Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Ticking Clocks (6x14)

This episode is incredibly clever, so much so that it's not quite as funny as I wish it was.

Cons:

The idea of doing an episode in real-time sounds great, but in reality it slows things down, because we can't cut to just the funny meat of things, but instead need to show the transitional moments between them. For that reason, I felt like some of the episode was treading water, especially the scenes with the mean sorority girls making fun of Terry.

I also didn't much like the recurring bit with Jake saying the name of the lasagna before every commercial bit. It worked fine the first time, but got old very quickly.

I really like the idea of Rosa and Jocelyn working on their relationship, but I think one problem is that we haven't seen the two of them function as a happy couple, so we don't understand what it is that Rosa's fighting for exactly. It seems like Jocelyn is being a little harsh, given the literal crisis going on around her. We just don't have enough context to fully grasp this relationship.

Pros:

As I said, the episode is very clever, and there were plenty of chances to appreciate that cleverness, even if I wasn't laughing quite as much as I would have liked.

The lasagna bit was a great way to center the episode - at the start, Hitchcock and Scully start a timer on the microwave, and that timer corresponds to the episode's run-time as we are treated to a nefarious hacker plot that the 99 has to solve before the bad guys get into the server.

I liked Amy's "FOMOOW" (Fear of Missing Out on Work) even if that acronym doesn't quite work for me. It was adorable to see her running through the streets and pushing past the security guard in order to get in on the action. I also liked that her presence was instrumental in solving the case, but not necessarily because she's better than everyone, but because she had reason to recognize the bad guy. That was quite clever.

There were moments where the episode used the real-time pacing to good effect, like when Jake and Holt are texting each other, or the part about food being stuck in Jake's teeth. I also liked Jake talking about Killing Eve. I, like Rosa, haven't managed to see it yet, but I really should get on that soon!

I apologize that this review is so short - and also a couple of days late. But yeah, that's basically all I've got to say on this episode. Not bad or anything, but maybe not as much as I would have hoped for!

7/10