Jake and Sophia

Oh yeah, Jake and Sophia are a thing. It’s been a while since we saw anything about Sophia, but Jake has been dating her for three months now, and the fact that he’s a cop and she’s an attorney is becoming a problem. She wants to put a pause on their relationship because her boss doesn’t like Jake, so Jake goes on a mission to get the boss on his side and win Sophia back.

Eva Longoria has been fun on this season, but in the end Jake’s relationship with her never became anything more than a distraction from Santiago. I never felt that they had much of a chemistry as partners, although they shared some funny scenes here and there, and so I’m not sure the conflict of this episode totally worked because I was never really rooting for Jake to win Sophia back. The show never really demonstrated why Jake would like Sophia so much, placing most of their relationship off screen.
Besides, Sophia is made out to be pretty unreasonable in this episode. Her reasoning for wanting to pause things with Jake makes sense, but the reasoning for her breaking up with him at the end of the episode is that he arrested her boss for doing cocaine in the bathroom. What exactly was he supposed to do in that situation? It felt like kind of a contrived way to break them up, with Jake being completely in the right and Sophia being totally unreasonable.

But even if some of this storyline didn’t really work, it still lead to some pretty amusing moments, like the montage of Jake’s bets with Sophia’s boss, played here by Chris Parnell. This includes betting to see how tall Terry is in egg rolls, and trying to remove a glass of champagne from a stack of glasses (Jake removes the very top one, yet they still all somehow fall over.)

It is also nice to see the show not relying on standard sitcoms tropes and having Jake and Sophia break up because Jake is still in love with Santiago. That seemed to be the predictable way to take this, and I like that the show tried to make their breakup more realistic and more to do with the conflict of interest between them. It didn’t totally work for me, but it’s nice to see the show straying from formula a bit.
Holt, Diaz and Wuntch

Meanwhile, the endless struggle between Holt and Wuntch continues. She’s the frontrunner for a job in Boston, which I’m positive the writers selected just to Holt could make jabs at her about being a witch. She needs Holt’s recommendation to get the job, leaving her fake in the palm of his hand. He has to decide if he should exact his revenge or let it go and help her out.

Holt turns to Diaz for advice, as she is the most vengeful person in the office. She says revenge isn’t worth it, telling the story of her getting revenge on another kid in second grade which came back to haunt her for years. Holt takes her advice and writes the recommendation, though still throwing in a jab at Wuntch with Wicked tickets. It’s nice to see Holt turning to one of his colleagues for advice and taking it, showing that he really does value them and their advice.

But wait. Just when it seemed like the Wuntch storyline might be winding down, it was all a scheme for her to get a promotion, and now Wuntch has more power over Holt than ever before. I absolutely love this and the fact that the Wuntch struggle is going to continue and probably get even stronger. It’s become a very Batman and the Joker kind of relationship, and I have to imagine some part of Holt likes the struggle between them and would actually miss it.

Gina, Boyle and Santiago

In another storyline that had kind of faded into the background, Gina and Boyle’s parents are still dating. They made a pact to break it off, but Boyle’s dad wants to marry Gina’s mom, and now Boyle wants them to go through with it. So Santiago steps in with her giant conflict resolution binder to help them out in a total Leslie Knope moment.

Though it seems at first like Gina is just being her usual hardened, sarcastic self, we find out that really she just knows her mom has been hurt before and doesn’t know if she can trust Boyle’s dad. She ends up talking to him…in the interrogation room, which is a pretty hilarious image. In the end she gives her blessing, albeit with the treat of cutting of Boyle’s testicles if anything goes wrong.

So we have a wedding to look forward to, which based on the discussion at the end of the episode may be the strangest sitcom wedding of all time.

Other funny moments:

-The cold open deals with the office suddenly being taken over by ants. “They’re in our yogurt. Now it’s personal.”
-“Please stay, I need a witness in case her head starts spinning around or she turns into a she-wolf.”
-“I’m a food blogger. I’m stained all over.”
-"That’s crazy, THEY’RE the enemy. I see what you mean.”
-“Let’s pause this like I pause Jamie Lee Curtis in trading places.”
-Contender for funniest moment of the episode is Jake and Terry entering the party in slow motion with the fakest of smiles.
-"Oh god." "Oh good indeed!"
-"What are you creeps doing? You made me look away from my phone, you better hope I didn’t miss a text."
-“The only reason I didn’t tell you guys is because I don’t value you as people, so why be honest?”
-“All the bridesmaids are going to be dressed like Roseanne from the television show Roseanne.”