After a season finale that featured the wedding of Jake and Amy, Fox canceled Brookyn Nine-Nine last Spring, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise for both the network that picked it up, NBC, and the show itself. The show is set to return this Thursday, and while it will be missing Chelsea Peretti for at least part of the season, there are at least two advantages to being on NBC. First, it will no longer have to be associated with Fox News, and second, it can now bleep and blur, which apparently was not allowed on Fox.
“Bleeps and blurs. We’re allowed to bleep now,” Andy Samberg said during the show’s press day. “You won’t believe this,” creator Dan Goor added, “but Fox had a no bleeping policy and a no pixellation policy, and NBC has bleeps, and it’s fun.”
In fact, the series has already taken advantage of the bleeping policy, according to Samberg, and while most everyone has been able to utter a profanity, it sounds like Terry Crews went full tilt with his opportunity. From E! News:
“I had one where I’m ashamed. I’m actually very ashamed,” Terry Crews revealed.
“We couldn’t believe it, because Terry Crews does not talk like that,” said Joe Lo Truglio, adding that the moment had to be followed up with a group huddle.
“God, it was so jarring. Everyone from behind, they were like, we actually…everybody had to regroup…for five minutes,” Crews continued. “I was like, oh my god! I was like, yo yo yo, everybody OK? Everybody all right? We had to check with everybody to make sure, but it was hilarious.”
Melissa Fumero could barely contain herself while describing the moment. “We can have fun with these curse words, ’cause sometimes we can just like, add to ’em, and I think they had told him to just ad-lib, make it a little longer, and Terry just went…I was…it literally shocked me and I didn’t know what to say,” she said. “He was so dirty, but it was so satisfying to hear Terry say it.”
Now that Brooklyn Nine-Nine is on Fox, Terry can fully express himself the next time someone steals his pickles. Meanwhile, the ability to pixelate has also been put to good use, although Joel McKinnon Miller and Dirk Blocker, who play Scully and Hitchcock, respectively, aren’t as excited about potential nude scenes. “Every week I prayed that we’re not in a bathhouse or something, a steam room,” Miller said, although Blocker was mum on whether the writers took advantage of pixelation with the duo. “Can’t talk abut it,” he said.
In addition to the bleeps and blurs, NBC has also clearly put a lot more money into marketing the series. Brooklyn Nine-Nine returns Thursday night on NBC.
