“Adrian Pimento”
Original Airdate: February 23, 2016
Adrian Pimento has been deep undercover for the last 12 years and has just resurfaced, seemingly lacking basic human interaction skills. Not only is he in Jake’s spot, but he proceeds to pull a knife on Jake. The introductions are not off to a good start. Pimento used to work for the Nine-Nine, but since it was over a decade ago, the only detectives who remember him are Hitchcock and Scully. Captain Holt decides to give Pimento his old desk back, which is Jake’s current desk, which explains why he was sitting there when Jake strolled in.
Everyone has different reactions to their new teammate. Jake is immediately captivated by Pimento and requests to be partnered with him on his latest case. Everyone else can see Pimento is clearly unhinged from spending 12 years undercover with a notorious mobster. But Jake — who reminds us he spent 63 days undercover himself — thinks he knows exactly what Pimento is going through and can lead him back to normalcy.
Boyle decides to welcome Pimento by making a gigantic pot of goat stew in the breakroom. Because, Boyle. Unfortunately, the stew explodes. Everywhere. Over everything. This means Boyle has to beg Mean Marge, the head janitor, for assistance. Mean Marge did not earn her name by accident. The woman is tough as nails, and Boyle’s request that Marge clean the breakroom for them completely backfires when she tells her team to stop cleaning the precinct altogether. Trash bags start piling up everywhere. Boyle and the other detectives are also forbidden to clean anything up themselves because to do so would take away work from the janitor’s union.
Jake has problems of his own to deal with, because later that night he finds Pimento waiting for him in his apartment. Jake finally starts to realize Pimento is mentally unbalanced. Between threatening to kill Jake’s elderly upstairs neighbor to referring to himself by his undercover name “Paul Sneed,” to doing Tai Chi in his underwear, Pimento clearly has issues.
It seems Pimento may be having trouble leaving his alter-ego behind, because while they’re working Jake’s breaking-and-entering case, Pimento takes a break to buy a burner phone and bolt cutters. Jake, who is completely disenchanted with Pimento by this point, worries that he may have turned and is still in fact working for the mob. When Jake witnesses Pimento donning a ski mask and breaking into an abandoned building, it seems to confirm his suspicions.
But, it turns out Jake was worrying for mostly no reason. Pimento is not still working for the mob (though he is still seriously unhinged). The burner phone was because he has terrible credit and can’t get a regular cellphone. He broke into a storage facility to get some of his old stuff, like family photos, back.
Jake’s lack of trust in him drives Pimento to go back to the only other job he ever had before joining the force: working in a grocery store as a bagger. After a heart-to-heart, in which Jake admits that despite his 63 days of undercover work, he has no idea what Pimento is going through, he convinces him to rejoin the team.
Meanwhile, Captain Holt has enlisted Gina’s help to create a video for a grant proposal he’s submitting. Holt wants a no-nonsense, straightforward video, but Gina has visions of smoke machines, CGI horses, and karate. After Holt storms off, Gina hires actors to play Holt and Rosa for the video. Holt is furious when he finds out and fires Gina from her directorial duties, but she submits a video anyway and the grant submission board loves it. She was able to curtail her need for pizazz and used the abysmal state of the precinct to showcase why the Nine-Nine needs funds so badly.
While Gina and Holt wage their video war, Boyle’s war with Mean Marge is escalating. Trash bags have now been piling up around the precinct for days and the breakroom where the stew explosion took place is still so bad it’s been blocked off as a crime scene. Mean Marge admits she’s really upset because none of them even know her last name and yet she knows everything about them: Terry throws his daughters’ drawings away, Boyle secretly eats fast food, and Amy accidentally wrote “their” instead of “there” on a memo.
The team decides to make it up to Marge by naming the breakroom after her if she’ll agree to let them clean it up before the naming ceremony. This plan works, they’re able to get their breakroom clean, and Marge agrees to return to cleaning the precinct — except for big messes. Boyle, of course, manages to break a dozen champagne bottles and a window about 2.5 seconds after she says this.
All in all, I wasn’t loving this episode. Pimento is unhinged in a creepy way, rather than a comical one, and it’s unclear how long he’ll be sticking around, but it seems it’ll be at least another episode. At least the Vulture is hilarious when he shows up; Pimento is just sad and scary. Maybe we can have an upcoming episode where Pimento and the Vulture face off. Now that would be interesting.
Bullets on the Bulletin Board:
- “I went undercover. 63 days, no big deal. You probably forgot.” “No, it’s your outgoing voicemail message.” “Hey, it’s Jake. Can’t get to the phone right now. I might be undercover again, like I was for 63 days. Byeeeee.”
- “What the hell, Boyle?! You almost killed me! I’m not going out in a stew-making accident! Terry’s gonna die saving the President or Terry’s never gonna die!”
- “I understand you have some filmmaking experience.” “Well, yeah, I’ve been re-vined by Rob Kardashian, so yeah, I’m a director.”
- “You added the one ingredient I didn’t want: pizazz.” “Pizazz is who I am. Would you tell the sky to stop being so blue?” “Yes. I wish it were tan. It’s my favorite color. It’s no nonsense.”
- “Bolt cutters? Bolt cutters have literally never been used by an innocent person.” “I use them all the time when I make jewelry.” “What? Oh my god. Follow up questions later.”
- “I know you call me ‘Mean Marge.’ Do you even know my last name?” “Mop-bucket?” “Scully, don’t guess!”
- “Pimento’s mementos. I know you have a gun on me, but I just couldn’t resist the rhyme. Sorry.”
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