With Parks and Recreation about to air its final season and Community moving online, Brooklyn Nine-Nine will very soon be the best comedy on television. The show’s first season was something of a miracle. A lot of sitcoms are relatively weak towards the beginning, with Parks and Recreation and The Office not really finding their footing until the second season. But Brooklyn Nine-Nine was brilliant and totally confident from the very first episode, knowing exactly what it wanted to do with all of these characters. It was one of the best first seasons of a comedy I’ve seen, and so the show had quite a lot to live up to this year.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s second season has been absolutely fantastic, and the show is continuing to impress every week. With Parks going off the air, Brooklyn Nine-Nine feels like the most worthy successor. Like that show, it features an outstanding ensemble of performers who all bring something to the table and play off each other brilliantly. Also like Parks, it’s a show that is just so incredibly fun and optimistic. A lot of sitcoms get their humor from characters making fun of each other and just generally being terrible people, but Parks and Brooklyn Nine-Nine both feature a cast of caring, loving people who are good at what they do.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine returns for all new episodes tonight. We’re about halfway through the second season, so before we dive back into our discussion of the weekly episodes, let’s take a look at the season so far and some of its best moments.
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10. Holt and Wuntch
Really, this entire list could be made up of Holt and Wuntch clips, and we’ll get to another one later. But this dynamic has easily been the funniest thing about this season. Giving Holt an enemy has been a great move, and seeing the two lob insults back and forth has been so endlessly entertaining. Mostly it’s great to see the childlike joy Holt gets when he puts down Wuntch, like in this clip. He is just so absolutely giddy to be unleashing a clever insult on her, and that will never stop being completely hilarious.
[new page = Gina’s spirit animal]
9. Gina’s spirit animal
Chelsea Peretti’s Gina is an absolutely fantastic character, and one of the first scenes of the season immediately proves that. After sleeping with Boyle, Gina is so ashamed she’s forced to downgrade her spirit animal to a naked mole rat. Something about the image of Peretti wearing that shirt is just so hilarious.
[new page = Room of 1000 Dolls]
8. Room of 1000 Dolls
I’m a big fan of horror movies, so this moment when Jake stays in a hotel room called the “Room of 1000 dolls” filled with a bunch of creepy dolls was hilarious, and Jake’s terrified reaction to it is absolutely perfect. And just when he thinks he’s safe, Jake checks into the closet which is full of creepy puppets. Both times the music cue in combination with Jake’s scream works so well. It's such a weird moment that is kind of unlike the show, but in a way that totally works.
[new page = Work friends or friend friends?]
7. Work friends or friend friends?
This clip isn’t particularly funny, but in a show largely about friendship, it was great to see the show tackle the question of how good of friends are these characters? Are they legitimate friends, or are they just people who work together and are friendly towards one another? It’s a storyline that continues throughout the episode and we eventually come to the conclusion that yes, they’re all actual friends. For a show that is mostly just gags, Brooklyn Nine-Nine is still sometimes able to achieve some real emotion, and this was my favorite storyline in that department this season.
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6. Amy gets aggressive
Santiago is a character who is generally kind of a pushover, sucking up to Holt and trying to please everyone. In this scene though, Holt’s children's book has made her more conscious of that, and so she intentionally goes out of her way to try to be less of a pushover. Seeing Santiago be so un-Santiago, snapping at Terry just for asking her to move, is pretty hilarious, and it’s one of several storylines this season which really helped give Amy some interesting development.
[new page = Boyle teaches Holt about food]
5. Boyle teaches Holt about food
Surprisingly, one of my favorite side storylines of Season 2 so far was Holt asking Boyle to help him cook. It’s such a great combination of Boyle, who is way too into everything, and Holt, who is completely emotionless. In this clip, we see how into the description of cheese Boyle is, whereas Holt describes the taste as “cheese.”
[new page = Rosa on cold medicine]
4. Rosa on cold medicine
Rosa is a character known for being really low key, kind of like this show’s April Ludgate, so seeing her completely out of her mind on cold medicine was definitely a highlight of this season. It’s a joke that could have come across as pretty obvious and dumb, just having a normally subdued character acting really crazy, but somehow it works here, and it’s the finest example this season of how great Stephanie Beatriz can be. In fact, many of these moments take the way we've come to know a character from the first season and flip them on their head, and it's generally worked pretty well all throughout season 2.
[new page = Holt wins the bet]
3. Holt wins the bet
One of this season’s highlights was Jake and Holt’s Halloween bet, the followup to last year’s episode. The episode ended up being a pretty worthy sequel to a great season one episode, made brilliant by the closing scene when we realize absolutely everything that happened was part of Holt’s elaborate plan, whereas before it seemed like he didn’t really care a whole lot about the bet. And of course, he’s already been planning next year’s bet for three months. Holt, you son of a bitch.
[new page = Jack Danger]
2. Jack Danger
One of the best things about Brooklyn Nine-Nine is the way it plays against expectations of what it’s like to work as a police officer. The show will often set our expectations towards what would happen in a Die Hard movie and contrast that with the boring or realistic nature of actual police work. In my favorite example of that this season, Jake and Boyle are blown away by how cool it is that they’re having a meeting with a guy named Jack Danger, only to find out it’s actually pronounced “Donger,” and he’s basically the lamest guy ever.
[new page = No regrets]
1. Had it both ways! No regrets
In my favorite Holt moment of the season, Holt really wants to rub it in Wuntch’s face that the task force was a success, but Jake and the crew recommend he be the better person and simply thank her for receiving the award. This disappoints Holt, who stayed up all night thinking of the pun “Wuntch time is over.” So Holt listens to Jake and doesn't use his pun...until she starts walking away, when he bursts out with it. The rare outburst of emotion from Holt is always so startling and funny, and I especially love here how proud Holt is of himself. It’s not like it’s just something that slipped; he’s so happy that he was clever enough to have it both ways. “No regrets.”