BROOKLYN NINE-NINE 5x05 "Bad Beat"

After a break following the Hallowe'en episode, Brooklyn Nine-Nine returns with "Bad Beat", an episode in which 3 hilarious plot strands unravel alongside one another. In the A-plot, Holt talks his way into helping Jake and Terry with their case despite a gambling addiction, and in what I would suggest were B-plots of equal standing, Boyle and Amy invest in a "murder truck" while Rosa partakes in the "Butt-lympics", a challenge devised by Scully and Hitchcock to find which of the three can sit down the longest.

   The A-plot plays to the strengths of the characters: Terry as the straight man, Jake as the goofball and Holt as the deliverer of some epic punchlines. My favourite harks back to the classic Monty Hall problem subplot in season 4, wherein Holt "fired" Amy for disagreeing with him about the answer to the Monty Hall conundrum: today, he "fires" the entire precinct when Jake and Terry try to prevent him from gambling. Holt's emotional blandness intertwines with the faintest hints of desperation when he fails to control his returning gambling addiction, and it's absolute perfection. I could watch a TV show with Holt as the only main character and not get tired of him.

   B-plot 1, as I shall refer to it, saw Boyle and Amy purchase a truck from the NYPD impound lot, though Amy had concerns when she discovered it was the scene of a recent double homicide. This was pretty funny (how could it not be with lines like "Everyone else was like 'ewww there's a knee in the fryer, I don't wanna sell food out of this'", but it felt somewhat ill-fitting in the grand scheme of things: there had been no build-up to a suggestion that Boyle was interested in opening his own food truck business, and that's jarring whether or not this is something that is revisited in the future.

   But B-plot 2 was much better. I'm a strong advocate for the hilarity that can ensue when Scully and Hitchcock are utilised properly. Beside Holt and Rosa, they are the funniest characters in the show and yet too often they are hangers-on to the plots, there for side gags. Pairing Rosa with this couple of goofs in a sitting competition was absolutely the perfect use of #Scitchcock (I'm claiming credit for that portmanteau), and there's no reason such personality-fitting plotlines can't draw them out of their shells a little. It would be to the benefit of the show which, after all, is a sitcom designed to make us laugh, yet wastes two of its most powerful punchline machines.

   And, while I'm doing away with the sacred art of episodic TV structure, I need to discuss the cold open right here at the end before I conclude this wrap-up. I find it wonderful continuity - or at least plot progression - that the episode following the proposal featured a cold open in which Jake elaborately asked Boyle to be his best man. I wonder how long until the wedding.

RATING: 8.5/10

POINTS OF NOTE

• "Welcome to the Butt-lympics"
• "You're a virgin, that's an order."
• "Guess I'll just head back to my mum's basement; I'm a virgin."
• Does anyone else think Jake's disguise was paper thin? Sunglasses and a hoody in a gambling den? It's diabolical that was allowed by the writers.
• "Mad respect."
• "I can stop whenever I want."
  "Then stop."
  "I don't want."