NOTE: Full spoilers for this episode of, “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” are present in this review
Brooklyn Nine-Nine started its latest episode twofer this week with, “Your Honor”, a pretty reliably funny and enjoyable offering. Another big family development for Holt serves as the big attraction of this episode, as Holt’s mother, Judge Laverne Holt, comes into the Nine-Nine as the victim of a crime, while two other subplots also elevate the episode nicely.
Things begin with Holt deciding to ask one of the detectives at the Nine-Nine to help his mother, after her place is robbed under mysterious circumstances. Santiago immediately comes off as too weird, so Holt asks Peralta to help with the case, with Peralta being overjoyed at the chance to continue getting to know Holt from his childhood. Further stoking the comedy nicely is the fact that Peralta appears to get along with Holt’s mother very well, leading to a good bit of jealousy from the Nine-Nine’s captain.
This latest bit of Peralta/Holt conflict often provided strong laughs, even if the final resolution of the investigation is a bit less effective. After following the evidence to Laverne’s wine club, Holt thinks he’s found a suspect, namely a man who was seen outside of his mother’s place during the night of the robbery. You might be able to see where this is going. Yes, Laverne has a secret boyfriend, and she confides this information in Peralta in confidence, asking that he not tell Holt about what really happened.
This is well and good, though Holt aggressively trying to pursue the suspect, and Peralta constantly getting in the way, felt like forced attempts at humour. I get that there’s a bit of a time constraint on the investigation, but surely Holt can discover for himself that there’s not enough evidence to arrest the man with? Why does Peralta need to overreact and blow Laverne’s undercover relationship? There weren’t really any consequences for this either, even if this does bring Holt and his mother a bit closer together in the end. Still, at least the culprit being the mailing list lady and her husband from Laverne’s wine club made for a pretty decent resolution to the case itself.
The episode’s other two subplots were smaller in scale and focused almost entirely on humour, but both got the job done pretty well. The first of these subplots has Jeffords, Diaz and Boyle renovating the break room, and becoming enamoured with their work at classing it up. Scully and Hitchcock are furious at the effort though, and say that the break room is ruined. The three detectives are stumped at first, but it turns out, yeah, no one likes the new break room, so they have to let Scully and Hitchcock put it back the way it was. Yes, this was mostly a filler storyline, but it was still a really funny sequence of events, so it’s difficult to really dwell on how superfluous this story arc truly is in the end.
The other subplot centers on Santiago and Gina, after Gina tries to call someone to change a tire for her. Santiago insists that Gina must learn to change a tire herself, and tries to get Gina to watch her do it in the parking garage, only to have Gina not pay attention. This served as another throwaway plot that was all about simple laughs, but Santiago accidentally slashing the wrong car’s tire to get Gina to co-operate, and Gina fixing the tire off-screen by looking at an online instruction video (wrecking Santiago’s car in the process!), all made for plenty of funny, unexpected developments. The karmic result for Santiago was especially funny, since she did manage to make Gina feel empowered, though at the cost of losing all of her own car wheels, go figure.
“Your Honor” is a fairly by-the-book episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, but seeing as this sitcom remains one of the sharpest and funniest shows on television at this point, that’s certainly not a bad thing. All three storylines offered plenty of standout laughs, and the latest excuse to pit Peralta and Holt against each other proved to be especially inspired, even if it had to shoehorn a bit of conflict here and there. The latest chance for Scully and Hitchcock to be useful proved to be really satisfying as well, as did Gina still managing to look like the smartest person in the room during a teachable moment. Considering that Season Four is coming to an end next week, a simple little episode like this is a great way to have reliable fun for fans, as bigger developments no doubt start unfolding for the season’s climax.