Brooklyn Nine-Nine: PB&J (8x05)

Okay... is anyone else just over it all?

Cons:

Somehow the whole Doug and Jake friendship thing is rubbing me the wrong way when you have a black criminal and a white cop and they're such good buddies but like... Jake is still taking him to prison for five years, and then he has to stop him from escaping... does anyone else get like, weird vibes from it? It's not that I hate Doug, but I kind of hate the whole cat and mouse thing when it's a comedy parody of a black man with a family desperately, frantically, trying not to get locked away for five years. I don't know.

Then there's the whole "Jake might lose his job" thing. Are they trying to set this up like that's the outcome at the end of the season? Jake and Amy and the others all quitting their jobs because being a police officer is bad? I just wish this sitcom wasn't trying to take on the whole weight of police corruption in hits final ten episode season. I want to say it's... admirable that they're addressing it? But honestly it's messy as fuck to try and do this, and I'm not convinced it's working. There's no nuance being added to the conversation, here. Do I think Doug should go to prison? Well, no, but then I'm a fan of abolishing prisons altogether for nonviolent crimes. But should he escape and just be a fugitive? Seems like an unsustainable system, to me. But in setting up these two options as a dichotomy we ignore the fact that Doug is a nice person but undeniably a thief who keeps going back to his life of crime, despite saying he's left the life. They've circled the drain with this character so many times that I don't even know what I'm supposed to think anymore.

Also, I oddly felt like Charles was out of character in this episode? I thought his whole thing was that he's jealous of Jake as his best friend, so the fact that he was eager to do a game and celebrate all the ways Jake and Doug know each other just rang a little false to me. The fact that it was all part of a bigger plan does make it better, but there could have been a few moments where Charles was grumbling about it, or maybe just insisting loudly that he knew Jake better than Doug ever could. Felt like a missed opportunity.

Pros:

Within an episode that kind of disturbed me on its face, I did find the individual jokes within it pretty funny. The "slurp slurp" thing was hilarious, the various questions and answers in the game that Charles created, the silly outfits and foot slapping and all these little routines... if I think about it for more than a second, I am disturbed by the implications of these two being close friends and having become close friends through Jake constantly trying to catch and imprison Doug. But if I ignore that rather weighty context, I do think they have a funny and even sweet friendship, underneath it all.

And I guess I'm... glad that Jake broke the law and helped Doug to escape in this really sneaky way? Again, it just feels messy. I guess I'm meant to applaud this decision of Jake's as if it's not a super serious big, big deal that he did something like that. As if he wouldn't be fired at once if anyone found out. It's just not clear to me what outcome I'm meant to hope for, this season.

Sorry, that's all I got. I like Doug, I'm glad we got to see him, but I'm definitely a little conflicted here.

6/10