Brooklyn Nine-Nine

(Mild spoilers for episode 8)

Brooklyn Nine-Nine, starring Andy Samberg,  is considered to be one of the new break-out comedies of the 2013 season and has managed to get a full-season pick up AND the coveted Post-Super Bowl spot (tag teaming with New Girl to form a 1 hour comedy block). For better or worse, the comedy is sticking around through Spring.

Let's talk about "the better" first. The first and most essential good thing about Brooklyn Nine-Nine is that it's actually fairly funny and often enough has some legitimate "laugh out loud" one-liners. If you like a one-camera style similar to the The Office, Parks and Recreation, or Modern Family you might be able to find a place in your heart for this one as well. It's got the same types of quirky characters, family/work place dynamic, and some characters to root for. And like these shows before it, it's taking awhile to figure itself out. That's fine. It's also nice to see something new with the cop/comedy hybrid. It's all very "has potential" and that's good enough for now.

Now onto the things it could improve, the first and most essential (to me) being the main character of Jake Peralta. Jake's a gung-ho cop who seems more interested in the fictional action cop life than the real cop life, which includes paperwork and due process and routines. I'm fine with that -- if Jake played by the rules, it'd be a pretty boring show. What I'm less okay with is his conceited attitude and constant smirk. He's a know-it-all and considers himself the best, puts himself first a lot, and makes quips only he thinks are funny. Overall, he's not very likable. Now, while I do believe to a certain extent that main characters should be likable, I could see many cases in which they aren't and the show still works out just fine. No, the real issue is that Jake needs to be realistically vulnerable to something so audiences can care. Thus far, not much has affected him. He wins a lot of his arguments one way or another, even when he does wrong or causes problems for the precinct. Nothing has affected him, nothing has hurt him, nothing has given him the added layer of being a character who matters.  

However, the most recent episode, "Old School," gave me hope for the future. It was not the best episode by a long shot, as it just wasn't as funny, and the first half was complete characteristic Jake -- neglecting the job to idolize his personal hero, getting drunk, and talking bad about Captain Holt while intoxicated to a writer who was going to quote him. The second half of the episode, however, is where my appreciation comes in -- Jake sought to make it right and make sure those quotes went unpublished even if it meant upsetting his personal hero. It was nice even if it was obligatory, since he was the cause of the trouble in the first place.  But what I really appreciated was the end. At first we're meant to believe that Jake punched the writer because of an unwillingness to get rid of those quotes.  But Santiago later reveals that Jake actually punched him because he called the gay Captain Holt a "homo" in a clearly derogatory fashion.

At this point, I was ready to cheer. Jake cares about something! He's not going to tolerate homophobia or disrespect for his captain, even by someone he once admired!  He did something good even though it cost him (the writer wrote bad things about him instead)! Yay!  This is what I've been asking for since the beginning. Let him be crazy and narcissistic as much as he wants, but make him redeemable. Make me love him in the same way I grew to love Parks' Leslie, Ron, and even Tom for all his faults. That, combined with humor that improves every week, will really be what makes the show worth watching.