We have been working our way through all of the seasons on yer ‘flix and now that the end is coming, I must say I will miss it. So many wonderful lines, sight gags, running jokes, bizarre situations and good ol’ fashioned stupid stuff. Very reminiscent of Scrubs – but I think Brooklyn 99 is better.
The Jake Peralta character holds it all together with his relentless cheerfulness and child-like naivety. He is also somehow convincing as a top-notch detective.
Let me explain why I thought this was worth a thread by doing the thing you should never do – write out a quickfire joke. Ready? Here goes:
Jake Peralta – “So! This case is a classic ‘Whodunnit’?”
Captain Holt – (dismissively) “No, the actual term is ‘Who Did This?’- as that is grammatically correct. “
Jake (spluttering, incredulous) – “What?! NO-ONE says that…”
Much, much later on, a new detective is brought in to help solve the case.
New detective (with authority) – “On the face of it, this case is a classic ‘Who Did This?’ …”
Great show, and worth repeated viewings. I get the sense there’s a vague sniffiness around it from some quarters. Perhaps it’s one of those things that’s so well-constructed and tight that it makes it “look easy”. Loved it.
Well, Netflix told me I’d given this a go before, but it obviously didn’t stick for one reason or another. Plane to catch maybe…anyhow, that looks like me spoken for for quite a while. Not sure I’ve quite got the stamina for seven seasons, but ep.1 certainly hit the spot.
Is it one of those US comedy laff fests where they have 101 writers churning out lines so every character cracks wise the whole time they are on screen ( a la Big Bang Theory), or more nuanced , less writer- heavy US comedy (Silicon Valley)?
Prefer the second category over the first but no way am I going to star watching a show that ran for seven years.
Not sure.
BBT drives me up the wall as Twang Jr binges on it from time to time. The snidy hilarious remark/canned laughter routine gets old very quickly.
Yes. Best watched in singles
Is it one of those US comedy laff fests where they have 101 writers churning out lines so every character cracks wise the whole time they are on screen ( a la Big Bang Theory), or more nuanced , less writer- heavy US comedy (Silicon Valley)?
Prefer the second category over the first but no way am I going to star watching a show that ran for seven years.
Still not sure.
Oh, no not another repeat!
Apols for my duplicate post which I can neither edit nor delete
It’s the first category – but there’s an innocence to it that means the comedy is more pure than a sarky wisecracking Chandler Bing, for example. They are all happy characters, comfortable with who they are – even though a couple of them really shouldn’t be.
It’s a 22 minute shot in the arm – in the same way I used to look forward to MASH, Cheers, Frasier, Scrubs, Taxi, Rhoda…that kind of thing.
When first aired gave up halfway through Series 1 – was I Wrong?
Of course. Need you ask?
Just checking
Ah, I gave up after two episodes, which was the other day, funnily enough. I found it all a bit too forced and badly edited and the delivery of the lines was a bit too much like an awful American kids show my daughter used to watch, with the lass out of Dune in it. I compared it to Arrested Development, which is similar in that there’s a gag along every few seconds, but which did it much better, but I guess Arrested Development has a much bigger budget and much better actors.
I’ll add it to the programmes I need to go back to then, along with Parks and Recreation and Seinfeld. I have so many things to watch that I tend to make quick decisions, if I’m not really enjoying what I’m watching. All three of these shows were amusing, but not up to the standard of other comedy shows I’ve watched. I guess some of them take a year or two to get going properly.
Well, I gave up on Brooklyn 99 AND Scrubs AND Arrested Development AND Parks and Recreation (AND the US Office come to that). Not sure of my point, but there you go.
US Office is brill, or at least it was when Steve Carell was there, once they got past the awkward first few episodes that were based on the UK ones. And Arrested Development is up there as the funniest show ever for me, with great throwaway gags coming thick and fast, like on The Simpsons or Family Guy.
Maybe I just have the wrong kind of funny bone!
Favourite comedies: The Office (UK), Father Ted, The Thick of It, Blackadder, Fawlty Towers, Only Fools and Horses.
US-wise I like Atlanta, Russian Doll, Veep, Curb Your Enthusiasm (and Seinfeld but not as much as Curb).
I’m going to ignore the fact that on a recent thread I wasn’t totally dismissive of Mrs Brown’s Boys, because that’s an argument that I know will go nowhere!
There were one or two gags on Mrs Brown’s Boys early on that were quite good. The story about her losing her virginity on the bus was a cracker. I’m not sure why it became more than something that people didn’t like though. It’s not particularly to my taste. I watched some of it early on and haven’t bothered with it since, but that doesn’t seem to be enough for some reason, as you have to hate it with a passion. A bit like Michael McIntyre. I don’t find him funny, but you have to hate him too, not just dislike him. I prefer just to not watch things I don’t like and don’t give them another thought. I find Russell Howard fascinatingly unfunny, as in I try to avoid him, but when I catch him I watch for a few minutes totally puzzled as to how he gets employed as a comedian.
But then I let all this reasonability slip at the mention of James Corden. Christ, he irritates me beyond belief.
All those programmes you mention are great and would be at the top end of my list, except maybe Only Fools and Horses, which I went off after a while, as it seemed to lose its edge. I think it’s when they got girlfriends and they started bringing sentimentality into it a bit too much. And Del falling through the bar isn’t the funniest bit. Grandad unscrewing the wrong chandelier was.
Agree re the chandelier. One of the best and we’ll timed gags in comedy history.
I do like Parks and Rec to suit a mood. There’s no canned laughter for one thing.
Will the Pontiac Bandit charm Jake every time?
(I think I just answered my own question).
You wouldn’t want me to spoil it now would you.
A lot of love from it in our household, although i do think the last 2 series have seen a slight drop off in quality.
The first few series should be lauded though, excellent writing & every episode has proper belly laugh moment in it.
There was one line from Jake that really tickled me. Something along the lines of ‘I wasn’t hurt that badly. all my bleeding was internal. That’s where the blood’s supposed to be.’
Jake / Andy Samberg* also did a cracking film called Palm Springs that is well worth a watch. Similar humour to B99 & one i really enjoyed.
*he is married to Joanna Newsom. Pointless knowledge I grant you, but I am a big fan of hers
Yes, B99 is probably my fave comedy of the last few years and been very sorry to see it go. Holt is a brilliant creation. It did dip slightly for a season (6?) I though but from a very high point and how many long-running series DON’T have at least one year that doesn’t quite reach the heights – certainly Frasier and Seinfeld both slipped at bit at various points.
Palm Springs also highly recommended.
Dunno about the show but this is a favourite:
One of the key sitcoms that the whole family absolutely got behind (Friday Night Dinner, Parks and Rec, Motherland), coming along when they were 14/15 which is probably the best age to watch it. Lots of love still, above all for Captain Holt who is a comic creation to rival anything in the past twenty years.
Yes that’s how we got into it. Teenage children loving it and telling us. In the old days, we’d have all watched it together of course.
And yes, Captain Holt is a brilliant creation.
There is a critical view, that in series 1-6 it was copaganda, this is a thoughtful piece:
https://medium.com/@ohgodscrewthis/brooklyn-nine-nine-as-copaganda-a-critical-analysis-6cca54cae7f8
Certainly American cop shows over the past 2 years have had surely to reckon with this. The best argument in the article is that though the senior officers and leaders are presented as uniformly bad specimens of humanity, 99% of the show is spent with the main characters who are all presented as flawed but at the core good human beings.
Interesting to apply this to say Line of Duty – which does have the same dynamic, the top brass are all corrupt/careerist/self-serving/uncaring and hence provide a critical angle BUT we spend 99% of our time with Ted, Kate and Steve who are exemplary cops (with tangled private lives OF COURSE). I think the regular presence of Dot Cotton, Buckells and so on does provide LOD with less of a copaganda feel, and of course this is much easier to achieve in drama than comedy where you have to identify with and root for the central characters much more.
The idea that cops are basically good guys/gals doing their best out of a sense of civic duty is still a sacred cow in TV drama. Then you put the news on and it’s all about officers taking gurning selfies with corpses and sharing rape fantasies with murder suspects. In terms of realism we’ve not moved on a lot from George Dixon.
Evening all.
Maybe only GF Newman has actually been brave enough to not succumb to the ‘bad apples, the barrel can be saved’ view of the police.
If you want to watch a terrific UK cop show, check out the first two runs of Between The Lines from the early 90s, both of which are available on Youtube. Much better than LOD im(ns)ho
Yep . Peter “Wor Friends in the North like” Flannery IIRC.
C4’s Babylon and No Offence also recommended, if more conventional.
I recently watched “We Own This City” which was based on a true story of what happened to the Baltimore police department. Dramatised by George Pelecanos and David Simon, it’s The Wire” vibe means you need to turn the sub titles on, but it’s really worth the effort. Copaganda it was not.
A very interesting piece. Thanks for posting it. As it says, the show is routinely disrespectful to the culture of the NYPD and depicts the top brass as hopelessly evil and corrupt – or simply hopeless. The main characters are the good guys and as the viewer we want to believe that all cops are like them.
They make a good point about internships. The practice of having unpaid interns effectively weeds out people who need to earn money to live. So you end up with young people funded by their parents i.e. mainly rich white people. How much talent has been missed over the years by not paying the going rate to young people? It shouldn’t be allowed.
Not as good as Angie Tribeca.
Absolutely. Took some finding online but well worth the effort.
It’s in the great Police Squad tradition of Stoopid.
Just the two of us, then.
It is extremely good. Although I think Captain Holt is a genius character. It manages to be silly and clever at the same time. My favourite combination.
Love it. Teenage daughter did too.
Yes, it promotes a view of the Police as a force for good. But it’s a bloody comedy.
It’s not The Wire.
Andy Samberg was clever enough to not make it all about him as Jake Peralta.
And I love the conceit that Scully and Hitchcock are really Starsky and Hutch gone to seed.
I agree completely & as I also enjoy ‘Bosch’, there is a pleasing echo of Hitchcock & Scully in his unit, with the 2 ageing ‘old school’ detectives, who in this instance actually do have a few tricks up their sleeves.
Is Top Cat still on
^this is the greatest post in the history of the Afterword
I really enjoyed some of their “cold opens” (if that is the correct term? I’m not really sure, but I’ve read it somewhere and I think it refers to the stuff that happens before the opening credits, that doesn’t particularly relate to the main story). Anyway, some of them are fantastic little sequences that require no explanation. I think this is my favourite 1′ 30″ of the show.
Having enjoyed the first episode I tentatively suggested to Mrs thep that she might enjoy it too. I didn’t really believe she would, because she has very little patience with US comedy, with the single exception of Parks and Recreation, and she didn’t even manage a whole season of that. And yet…after three episodes on the bounce, she pronounced it ‘even better than Parks and Recreation’. So go figure.
That’s great – I’m glad she enjoys it.
The last season is out on Netflix. Definitely run its course but still some good jokes.