Brooklyn Nine-Nine Review: Hello Karen Peralta
This episode was a bit of a mixed bag for me; Jake’s storyline with his parents was great, but the secondary plots fell a little flat. In that A-plot, Andy Samberg did some nice work, especially with Jake’s inner kid coming out in the wake of his parents’ news. It was completely believable that he would revert back to that a little as a way to mask how genuinely concerned he was about his dad hurting their family again. However, it was also important that he had a frank conversation with each of his parents about his feelings and proving once again how protective he is of the people he loves, one of his very best character traits.
It was also nice that this storyline allowed Jake and Amy to take such a big step, and it was refreshing that, even though Amy was nervous (in a completely in-character way), they’re comfortable enough in their relationship at this point for it not to be a huge deal. Amy also gave this more serious plot (for B99 anyway) a bit of levity, between her obsession with Jake’s childhood bedroom and singing “Itsy Bitsy Spider” at every single awkward moment.
Like I said, I didn’t love the other storylines this episode. Both felt like iterations of something we’ve seen before, which I’m usually o.k. with (sitcoms are just naturally a bit repetitive), but only provided that a plot is clever or especially funny, which I don’t think was quite the case here. I liked the locked room storyline a little more because it’s always fun to see Scully and Hitchcock surprise those around them by actually being helpful, but even there Captain Holt did the majority of the work.
Jake’s storyline was enough to make this episode fairly enjoyable for me, but it won’t go down as my favorite of the season.
