Following the cancellation on Fox and renewal/pickup by NBC within 24 hours due to fan outcry, I made a mental note to watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine despite my earlier assumptions that it would be a groanworthy cop comedy with very forced humour. While I wasn’t wrong, I grew to understand the humour and appreciate the characters of this beloved comedy.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine follows the adventures of a team of detectives following the arrival of their new Captain, Raymond Holt (Andre Braugher). Set on teaching the team how to shape up, Holt’s authoritative and non-emotive approach doesn’t exactly fit in with the precinct’s current dynamic, especially with Jake Peralta. But it soon becomes clear that their opposite personalities are exactly what the other needs to grow.

Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg, Saturday Night Live) is one the 99’s best police detectives, who lives his life as if he’s a hero in an action film. His childish antics grow on you and it’s kinda fun to see a kid actively living and enjoying his childhood dream. As a die hard Die Hard fan, Jake finds excitement in terrifying situations and manages to relate them to a bunch of action and crime films. The most unrealistic part of this show is how chill the criminals are after they’ve been caught when Jake feels the need to drop a one-liner. How are they so unfazed?

The Nine-Nine also includes Amy Santiago (Melissa Fumero), the nerdy teacher’s pet who basically moved on to being a bosses’ pet; Charles Boyle (Joe Lo Truglio), Jake’s loyal best friend who is ‘slightly’ uncoordinated but knows a lot about food; Rosa Diaz (Stephanie Beatriz), who is terrifyingly the most badass cop in Brooklyn; Sergeant Terry Jeffords (Terry Crews), a family man with the build of, well, not a family man — he’s a teddy bear covered in muscles;  and civilian administrator Gina Linetti (Chelsea Peretti), is this sarcastic and self-confident social media enthusiast, who will do anything except her job.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine has a light-hearted approach on the 99th Precinct as they take down criminals, deal with unwanted changes in the administration of the precinct, as well as personal matters and how being a cop can impact on their families. It contains minimal swearing and while has aspects of violence, this is usually based upon self-injury for comedic effect rather than in the line of duty and makes an effort to focus on capturing criminals rather than killing them.

Perhaps what I enjoyed most about the show was that the writers managed to find a lot of comedic content that didn’t rely on belittling race, gender, or sexual identity. In fact, the cast is pretty dang diverse for a mainstream comedy series, and even reflects on how these characters have faced adversity in the past or are even battling it currently with their families.

Additionally, the positive portrayal of this diversity doesn’t rely on their minority status, sure it pops up, but their personalities aren’t typecast based upon these identities. For example, Holt mentions how he’s faced a lot of discrimination being a gay, black cop, but he isn’t written as speaking or acting with a stereotypical ‘gay’ or camp aesthetic style, nor with ‘black’ vernacular. He’s formal, hardworking, unemotive and thoughtful. His identity is written as his identity and not his personality.  

Quite a bit of the show’s humour relies on you understanding the personalities and dynamics of the characters, therefore whilst they do sometimes make jokes at each others expense, it’s based on minor traits (eg, clumsiness, or clothing choice) rather than a permanent aspect of the character. Additionally, there’s no laugh track, so the jokes don’t feel as forced as a lot of other comedies.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine does a fantastic job of creating a workplace family within the precinct. It’s shown over and over again throughout the series with a sibling-like rivalry between the detectives, unwavering support of each other and office-wide pranks and competitions, my personal favourites being the Halloween specials each season. The characters know each other better than anyone (well, except Rosa — don’t insert canned laughter here because B99 ain’t about that).

Whilst often predictable, Brooklyn Nine-Nine is a breath of fresh air as far as it goes with comedies and cop shows. Its positive messages about identities and supportive workplaces makes it hard to find fault with this show.

Its main drawback, however, is that with the multitude of recurring characters and focus on relationships foremost rather than solving crimes (though how they often solve them is very well written), means viewers need to have an understanding of the show and character dynamics to understand a lot of the humour and storylines. As a binger, this has worked to my advantage, but if you’re thinking of watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine, jump in from the beginning.

Show Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Seasons 1 – 4

Network Netflix, TVNZ, Lightbox (NZ), Fox (US)

Release Date 17 September 2013 – 20 May 2018

Binge Time 40 hrs