Brooklyn Nine-Nine: The Crime Scene (6x06)

Jake and Rosa are great!

Cons:

Ummm... error, not found? I guess I kind of missed some of the other characters, but honestly I think the focus on Jake and Rosa was perfect.

Pros:

This episode had a difficult task in balancing its tone, and it did so wonderfully. There's been a terrible murder, and we see as Jake and Rosa try to solve the case, while also interacting with the deceased man's devastated mother. We have lots of fun jokes and lots of serious moments. We also touch again on Rosa's strained relationship with her mom because of her sexuality, while having fun with silly haircuts along the way. I like that we didn't dive too deep into any one mood, but instead got an interesting mix of humor and drama. That might seem like an obvious thing to say about a cop show that's also a comedy, but I just really noticed how well it worked this week.

On the comedy side, there were just too many funny moments to count. My favorites include Jake and Rosa's exchange about Jake's math teacher: "She sucks!" then, a pause: "Actually, she was very sweet, she believed in me"; Jake waking Amy up holding a knife over her; Rosa's constantly changing and ridiculous hairdos; Charles being the body in Jake's simulation; the CSI agent's terrible one-liners; Holt coming in and revealing that the best two detectives he ever worked with were two random people he's never mentioned before; Jake accidentally calling the victim's mom his own mom... it goes on and on. The comedy in this show is sharp, memorable, and genuinely hilarious.

On the more emotional side, I like that we're delving in to the real horror of murder and of losing a loved one, without making the show suddenly dark and gritty. Jake has this great line about how he forgets that he's become so numb to truly disturbing imagery, and Rosa agrees with him that it undoubtedly affects their souls and their relationships with other people. Sure, that moment was a joke, but the reality behind it felt grounded in the story. We see the food delivery guy completely freak out, and we see the grief from the victim's mother, and these things are just as real as the comedy.

Jake's descent into madness was played wonderfully by Andy Samberg. It never goes so far as to become completely ridiculous, even though it obviously is ridiculous, if that makes sense. Jake's fast-talking gets worse, he starts talking to (and hearing answers from) inanimate objects, and it all feels like a perfectly natural consequence of his obsession with this case. I liked seeing how getting personally invested ended up helping Jake and Rosa in the end, even though it was still definitely a bad idea.

Rosa's hair was hilarious, but it's also really fun to get some more personal detail out of her. We learn that things are going well with her girlfriend Jocelyn. That's nice all on its own, but it's even nicer that we get to hear about it at all, and that's because Rosa is opening up and sharing things about her personal life with Jake. That's really rare, and therefore quite heartwarming. We learn that Rosa is going to meet Jocelyn's parents, but that Rosa hasn't spoken to her own mother since coming out as bisexual. She shares with Jake that this is hard for her, and in the end she decides to stop waiting for her mother to come around, and to contact her directly. It shouldn't be Rosa's job to reach out, but she does, and I think that was the right thing for her in this situation. I like that Jake gets extremely awkward around Rosa's mother until Rosa tells Jake he can go, and then he just books it out of there. We don't get some big cathartic moment where Rosa's mom apologizes and everything is suddenly fine. This feels more like a first step, and I find that to be much more realistic, and therefore touching.

That's all I've got for now! As much as this season has been lacking in group dynamics, I'm actually really thrilled we got an episode just focusing on two of our leads. I hope we can replicate that with other pairs throughout the rest of the season!

9.5/10