Given that incarcerating Jake and Rosa seemed a great deal more impactful than putting Jake and Holt into Witness Security, and that it took that WitSec story three parts to conclude, proving Jake and Rosa's innocence therefore seemed a difficult feat to accomplish in just two episodes. It's all the more impressive, then, that the writers have effectively managed it in one (we can discount the season 5 premiere since virtually no movement towards this outcome was made in the entire episode).
The Nine-Nine receives much more of a look-in as they fight to prove their colleagues' innocence: Amy has been tracking Hawkins for a month, Boyle has a (hilariously characteristic) podcast, and even Scully and Hitchcock have been keeping an eye on Hawkins' ex-team member turned pig farmer, Matthew Langdon.
It's this last lead that provides Jake and Rosa with their (literal) get-out-of-jail-free cards: after Hawkins outfoxed the Nine-Nine in a supposedly secret sting operation, Holt deduced that Hawkins was actually smuggling the diamonds she stole in the bank robberies through Langdon's pigs. I don't know if anybody else didn't see this coming, but if you did then you pay much more attention to Scully and Hitchcock than their punchlines deserve - which is a true testament to the skills of the Brooklyn Nine-Nine writers. We often underestimate the sedentary pair (remember, Hitchcock still holds the Nine-Nine record for case closures), so it's natural their narrow approaches to police work would be discarded by the audience as well as the other officers - yet it's only due to their "attentiveness" in noticing the fattened pigs that Holt could come to the conclusion Hawking was using them to smuggle the diamonds.
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| While the Nine-Nine celebrate, Holt reflects on his decision to source help from a criminal. Image: FOX |
If only that conclusion was independently reached. An early approach from a dangerous organised crime character, Seamus Murphy, was a double-edged sword: he would give information that could help see Jake and Rosa exonerated in exchange for a future favour. While Amy declined, it appears Holt was furtively grateful for the help: it was Murphy's information that led him to look more closely at the pigs. This reveal was as cleverly disguised as Scully and Hitchcock's importance, with Holt knowing a wealth of pointless trivia a character trait we've come to accept. It is beyond believable he would chastise himself for not noticing the pigs sooner, which is why it's such an effective disguise for the revelation that he was aided by a notorious criminal.
But the episode's lack of balance leaves a slightly bitter aftertaste.
Given that the episode openly forecast the fact that it would be the Nine-Nine who would find the damning evidence to free Jake and Rosa and imprison Hawkins, Jake's sideline of trying to figure a way out of prison himself felt a little too much like filler, bunched between the Nine-Nine's scenes so the episode would hit a 20-minute run time, which feels like a letdown after the good work done in the premiere.
Still, there's plenty going for this episode, including some shooting locations that felt aesthetically different to what we normally see in a Brooklyn Nine-Nine episode. That's before remembering that the writers freeing Jake and Rosa inside 2 episodes leaves an extra episode for the writers to play around with that season 4 didn't have with the three-parter.
But if there's one thing we've learnt from this episode, it's to never ask Hitchcock how he knows things.
RATING: 8/10
POINTS OF NOTE
- Heterosexual Holt gets even better lines than homosexual Holt: "My female wife"; "heavy breasts"; "there's nothing more intoxicating than the clear absence of a penis".
- Did anybody else find Jake's scenes in solitary utterly cringeworthy?
- Cannibal Caleb deciding to try take a bite of Jake before he left was the perfect way for these two characters to part.
- With Jake and Rosa free, normal service can resume. NINE-NINE!
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