these two toss dry insults at each other (“Hello, Deputy Chief Wuntch. You’ve aged”) for days – and also demonstrated a flaw in our favorite robot’s programming. His hatred of Wuntch blinds him to the trap she sets, and it’s up to Terry – made the straight man in the story due to the irrational Holt/Wuntch feud – to point out what’s really at stake here. And the idea of Rosa running an anti-Giggle Pig task force has promise – and not just because “Giggle Pig” is a funny name for a party drug.
What did everybody else think?