A quick review of tonight’s “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” coming up just as soon as I cook my oatmeal with a road flare…
That was pretty swell, wasn’t it? Where “Brooklyn” episodes can at times feel too diffuse by trying to squeeze three stories into the same episode, “The Wednesday Incident” for the most part decided to stick with two. It spent a lot of time on Jake and Gina investigating the eponymous incident and why it was making Captain Holt so cranky – and had a very minor third story of sorts in Terry trying to keep the squad from angering Holt further. And it gave us just enough of Boyle vs. Garry Marshall’s genial old man bank robber to appreciate the joke (and the fun of Marshall acting) without eating up too much time elsewhere. While I certainly don’t mind giving every member of the ensemble something to do, I don’t know that it always does the show a great service to carve the ensemble and episodes into smaller and less satisfying chunks. Better sometimes to just find one good story, go to town with it, and if Diaz or Santiago aren’t as prominent that week as a result, you give them a strong story in a later episode.
And the title story was a real treat, both for letting Andre Braugher push all the things that are distinct and funny about the captain to extremes (Holt over-articulating, Holt smiling too much) and for letting Peralta delight in learning all these new facts about his weirdo boss. (Overjoyed Peralta is probably the best Peralta. Case in point: the goofy enthusiasm with which he delivers the riff on Billy Ocean’s “Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car,” which you should go listen to now.) Jake’s Holt impression wasn’t great, but that was sort of the point, and it nicely set up the punchline where Holt thanked him for his help by repeating Jake’s “Peralta, you’re a genius”
After a couple of slightly off episodes, it was nice to get an episode so strong that Terry pop-locking against a spray-painted robot street performer was just a minor treat.
What did everybody else think? And now that we know Bill Buchanan from “24” is Holt’s fencing instructor, how long before Mary Lynn Rajskub shows up as a rival of Gina’s?