It’s evening round-up time, with quick thoughts on tonight’s New Girl and Brooklyn Nine-Nine coming up just as soon as I’m scared the Knicks may never be good again…
New Girl stories that have Jess and Cece off on their own tend to be less fun than ones where they’re interacting with one of more of the guys, so the most promising aspect of the eponymous plot of “The Apartment” was that it ended with Jess quitting her vice-principal gig. Jess’s job has never been a particularly fruitful story area, and as we’ve seen from the start of this season, the show is in a better place right now when the loft is more chaotic, without Jess playing the responsible authority figure, so having her out of work (or in a less grown-up job) could be fun. Mainly, though, “The Apartment” was worth it for the presence of Sam Richardson from Veep as Winston’s partner/doppelganger Dunston, whose various deficits so completely overlapped with Winston’s that they became useless as police officers. It’s best not to take Winston’s job – and his ability to stop being Ali’s partner and then start up again on a whim – in the least bit seriously, but most of the time, like tonight, it’s so goofy that it works.
Speaking of silly police officers, Brooklyn Nine-Nine definitely had its moments tonight with “Terry Kitties,” including Terry’s utter contempt for the kittens his ex-colleagues from the 65 kept sending him, Holt turning out to be more competitive (“Now who’s… da bomb?”) than Diaz and Santiago combined, and Gina helping Charles get out of having Pimento as a roommate. I’m having a little trouble, though, keeping track of Terry’s history, in part because the show’s original design for the character – a guy who’s built like Terry Crews but too afraid to go out in the field – got abandoned pretty quickly in the first season. As mentioned in a conversation with Holt in the pilot, Terry had been fat previously – getting the “Terry Titties” nickname that this episode’s title was a play on – before getting in shape and becoming the superhero cop we know today. I wondered where that fit in with his time as Flattop Terry, and asked Dan Goor, who explained:
“In my mind, he’s had three Terry Titties episodes and is always at risk of having another. They occurred once as a child, once as a uniformed cop, and once as a detective, post Terry Kitties. I believe that when Holt knew him, he was a uniformed cop.”
What did everybody else think?