Brooklyn Nine-Nine: The Road Trip Recap

Summary of 2×09: Jake decides to make a romantic weekend out of prisoner transport, but it blows up in his face when Amy reveals she wants to break up with Teddy. Diaz gets sick and denies it. Boyle tries to teach Holt how to cook.

Rating: ★★★½☆☆

First off, watch the adorable bite sized episode that aired during football on Thanksgiving Day. It’s only two and a half minutes long, but it has everything I could love about a regular episode about B99. That, and Terry being friends with Terrell Owens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGAkKcARIpU

Okay, back to the main episode.

Jake and Amy have to go to upstate New York to transport a prisoner back down to the city. Since they end up booking a room at a bed and breakfast, Jake decides to invite Sophia up so that they can have a romantic weekend. Amy laments that Teddy never does anything like that with her. Deciding to do something nice for Amy, Jake invites Teddy up to surprise her. Uh, I think that’s less Teddy doing something romantic and more Jake facilitating it, but whatever.

At the B&B the next day, Jake reveals his surprise to Amy, who immediately freaks out. It turns out that she’s been wanting to break up with Teddy and was hoping to use the night to draft out her outline of why. Jake agrees to run interference for her, which is good because it’s not like Jake and Sophia are going to get anything done in the Room of 1,000 Dolls. Seriously, all the musical stingers for those scenes were on point. Well done.

Sophia agrees to help Jake with interference, which goes okay until after Teddy arrives. At dinner, Amy tries to keep it together, but she ends up word vomiting that she wants to break up with Teddy, but needs more time to list out why besides his weird obsession with pilsners. Jake and Sophia try to leave, but Teddy tells Jake that he thinks he’s part of the problem of the break up. Because Amy used to like him too and every time Jake admitted to his feelings, it would throw the relationship “out of synch.” Teddy leaves, Sophia retreats to the room, and Jake and Amy don’t talk for the rest of the night. Later, Jake apologizes to Sophia and assures her that he doesn’t like Amy anymore and that he likes her. Jake tells Amy the same, but that he’ll gleefully tease her about it forever. Right… I don’t think this is over yet, folks, but we’ll see.

In the b-plot, Diaz comes into work with an awful cold, wanting to interrogate one of the Giggle Pig dealers. Jeffords and Gina tell her to go home, but Diaz refuses since the task force really does need a win. I’m not sure what this speaks to more: Diaz’s stubbornness or the pressure on her to succeed with the task force. She eventually agrees to take cold medicine, but only to fight off “oncoming symptoms.” Yeah, that’s bull, but it does give us the best moment of the episode: Diaz hopped up on non-drowsy cold medicine. Seriously, Stephanie Beatriz deserves an award for that scene alone. She calls Hitchcock the best detective she knows! Unable to take it anymore, Gina locks her in a supply closet so she can sleep. While she does, Jeffords interrogates the perp and Gina buys her a care package so she can fight off her cold. This brings us the second best part of the episode: Diaz smiles.

Another b-plot features Holt turning to Boyle to try and learn how to cook for his anniversary with Kevin and failing. There’s not really a whole lot here besides driving Holt’s “boring and practical” angle into the ground when it could have been such a good match against Boyle’s passion. However, it does have a really sweet resolution where Holt admits that he did take the lessons he learned from Boyle’s blog about food telling a story to heart and that he ended up making a croque monsieur for Kevin as a recall to their first anniversary. He gives a second one he made to Boyle and he finds out something else great about Holt: he’s a natural chef.

This episode felt all over the place at points, but the character moments and relationships made it a worthwhile watch. I just hope that the writers in the future don’t get too heavy handed with making Holt “boring.” Well, I guess its better than the alternative with a character that’s a black gay man.