TV Review: Brooklyn Nine Nine (3×06) “Into the Woods”

Welcome back to my weekly review and recap of “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.” To catch up on previous coverage, click here.

Sometimes Brooklyn Nine-Nine is able to nail the three storyline structure, and sometimes, it feels like one of the three is decidedly slimmer than the other. This week it was Amy and Gina’s shoulder flashlight plot, which was already slim in terms of what it added to the episode, but was made more so by the limited amount of time they were given. More than anything, it seemed like an excuse to let the two actresses act together, and Chelsea Peretti and Melissa Fumero have a wonderful, big sister teasing little sister dynamic, but out of everything that was going on it seemed like the one story that could have been on the cutting board.

If anything it continued to show how the relationship between the two women is growing, from season one Gina being straight out antagonistic, to now being affectionate, even if she desperately wishes Amy would change her name to Vanessa.

The other two storylines got the real berth of time dedicated to them, even if the A plot seemed to take second place to Holt and Rosa’s emotional journey.

Jake takes Terry and Boyle to the woods. 

And fun times do not happen, as was foreseen before the trip even began, because what’s the fun in everything going smoothly. The trip is planned after Jake angers Terry by pulling an unnecessary stunt on a drug bust and forcing him to have to do paperwork all weekend. The rest of the squad sees it as something cool while Terry just see’s the mountain of work building up.

So, after doing the paperwork himself with Amy’s help, Jake proposes that he, Terry and Boyle go spend a weekend at a colleagues cabin, hoping it will help loosen Terry up and relieve a bit of his stress.

It starts off poorly, with Terry having to drive since Jake’s car is in the shop, and only gets worse, when the cabin has no power or electricity, putrid water and bad scotch. The three of them can’t even manage fishing, with Jake managing to hook himself in the neck and Terry throwing the rod into the water. When he learns that Jake never thought to bring food, his temper worsens, and when Boyle doesn’t return after going out to find them something, he grows furious with Jake from failing to plan ahead. They end up finding Boyle of course who has managed to fall into a pit. When they try to get him out of it, they fall in, because that’s how sitcoms work.

Terry lays into Jake, telling him that it’s typical of him to make plans while expecting others to clean up his mess, whether it be Boyle and food or Terry and paperwork, he doesn’t think ahead, and it’s something that continues to get in others way.

My favorite part of this storyline has to be the three person spooning session to stay warm, if only because Andy Samberg and Terry Crews make angry spooning hilarious.

To fix what he’s messed up, in the middle of the night Jake manages to haul himself out of the pit with his clothes, dragging himself through the poison ivy he’s allergic to in the meantime, and is able to see where to find the cabin while also pulling Terry and Boyle out of the pit.

I’m kind of confused about why Terry couldn’t have given one of them a boost, but I’ll chalk it up to his anger, and not wanting to wander the woods lost at night (and narrative convenience.)

Rosa and Holt feel…things. 

My favorite plot line involves Rosa and Holt as the latter tries to help her in her breakup with Marcus. I for one am relatively pleased by this development, mainly because Marcus has never really been anything of a character, spoken about more frequently than actually being given any discernible characteristics. What makes the breakup better is that Rosa and Holt get to work together, and that’s always a strong pairing.

Kevin shoots down the two’s plan for Rosa to text Marcus while he’s sleeping that they’re over, saying that they’re both sociopaths. They plan a new form of attack, where Rosa acknowledges his feelings, even if this leads to a long winded discussion about emotion where Rosa even tries to escape out his window to avoid how uncomfortable it all is.

But then, Rosa does the unthinkable, and begins to cry over it, in front of Holt no less.

The two later share a scene where they both get to behave emotionally for once, and it’s a reminder of how similar the two are that they’d still pretend it isn’t happening, even while facing one another. Stephanie Beatriz and Andre Braugher are hilarious and even a tad heartfelt here, both giving fantastic performances this week.

It’s a very funny episode, and there are pieces I enjoyed quite a bit, it’s simply not the universally strong return I’d hoped for, and really the only meh episode of the season so far. One of the storylines needed to feel more than an afterthought.

6.5/10