So, I rewatched He Said, She Said today, and, while there have been many smart conversations about how good that episode is, the thing that really stands out to me every time is how they gave Keri a personality. It would've been so easy to just make her a sad and sympathetic victim and nothing more, but no! She's a talented business woman who loves her job, dreams of one day having a pool of gold coins, and nicknamed her coworker skid-mark after he pooped his pants. Brooklyn Nine-Nine said, “This is what victims of sexual assault look like! They're very real women with their own ambitions, agency, and sense of humour.” She only had a handful of minutes of screen time, but even in that short period, they successfully showed us how this woman is so much more than just her assault.
I did a poll recently to see which episode of B99 was the most disliked, and as expected ME Time got a decent share of the votes (just under 10%). Clearly it’s not *that* disliked, at least not as much as Gintars, Casecation and *gestures broadly at season 8*. But it reminded me of some thoughts I’ve had for a while that I want to share.
I think ME Time provides an interesting comparison with The Therapist from season 6, which got half the number of votes but which I think is a significantly worse episode.
ME Time and The Therapist have similar premises: someone is dead, Charles is the primary on the case, and Jake is assigned to investigate with him. Jake jumps to a conclusion based on his own bias and goes against Charles’ instructions. However, they end very differently.
In ME Time, Jake assumes that the victim died of Being Fat, because season 1 Jake is a dick. Charles actually tries to investigate, Jake fucks around and does some weird kinky stuff with the medical examiner, and at the end Charles is proven right that the victim was murdered. Does Jake learn to be less fatphobic? Uh, no. But he’s clearly depicted as being in the wrong, with nobody laughing at his jokes and his assumptions based on his bias proven to be incorrect.
In The Therapist, Jake assumes that the victim was murdered by his therapist, because Jake had a bad experience when he was younger and believes that All Therapists Are Bastards. At the end, he’s proven right! All therapists *are* bastards! So Jake was right, and I guess Charles is just an idiot for not realising.
Also ME Time just has some really iconic lines. (‘Joke’s on you, I skipped forth grade’ is from ME Time!)
It was really impressive how Brooklyn Nine-Nine episode 8x06 deconstructed its own formula. Jake’s off-the-wall theories are always right; we’ve been conditioned to assume he’s always justified in whatever he does. To completely flip that on its head and have him be simply, unequivocally wrong was a really fantastic and sobering plot.
I was also impressed with the B-plot twist! The B-plot normally doesn’t have significance to the A-plot, so having the reveal to it come up in the middle of the A-plot was genuinely surprising. I don’t know what’s funnier, that O’Sullivan thought his absurd scheme would work, or that it did.
hi, I’ve started a new project analyzing season 1 of b99 episode by episode because I love this show a lot. If you want to read some character analysis and insight into the friendships and relationships (especially peraltiago!), please check it out on ao3 <3
Amy’s dream of having Holt as a ‘rabbi,’ a career mentor, is also interesting.
In our first scene with Amy, she’s rolling her eyes at Jake, who’s solved a robbery using Fuzzy Cuddle Bear, the nanny-cam. Despite not solving that case, she remains competitive and ambitious throughout the episode. She writes ‘24’ in tiny numbers when updating the whiteboard where they keep the bet; Amy’s only at 22 and she’s losing. She pours hot sauce all over her sandwich and dares to eat it because Scully mentions that it’s spicy.
Amy is my favorite character because she balances working hard and having fun (“fun but not too fun was my campaign slogan when I ran for prom queen!”) Dan Goor and Mike Schur worked hard to develop an ambitious female lead who wouldn’t be the buzzkill of the group, and it really paid off.
We also see this ‘fun but not too fun’ dynamic with Amy and Holt. Amy respects Holt a lot (perhaps too much?) and she wants to gain his approval, yet she’s still friendly with him. Even in the first episode, she doesn’t put Holt on a pedestal. For example, Amy warmly asks Holt ‘when did you come out?’ after Holt tells Jake and Amy that he’s gay, and Amy calls out “speech!” when Holt introduces himself.
read the full chapter on ao3!
I plan to go through all the episodes of season 1 and then move onto season 2 and 3 eventually
E10 (“ADMIRAL PERALTA”): mid-May 2020 + around 6/17/2020 + Friday, 6/26 to Saturday, 6/27/2020
E12 (“RANSOM”): Day 1 to Day 3, mid-August 2020
E13 (“LIGHTS OUT”): Day 1, around 10/20/2020
explanations for the dates are under the cut!
Things to keep in mind:
The B/C-plots, for the most part, are not included in the calculation of the times here, because they rarely have the same number of days as the A-plot.
I didn’t take weekends into consideration unless otherwise noted. There is a weekend squad, but we know that the regular detectives also sometimes work weekends (enough so that on more than one occasion, Holt has rewarded them with “weekends off”).
Time-stamps within the episode are used as guidelines, but not always as the rule, unless there is a specific number of days given.
7x01-early 7x06 all have to happen in June so that they can start The Amy Way in July. Please refer to 7x06 for the explanation for the dates on these episodes.
Season 6 Finale: 5/8-5/15/2019
Has to start and end on a Wednesday; two or more weeks must pass until 7x02.
7x01: 6/6/2019
As per Amy's period in Trying, it has to be at the beginning of the month.
Continuity: Since patrol cops spend “6 months on the same beat,” which Holt is still doing in December, assume that when Debbie says it’s his “first week on the job,” she means his current beat.
Continuity: her period technically is supposed to start somewhere between 6/2 and 6/7. Assume when she says it’s “late,” she means by just a few days. After all, for the July calendar to be accurate, it can’t be late by more than a week.
7x02: 6/7-6/10/2019
Day 1 – cold open // Day 2 – they meet Cpt. Kim // Day 3 – Party // Day 4 – last scene
Kim got an “email from two weeks ago” from Wunch. Cold-open is on 6/7, a Friday (because Rosa has the weekend off and, therefore, wouldn’t be there to meet Wunch on Day 2 of the episode). The timestamp on the last scene—Day 4—says that it's a Monday.
7x03: 6/18-6/27/2019
Day 1, 6/18 - cold open
Day 2, 6/19 - visit Pimento’s doctor; Pimento spends the night at Charles’s
Day 3, 6/20 - HR seminar + Pimento in hospital
Day 10: “One Week Later” from Day 3.
Per the cold-open, Amy is ovulating during this episode. Also, Jimmy Jabs are on 6/21.
Continuity: The Masked Singer finale/premiere dates don’t make sense. But the contestant they mentioned didn’t even exist in season 1 of TMS, so it’s excusable.
Continuity: The last scene takes place during “Trying.” Roll with it.
7x04: 6/21/2019
14 days since Rosa last took a vacation—7x02—and a Friday because Amy skips a seminar that was probably wasn’t scheduled for a weekend.
Continuity: Rosa and Jocelyn had apparently been dating “a year” at this point. It was probably shorter than that.
Continuity: This episode most likely takes place before Trying: Jake mentions Amy being more, erm, adventurous now that they’re trying to conceive, and that doesn’t really fit in with the overly-scheduled sex UD-ing that was happening from July 2019 and onwards. Plus, the stress/potential injury that such a competition would bring definitely doesn’t fit in with The Amy Way.
7x05: 6/22-6/23/2019
Debbie steals the cocaine at end of 7x04; assume 7x05 is the day after. The final scene is the day after the rest of the episode.
Continuity: They mention Debbie’s journals from “this year,” and specify that they were written on “August 21.” Assume this means August 2018.
7x06: 6/24/19 - late January 2020
On the calendars in the war room, “Menstruation” lasts about five days and starts around the 4th of every month; “Ovulation” starts around the 15th of every month and lasts about a week. Amy presumably took a pregnancy test at the very end of every month—not only were these scenes always followed by calendar flips, but she would have to take the tests at least two weeks after ovulation but before she got her period.
The calendar invites/The Jake Way happen in June—so Amy still has to be ovulating at the start of the episode—because they start The Amy Way in July.
The Amy Way fails for the last time in December. The pregnancy test she takes before Hitchcock announces that his girlfriend is pregnant was late December (around 12/30). The next test she would take—the last scene in the episode—would be late January (around 1/30).
Assuming it isn’t a false positive (which is unlikely, considering her doctor would have double-checked this before putting her on fertility medication), the earliest she can get pregnant would be mid-February.
7x07: lasts about a week and ends mid-March 2020.
Has to be after 2/14 but before 4/12, based on Holt’s uniform changes in Valloweaster.
It’s very likely that Amy’s just a few weeks pregnant here since she wasn’t suspicious at all until her doctor brought it up; if the hormones messed up her cycle a bit and she got pregnant mid to late-February, she was 3-4 weeks pregnant in this episode and wouldn’t have noticed until taking the test.
Continuity: I’m assuming that the “Ebola Doctor” was Craig Spencer. He contracted the virus in 2014, so “six years ago” makes sense.
7x08: 3/27-3/30/2020.
Since it’s Holt’s first day back, this episode is relatively soon after 7x07, but with a week or two in between to account for paperwork and official promotion procedures.
Day 1: Friday (The bachelor’s party is over the weekend)
Day 2: Saturday (heist)
Judy’s friends were clearly arrested at nighttime, and that + the change of clothing indicates that Jake and the Judy’s had to have come home the next day.
Day 3: Sunday (Jake comes home)
Day 4: Monday (last scene)
Continuity: The screen on the computer that one of Judy’s men hacks into says “Last Login: March 27 2015.″ Since this episode obviously takes place in 2020, just ignore that.
7x09: ~4/10/2020
Earlier than June—Terry’s kids are still in school (Spring Semester). Also probably(?) a Friday, since Terry’s kids have a concert and it’s unlikely they’ll have one in the middle of the week.
Cold-Open: pregnancy reveal and end of 1st trimester.
Day 2: Jake tells his father that they’re having a sex-reveal party “Next Friday,” indicating two Fridays after this day. Therefore, this conversation happened around June 17, 2020 (The Wednesday that is approximately 18 weeks from mid-February).
Day 3: Friday, Day of the party (June 26)
Day 4: Amy finds out; day after Day 3 (June 27)
Continuity: The entirety of 7x11 takes place before this one.
7x11: 10/31/19, 2/14/20, and 4/12-4/13/2020
7x12: Day 1-Day 3, Mid-8/2020
Day 1: Cold Open
Day 2: find cheddar
Day 3: B- and C-plots end
Shakespeare in the Park is usually held in Prospect Park over the summer. Halfway between 7x10 and 7x13 is the end of August; I made it mid-August so it’s still technically “Summer.”
Continuity: Amy’s only 6 months pregnant in this episode and her baby shower is the weekend after. However, in season 5, Gina also had her baby shower at around 5/6 months, so this isn’t unusual for these characters. Plus, this is Amy we’re talking about—she probably had a registry ready to go within days of finding out about the pregnancy.
7x13: Day 1, late-10/2020.
The elevator expiry is listed as 12/20/2020 and it was inspected “4 months ago.” elevators in New York are inspected every 6 months, which means that the last inspection was 6/20/2020 and it is now (mid to late-)October.
Later in the month (10/20/2020* or later) matches up with Amy getting pregnant in mid-February: her due-date would be mid-November, and it makes sense for her to start maternity leave about 3 weeks beforehand.
Continuity: Amy going on leave so early explains why she didn’t have a maternity bag stashed somewhere in the precinct—we all know that she would have had one had she been working right up to her due date. Also, although Amy’s FOMOW would make her want to stay at the precinct right up until she gave birth, if her doctor recommended her to take rest earlier (which is likely, given how stressful/strenuous her job is…), she would have followed those orders properly.
Thank you to @feeisamarshmallow for talking through this with me!
* baby Mac could definitely be either a Libra or a Scorpio :)
In the pilot one of the first things holt (and by extension the audience) learns about charles is that he’s a ‘grinder’, it’s literally the first thing terry says about him. Charles has always put himself second to jake and for the most part jake goes along with it, in his defence I think because he knows charles doesn't care about the glory as much as he does. It was important that jake made charles acknowledge he wasn’t taking himself out of the running for his sake because I KNOW if he was jake wouldn't have been okay with it at all.
But I loved seeing charles really prove this ep that he is actually a true ‘grinder’ and a good detective, which we have seen before but not when compared to jake (because usually they’re working together and/or jake is the one solving the case in the end). I especially loved seeing jake acknowledge that charles was actually just...a better detective in this scenario and be proud of him and realise that no, charles deserves this more than he does and he’s okay with that. jake has loved and supported charles from the get-go but in earlier seasons I don’t believe he would have had the emotional maturity to be so self-aware and say what he did to charles at the end of the ep. jake has never handled his ego getting bruised well but his love for charles took over in the end.
I just love seeing charles get the recognition he deserves!! and having his best friend back him up so wholeheartedly!! They are the purest friendship on tv and my heart is so full
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
An essay on pro-cop propaganda, how Brooklyn 99 intersects with it as compared to white-centric cop shows, and how this creates a higher standard requirement for diverse shows than homogeneous ones.
Also: how performative allies benefit from condemning B99 while remaining silent on true inequality in (every) other cop show.
“The higher standard that BIPOC media and people are held to as compared to white media and people creates an issue where the existence of diversity in a show exposes the show as a target to "not enough" diversity from performative allies.”
