Brooklyn Nine-Nine: “Cop-Con” and “Chasing Amy”
(Episodes 4.17 and 4.18)
Fox
I’ve often said, or implied, or insinuated, or intoned, or whatever the hell you prefer to call it, that I would in most cases rather watch an average episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine than what passes as a “good” episode for most other sitcoms. Having sat through both “Cop-Con” and “Chasing Amy,” the first in a series of double-headers to round out the show’s fourth season, I’m thinking I may need to reconsider that old assessment, because by now it’s likely as overbaked as the mother dough setting by Gina’s space heater.
Don’t be alarmed; I still love Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and you should too. Both “Cop-Con” and “Chasing Amy” make for solid entertainment, even if they don’t make a ton of sense paired up as a two-fer. The fault, really, lies with “Moo Moo,” last week’s phenomenal installment and a pretty damn hard act to follow for any episode, a good episode, even a very good episode, which puts this week’s duo in a rough spot. As a consequence, we’ve all been set up for disappointment. Seven days ago, the audience was treated to a smart, concise, poignant comic treatment of one of the most pressing social issues of the era. Now, we’re back to good, old-fashioned 9-9 antics. This isn’t exactly strange, per se, or even unwelcome, but how can we not feel let down by the sudden return to goofball hijinks after a detour into the waters of topicality?
Maybe a mention of last week’s events would help offset the 180 taken in “Cop-Con” and “Chasing Amy.” On the other hand, maybe that kind of gesture would just lack basic grace and decency. Either way, we’re back to basics, and if Brooklyn Nine-Nine is good at doing anything, it’s making the basics work. What’s missing is the connective tissue, something to link “Cop-Con” to “Chasing Amy” beyond thematic residue. In “Cop-Con,” Holt and the crew head to exotic Rochester, New York, for a law enforcement convention, where Holt expects them all to be on their best behavior and competes with an old colleague (played with the smarmiest charm by who else but Andy Daly); in “Chasing Amy,” Amy prepares for the Sergeant’s Exam and in so doing drives herself straight-up cuckoo.
If we’re being fair, there is a bit of resonance here: Holt’s ambitions in “Cop-Con” mirror Amy’s in “Chasing Amy,” which feels, perhaps, unintentionally appropriate given their status as mentor and mentee. (Hell, you can even throw some rope back to “Moo Moo,” and use Terry’s drive for career advancement to tie all three together.) But it’s difficult to go from “Cop-Con” to “Chasing Amy” without scratching our heads and wondering over the decision to run them one right after the other on the same evening. These are episodes that’d do just fine with the distance of a week separating them. They don’t need to play together. Are we just trying to fill up space here as the show heads toward its season finale?