One of the central conflicts of Brooklyn Nine-Nine is seeing a bunch of people who are very different struggling to work together. Another recent comedy that frequently dealt with that was The Office, and so it’s appropriate that that’s the theme of tonight’s episode guest starring Ed Helms.

Jake, Boyle, Rosa and Jack Danger

This episode continues the plotline of the new drug task force lead by Rosa. They’re under a lot of scrutiny and need to make a bust, and so Jake and Boyle go after a case which gets them tied up with the USPIS: United States Postal Investigation Service. And yes, we’re meant to giggle that it sounds like “us piss,” and I totally did.
My favorite part of this episode is probably Jake and Boyle’s excitement to work with someone named Agent Jack Danger, only to find out he’s incredibly lame and boring and his last name is actually pronounced “Donger,” which means prudence in financial matters. Oh, and he also goes by Jackie. Jackie Donger.

Danger looks down at Jake and Boyle because he’s a federal agent and they’re just the local cops, so Jake is already against this guy, and his name being so disappointing doesn’t help. They go investigating a mailbox that it turns out drug dealers have been using for drops, but because Danger trips and grabs Jake, the dealer gets away.
Danger wants to keep investigating the mailboxes, whereas Jake thinks he has a good lead with a list of names of everyone who had keys to these boxes. Rosa just wants Jake to work with Danger to get the USPIS on their side, but Jake goes over both of their heads and just gets the list of names himself.

This episode then is all about working with others who have different outlooks on how to handle a situation, as Danger and Rosa do. Jake is characteristically into his job, so it makes sense that he wants to rush into getting the bad guys without considering that if they betray Danger, he can take the case from them.

They do get the guy, but as Rosa was worried about, USPIS takes the case from them because Jake went behind Danger’s back. So Jake now has to do the worst thing possible to make it up to Rosa. No, not dip his penis in vinegar: apologize to Danger and make things right.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine is a show full of people who, with the possible exception of Gina, really care about their jobs, and “USPIS” shows that and explores the problems that can result from it. Danger and Rosa are against Jake in this episode, but they just have a different mindset of how to handle the case. The episode comes away with Jake having a better understanding of not rushing straight into a case and considering the point of view of his peers and friends.

Santiago’s smoking

Meanwhile, in the episode's b-story, Santiago is trying to quit smoking, and everyone in the office tries to help her. It’s a storyline that actually reminds me a lot of The Office in that it takes kind of a typical problem and gets the whole cast involved with dealing with it.

First Terry tries to help her by doing what he did to get over his food addiction: having Santiago dunk her head in a bucket of ice. That doesn’t work, so Holt steps in, taking her out jogging hoping exercise will help. Finally Gina gets involved with a hilarious meditation exercise.

But none of this works, and it’s actually pretty interesting that the episode ends with Santiago not quitting smoking. A lot of shows would introduce the smoking conflict and by the end the character has completely overcome it, but it would be pretty unrealistic for a person so intense as Santiago to be able to just give up smoking within a 20 minute episode.

What’s more important though is everyone getting involved with trying to help Santiago, again showing that this is a show full of people who really care about one another. Each attempt to help Santiago tells us a lot about the character’s relationship with her, but all are done out of an honest attempt to help her, and in an age when so many sitcoms revolve around their characters being mean to one another, it’s great to see a show where the characters are all genuinely great, caring people.

Other funny moments:
-Hitchcock and Scully are pretty sinister in the cold open, where Hitchcock convinces everyone they forgot Scully's birthday. The highlight of this though is definitely Scully accidentally drinking from his mug of thumb tacks.
-Jake had to return his everything bagel because in what world does everything not include Beef Jerky?
-"He's a cool guy, he's probably expecting a cool knock."
-"He told us how he brought down a snail smuggling ring for like an hour.”
-Another great Holt flashback where we see his addition to horse racing. "I lost everything."
-Boyle's description of a fax machine: “Imagine a letter had sex with a phone.”
-Holt after exercising: "I’m in a state of total euphoria.”
-"You lose millions of letters ever year.” “Really? Then explain why these millions of letters have never been found.”
-Everyone at the USPIS apparently thinks "going postal" means doing something really nice.
-Best Boyle moment of the week has to be him being so excited to have broken down a door that he high fives the criminal who has his hands in the air. "Boyle, that's the bad guy."
-Gina forces Holt and Terry to repeat the "For I am a powerful woman" part during meditation. She knows exactly what she's doing.