For anyone hoping to see the physical embodiment of mayhem from the Allstate commercials give Andy Samberg some very hearty butt slaps “The Vulture” was for you. Much of the humor for “The Vulture” didn’t hit as much as some other episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine but that didn’t stop the episode from being enjoyable. “The Vulture” expanded upon Jeffords’s character while also dialing back on some of the Peralta as the fledgling series continues to tinker.
Peralta cannot close a murder case because he has yet to find the murder weapon. This causes the major crimes unit to send Detective Pembroke (the aforementioned Allstate spokesperson Dean Winters) in to close the case. This causes most of the precinct that he refused to use during the case to drown their sorrows at the local bar. In the midst of pulling a prank on Pembroke, Peralta decides to go the crime scene with Santiago, Diaz, Boyle, and Hitchcock to reenact the murder in hopes of finding where the suspect could have hidden the murder weapon.
Seeing nearly every principal character in the same scenes was great. They all played off of each other and it is easy to see the chemistry between them all. It was also refreshing to see them all working together with the focus not on their specific arcs. And while none of this interplay inspired many laugh out loud moments there will still something fun in their being together.
In the other plot Jeffords, Holt, and Linetti go to a shooting range under the guise that Jeffords is helping them with their marksmanship. It was revealed that Jeffords used to be the most accurate gunman but due to the mannequin and piñata incidents and his rather volatile emotional state he was assigned desk duty. Holt ended up tricking him until the final shot, in which the plan was to get Jeffords to unknowingly be recertified was revealed. Some of the stuff Jeffords did to stall was funny, especially his retelling of the movie Top Gun to Linetti who had never seen it, but again there was nothing too hilarious afoot.
More importantly, however, was that Jeffords’s character was finally given something to do. Instead of just having him tap into his artsy and emotional side for no reason his character was given an extra couple layers to play with. It now seems Jeffords will have a bigger role going forward and will be given a wider variety of things to do.
As a whole “The Vulture” seemed a little tighter than usual once Pembroke’s character had been introduced. Whether that was because Peralta wasn’t give license to be as silly as normal – until the end credit scene of him making a plaster cast of his butt to send to Pembroke as a call back to Pembroke always slapping his butt – or just because there were so many characters together in the main plot. Brooklyn Nine-Nine remains an intriguing show and seems to grow every week.