Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Admiral Peralta
April 5, 2020 3:38 PM - Season 7, Episode 10 - Subscribe

A curse! A cake! A flute solo!
posted by Emmy Rae (23 comments total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
What I realized while watching this is that the departure of Gina has removed some of the unnecessary meanness and given Rosa space to be nicer, especially to Amy. I approve.

Unfortunately I did not enjoy the Holt we saw this episode, and usually Andre Braugher is my favorite part of the show!

The self-aware bit about Amy "hiding" her pregnancy was perfect.

Favorite line: "Terry loves being in and among floats!"
posted by Emmy Rae at 3:42 PM on April 5, 2020 [5 favorites]


Do you think the unpopular fallen officer with a funeral was Wuntch?
posted by Monochrome at 4:27 PM on April 5, 2020 [2 favorites]


I liked that Charles got to be a successful Winston Wolf type.
posted by Monochrome at 4:30 PM on April 5, 2020 [3 favorites]


I LOVED Holt in this episode. I love it when Andre Braugher gets to go Full Frank Pembleton. And he did warn Terry that it would be terrible if he helped him.

You're not the muffin man, you're the GARBAGE MAN!
posted by mmoncur at 4:39 PM on April 5, 2020 [6 favorites]


Would Amy and Jake really have a sex reveal party? That seemed a bit out of character.

Other than that, this was pretty delightful.
posted by hijinx at 4:55 PM on April 5, 2020 [5 favorites]


Nice The West Wing shoutout on the wall of the bar. The gender reveal thing was gross, though I did like the color they picked. Wonder how many meetings they had to find the exact shade?
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 6:13 PM on April 5, 2020 [5 favorites]


The other thing that gets me about this episode is it's Amy being pregnant and they make it 100% about how Jake and Charles feel about it. Hell, Jake's dad gets more to say about it than she does.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 9:01 AM on April 6, 2020 [4 favorites]


The other thing that gets me about this episode is it's Amy being pregnant and they make it 100% about how Jake and Charles feel about it.

I feel like Amy announcing this to her family is a major untapped source of plot and character development... hopefully we get there!

The gender reveal thing was gross

I have a personal unsupported theory that the episode was written with the gender reveal as a major plot device, and someone else's rebellion from the writer's room was to make Jake point out that it is simply an announcement of "what's happening down there". However I know nothing about show biz so I really don't know how stuff like this gets decided.
posted by Emmy Rae at 10:16 AM on April 6, 2020


I liked that Charles got to be a successful Winston Wolf type.

They're just about perfect in how frequently they show us that Boyle is a very good cop (and good at a lot of other things), he's just also a very weird person.
posted by Etrigan at 11:16 AM on April 6, 2020 [8 favorites]


I have a personal unsupported theory that the episode was written with the gender reveal as a major plot device

Definitely. The writer clearly wanted to set up the whole Peralta Curse thing as something that the Peralta fathers pass on to their sons, so of course the New Peralta Child had to be a son, which necessitates a reveal of some kind, etc., etc. Now, I don't think the gender reveal ("sex reveal" is such a shitty cop out; "blue" is not a "sex", the whole thing is inextricably about gender and changing a couple of words doesn't make it not problematic) actually adds anything to the story, but clearly the writer felt otherwise. And that's without getting into the fact that this episode clearly treats the baby as the New Peralta Child with Amy as an afterthought.

The Whiplash parody subplot with Terry and Holt was pretty funny, though. "I'm not a garbage man, I'm a muffin man!"
posted by tobascodagama at 11:40 AM on April 6, 2020


I am very not clued in to baby-related things and I hadn't even known gender reveals were a thing until a couple years ago, when I started seeing videos of people setting themselves on fire or starting forest fires or whatever with parties. And it grosses me out--I keep wondering if they started as some sort of awful cis het reaction to trans people becoming more visible, but I really don't want to go down that research rabbit hole.

So just the whole premise made me want to fast forward, and I really wish they'd not put Jake and Amy in that kind of situation--but agreed that it was probably some forced thing to create the Peralta Curse. (It doesn't help that I loathe Bradley Whitford.) I just feel like Jake and Amy are better than that.

Thank goodness for the Charles and Terry storylines. Emmy Rae, I also loved "Terry loves being in and among floats!" It might be one of my favorite lines from the series, ever. I harbored a secret wish till the end of the episode that Lizzo might show up with her flute.
posted by kitten kaboodle at 12:12 PM on April 6, 2020 [2 favorites]


The other thing that gets me about this episode is it's Amy being pregnant and they make it 100% about how Jake and Charles feel about it.

I find how common it is for stories about women to focus extensively on pregnancy or rape to be very tedious, as if male writers cannot think of anything else that women might have going on in their lives. Seeing Amy still being able to do things beyond "be pregnant" was a joy for me. Let them men wrestle with the tedious details of a gender reveal party for once, rather than writing all emotional labor as the sole responsibility of the pregnant woman.
posted by past unusual at 12:43 PM on April 6, 2020 [14 favorites]


Kinda funny that they had the guy from Whiplash as the guest spot last time and then holt totally did a Whiplash to terry.
posted by lazaruslong at 1:38 PM on April 6, 2020 [10 favorites]


I'm more interested than Pimento than Jake And His Daddy Issues, which says a lot. This show is never going to stop heading down the Jake Peralta show vein towards anything vaguely ensembley and one day I will accept that.
posted by jeather at 4:23 PM on April 6, 2020 [4 favorites]


My least favorite running gag is definitely "title of your sex tape" (it's indefensible with even the slightest probing), but the entire series of them were worth it for Bradley Whitford's character to casually throw out the actual title of his actual sex tape.

Wow, for my favorite show*, there are a lot of things I want to pick apart, and y'all have really covered them.

*now that The Good Place is gone, sob
posted by purpleclover at 9:28 PM on April 6, 2020 [4 favorites]


Agreed that the gender reveal party thing isn't something either Amy or Jake would be into, and if one of them were, it'd be Jake with a much wilder version of it than a cake.
posted by Navelgazer at 7:59 AM on April 7, 2020 [2 favorites]


Die Hard-themed laser tag if it's a boy, Terminator 2-themed laser tag if it's a girl.
posted by tobascodagama at 8:51 AM on April 7, 2020 [6 favorites]


I have been dragged to two gender reveal parties in bluest California. There was a nice cake and cheap sparkling wine both times. Both sets of parents are decent people who will probably throw their kids a second gender reveal party if they find out the prenatal one is incorrect. It's fine. That Amy didn't get upset about the green cake, or the disastrous party, or even Jake learning the baby's sex before she did is a nod to the fact that Jake and Amy aren't going to be Weird About This.

Bradley Whitford does a great job with the character of Jake's jerk dad, but I have to admit that I never enjoy the Jake's jerk dad episodes much. The part where three generations put on blindfold and determinedly smeared cake around a room was pretty good, though.
posted by grandiloquiet at 4:06 PM on April 8, 2020 [5 favorites]


I have to put in a word about Martin Mull as Admiral Peralta. He did a great job of being a character without being over-the-top funny. And I praise the writers for including someone that old in the story and not making "Ha ha, he died while the other characters weren't looking!" a plot point.
posted by mmoncur at 5:46 AM on April 9, 2020 [3 favorites]


I only ever hear about gender/sex reveal parties when stuff goes horribly wrong and people die or forests burn down or whatnot, so by that measure merely having a thumb cut off and surgically reattached is a success.

Also, this thing always bugs me:
Amy: I'm pregnant!
Jake: We're pregnant!
posted by ckape at 8:01 AM on April 9, 2020 [2 favorites]


This show is never going to stop heading down the Jake Peralta show vein towards anything vaguely ensembley and one day I will accept that.

That's pretty much my issue; nearly any episode where the focus is on Jake bores the shit out of me. Which makes it a very hit and miss show for me, obviously.
posted by tavella at 4:01 PM on April 10, 2020


nearly any episode where the focus is on Jake bores the shit out of me.

maybe some episode he can say to everyone "I'm sorry for acknowledging but never actually addressing my issues with my father. I am going to therapy so I can do the work myself instead of making uncomfortable jokes" and then SHUT THE HELL UP about it.

"haha I have problems. I know that. Now you all have to deal with my problems in our workplace." I know workplace comedies are not real workplaces but still. Stop calling Holt your dad. Or choose to address in a serious way the parental role he plays in your life. plz man
posted by Emmy Rae at 8:39 PM on April 10, 2020 [1 favorite]


Would Amy and Jake really have a sex reveal party? That seemed a bit out of character.

And... their party was full of STRANGERS. Like I think we've gotten used to B99 events basically being the whole gang, and there were a lot of randos milling about there. I'm glad we're getting to a better place with Jake/Amy stuff because the early pregnancy-arc just seemed to be about her wanting things and communicating and him fucking it up. Which is kind of a tired Lockhorns thing. The past few episodes have felt that it was more about not hurting Charles' feelings than Amy's, this one seemed to be better in that direction.
posted by jessamyn at 11:08 AM on April 11, 2020 [2 favorites]


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