Jake and Terry

We’ve had a few storylines this season involving Terry thinking about having kids, and now his wife is officially pregnant. Of course, nobody is supposed to know yet, but Jake figures it out due to some actually impressive detective work. Once again, though Jake is often kind of an idiot as we’ll come back to later in the episode, the way he solves that Terry is having a baby is actually pretty clever, and it goes to show that Jake is legitimately good at his job and at figuring things out.

Jake pays Terry back money he owed him over the years since he needs it now, but now everyone is suspicious, so Jake needs to pay them all back to make it seem like nothing special is going on with Terry. He owes thousands in between all of them though, which Jake obviously can’t afford to pay back, leading him to do a series of painstaking, sometimes humiliating tasks for them as a way of working off the debt and covering for Terry.

What’s great about this storyline is that it shows how much Jake actually does care about the people he works with, specifically Terry, and it's a great continuation of the "real friends/work friends" storyline with them earlier this season. He legitimately wants to keep this secret for his friend and is willing to do a series of things he absolutely hates just for Terry. It all comes crumbling down due to Jake’s stupidity, but it’s kind of sweet to see the lengths Jake is willing to go through for his friends.

But it’s also Jake, and so it all ends up being for nothing when he reveals the secret by hitting “reply all” to an email. It’s pretty fitting that after all his brilliant detective work, Jake is taken down by a simple, dumb mistake like this, even if it's one we see on television all the time. Now Jake wants to make sure Terry doesn't get the email, so he ends up stalling him at the gym and nearly killing himself working out. Although now he’s being dishonest, we’re still seeing a Jake who cares.

It’s hard not to feel bad for Jake when Terry finds out, but he still pays Terry back by selling his car, a pretty big deal for him. The Jake and Terry friendship has grown into something pretty sweet over the past season and a half, and this episode is a great example of that. This storyline maybe relies on some sitcom tropes a little too strongly, like the character trying to keep a secret from everyone or the classic “reply all” mistake, but it still works, even if it’s not very groundbreaking.

Holt and Santiago

Continuing in the Holt and Santiago relationship, the two are paired together as partners trying to solve the case Holt got wrong many years ago. I love the way this storyline totally subverts what we would expect of it, whereas the Jake and Terry one was pretty familiar sitcom fare.

Here, Amy goes into Holt’s office excited to work as partners, only for Holt to have already solved the case completely with almost no work needing to be done. She desperately tries to be of some use and to make this into a thing they can do together, like by offering to drive only for Holt to shut her down saying things like “You don’t know where we’re going.”

Also, this storyline totally subverts what Brooklyn Nine-Nine would normally do by having the detectives arrive on the scene, maybe interrogate some people, make an arrest, etc. Here, they get there to find out that the suspect died recently. That’s it. Instead, the crisis becomes Holt having diarrhea because of the food Amy recommended they eat.

It’s a little bit of an easy joke, but it works in a storyline largely about Amy and Holt being incredibly different people, represented here by food. Holt normally would just eat flavorless nutrition brick, but he decides to try things Amy's way. That ends up having disastrous results, but Holt is okay with it, and shares a moment with Amy towards the end where they can both laugh about the situation. Seeing Amy and Holt on equal footing is a great change of pace for the show, and though it was only for this one investigation, hopefully we can see more of that as the series progresses.

Other funny moments:
-In the cold open, everyone is suggesting what Rosa should do for Marcus’ birthday. Jake suggests ordering takeout, throwing it in a pot and pretending she cooked it. He learned that from Yahoo answers.
-Jake’s response to finding out he owes Terry $2,000: “Dollars?! Wait, why was that the part I was surprised by.”
-Jake hasn’t been to the dentist in 7 years and his teeth hurt all the time.
-”Fact the third...I’m really liking this ‘fact the’ thing, I’m gonna stick with it.”
-”Do I even weight anything to you?” “No, it’s like holding a couple of grapes.”
-Amy says the 82-year-old can still be a punk because “You can’t outgrow punk, sir,” which Holt seems kind of impressed by.
-Jake gives Terry the money in a briefcase, although it’s all in singles because it takes a lot of money to fill a briefcase.
-”I really hoped to say this to a drug dealer who killed my whole family but...it’s payback time.” I love Jake’s endless obsession to be in a Die Hard or Lethal Weapon movie.
-Jake owes Boyle $4,000. Boyle starts going through what seems like it’s going to be an endless list of small things like lunches and sodas, until we find out most of it was for a $4,000 entertainment system.
-”I’m a poet and I didn’t even know I was rhyming those words, but it did happen anyway.”
-In this week’s best Gina bit, she has Jake make calls to people she knows saying she’s dead. Starting with her grandma.
-Holt’s old partner was homophobic but not racist, which in those days was pretty good.
-Terry’s password is yogurt. Why are people’s passwords in shows always just one word with no numbers or anything?
-Scully does a pretty good job pretending to have a heart attack, Pierce Hawthorne style.
-”Sir, did you just laugh?” “Uproariously.”
-Jake plans to look up how to be a parent on Yahoo answers, and everything comes full circle.