Thursday, May 25, 2017

Brooklyn Nine-Nine 4x21 and 4x22 Recap: “The Bank Job” & “Crime & Punishment” (Time to Get Dirty) [Contributor: Alisa Williams]


“The Bank Job” & “Crime & Punishment”
Original Airdate: May 23, 2017

Another pair of back-to-back episodes this week close out season four of Brooklyn Nine-Nine. It’s been a wild season that started us off in Florida with Captain Holt and Jake undercover, saw the whole team assigned to the dreaded night shift, the precinct almost closed down, and now a dirty lieutenant is wreaking havoc for Rosa and Jake. Let’s see what cliffhangers the final two episodes have in store for us, shall we?

In the first episode of the night, Jake and Rosa go straight to Captain Holt with their suspicions about Lieutenant Hawkins being the secret leader of the bank robbing ring. Holt says because Hawkins is one of the most respected officers in the city, they’re going to need hard evidence before they take what they know to Internal Affairs. So, they head back to Hawkins’ HQ to find out what they can.

They have no luck, however, and Holt surmises it’s because Hawkins knows they’re good cops so she’s not going to let them anywhere near her plans. They decide their only option is to recruit a super sketchy dude to help them out. The natural choice is cop-turned-PI and Rosa’s fiancé, Adrian Pimento, who I for one hoped to never see again. They come up with a plan: Jake and Rosa will beat up Adrian (who is super excited about this) in front of Hawkins, which will convince her they’re dirty, and then they’ll be let into her inner circle.

The plan works perfectly. They beat him up in a room they pretend didn’t know had a camera. When they ask Hawkins to delete the footage for them so there’s no evidence of them beating up a suspect, she says she already did and then invites them out for drinks with the rest of her team. She even tells them to bring some cocaine with them to make it a true party.

Back at the precinct, the team has some suspicions of their own — about Gina. She’s had three doctor’s appointments in one week and Terry, Amy, and Boyle are convinced she’s pregnant. They’re sure of it when they find a file on her computer labeled “Baby Names.”

Boyle’s super excited and wants to confront Gina right away but Terry and Amy tell him to respect her privacy and let her make the announcement when she’s ready. This lasts about two seconds until Boyle sees Gina drinking coffee and runs to smack it out of her hand and lecture her about caffeine intake while pregnant.

Gina admits to them that she is indeed pregnant but she refuses to reveal who the father is, saying that she signed a nondisclosure agreement because he’s really famous. They’re super impressed but now they want to know who it is more than ever.

At lunchtime, she tells them she’s off to meet up with the father for a fancy lunch, so of course they follow her. But they find her sitting alone on a sidewalk bench eating a greasy pizza.

When they confront her about what they saw she finally admits that the father is one of Boyle’s cousins. Boyle is beyond excited about this. After a bit of sleuthing, Boyle figures out which cousin it is. He confides to Terry and Amy that the cousin is Milton — the worst of the Boyle cousins. Apparently, Milton is a “troll” and a loser. Just then, he shows up at the precinct and by anyone else’s standards, Milton (played by Ryan Phillipe) is quite a catch and doesn’t look anything like the rest of Boyle’s family. And he’s perfect for Gina. They’re both super weird in all the same ways.

Later that day, Holt manages to get a bag of cocaine out of evidence for Rosa and Jake. Pimento even offers to show them how to fake snort it but only manages to actually snort it three times. Rosa says they’ll just give the real bag to Hawkins and have a different bag for themselves of fake cocaine made out of Vitamin B powder.

Hawkins wasn’t kidding about partying hard. She confiscates everyone’s phones and then they party all night with whiskey and cocaine. Bright and early the next morning, Hawkins wakes them up (they crashed at the bar) and announces they’re officially in the inner circle and they’re going to rob a bank. Right now. Jake and Rosa try to make an excuse so they can zip back to the precinct and tell Holt, but there’s no time. Fortunately, Rosa was able to sneak Jake’s phone back and he sends a text to Holt about the bank job.

Holt and the team suit up and head out. Just as they arrive at the bank, Pimento shows up too. He’s still high and races into the bank ahead of them. When Holt and the team rush in, it’s the wrong bank. Jake and Rosa are in a completely different bank when all of a sudden a different team rushes in and arrests them. They try to explain they’re working an undercover job but just then Hawkins shows up and accuses them of being the “Golden Gang,” who her team has been tracking for months. When the masks are pulled off the other robbers in custody, instead of being members of her undercover team, they’re two guys Jake and Rosa have never seen before. As Hawkins is leading Jake away she laughs and whispers to him that she can’t believe he thought he could take her down.

In the season finale, we fast forward two months and it’s time for Rosa and Jake’s trial for the bank robbery. They face up to 15 years in prison if convicted but are out on bond at the moment. Melanie Hawkins is being heralded as a hero by the city. The night before the trial, the team gathers, along with Sam, the lawyer. The case against Jake and Rosa is super strong, especially since they were working off the books to take down Hawkins so there’s no official paper trail, only Holt’s word and theirs. But the prosecution has Hawkins, the city’s most esteemed detective and airtight alibis for all of her team.

The good thing is, there is absolutely no evidence to tie Jake and Rosa to any of the other robberies and they have airtight alibis for all those dates. Additionally, there’s absolutely nothing tying Jake or Rosa to the missing millions in stolen money. So, they’ll just have to convince the jury that being caught red-handed at this one was a big misunderstanding.

Amy wants to talk to Jake about what happens if he’s found guilty but Jake refuses, saying they will win for sure. Boyle is not taking the stress well. All his hair has turned white (all of it, he tells Terry) and then his back gives out the morning of the trial (because he was trying to dye his pubes) so he’s wheelchair bound.

The trial does not get off to a great start. Eye-witnesses can identify Jake and Rosa as the “ring leaders” at the scene. And as for the previous three robberies, well, the other two bank robbers who Jake and Rosa had never seen before that day say that was all part of the plan. Rosa and Jake weren’t at the first three so they could establish their alibis and sent two other robbers in their place to make up the team of four. This guy says he think they probably killed the other two robbers to prevent them from testifying and, despite the lawyer’s objections, the jury seems to buy it. Things are not going well.

Then they get worse. Hawkins takes the stand and says that just that morning her team uncovered bank accounts in the Cayman Islands in Jake and Rosa’s names containing $26 million. Uh oh. She even has signed paperwork from the bank and says the bank manager will positively ID them.

Holt isn’t giving up yet. He says all they have to do is prove Hawkins opened the accounts in their names and then they can take her down. They’ll need a hacker to break into the bank’s system and fortunately Boyle knows just the guy. His name is Pandemic and he sets to work. After five hours, he hasn’t gotten very far so he calls in another hacker — her name is Nightmare. After a few more hours, they call in a nameless third hacker.

Jake is feeling a little more hopeful as well. He’s tracked down a Detective Matthew Langdon, who seems to have had a falling out with Hawkins 14 years ago and then disappeared. He thinks Langdon might have some info to share. Rosa isn’t doing as well with everything. Holt can’t get ahold of her so he stops by her apartment and finds she’s about to run. Pimento has a place in Argentina and that’s where she’s headed. He tries to reason with her but it doesn’t work and she heads out. He follows her to the bus and tries to convince her again but it doesn’t work. He says her family (the Nine-Nine) will miss her and then walks away.

Jake and Amy find Langdon and he hesitantly agrees to talk to them about what he knows. Apparently, he caught her taking payments from a drug dealer and she threatened to kill him or his wife if he didn’t disappear and leave his wife behind. He still fears for his wife’s life so he refuses to help them. Just as they’re about to head back to the city, however, Langdon says he’ll come with them and testify.

Back in the courtroom the next morning, everyone’s there except Jake and Rosa. Jake texts Holt to say he’s just a few minutes away. Holt tries to make an excuse for Rosa but just then she walks in and tells Holt she couldn’t leave her family. The judge comes in next and asks where Jake is, just as he barges into the courtroom with Amy and Langdon.

Meanwhile, the hackers have finally got something. They don’t have a name but they do have the shell corporation the money really came from — Flaxton Hill Holdings. Terry and Boyle haven’t heard of it but they text it to Amy in the courthouse to see if any of the other team members have. Amy flashes back to the farm they found Langdon at and remembers seeing that the name of the farm was “Flaxton Hill.” It’s a set up! But Langdon’s already on the stand testifying and just as Amy tells Jake that Langdon’s dirty too, he tells the jury Hawkins was the most honorable cop he ever knew. Furthermore, he says Jake offered him $300,000 to lie and say Hawkins was dirty. Unsurprisingly, the jury finds both Jake and Rosa guilty on all charges. And it’s the end of season four!

Bullets on the Bulletin Board:
  • “Why is this so hard for me? Do I even have quads?”
  • “Where’s Gina going? That’s like the third time she’s taken off this week.” “She has a doctor’s appointment.” “You know what that’s code for: she’s taking a nap in the furnace room.” “Is that what you do? Because you really should go to the doctor. When you breathe it sounds like someone’s shaking a bag of quarters.” 
  • “I’m trying to read your womb vibe.” “Exactly. Knock it off.” “The daddy’s a Property Brother, isn’t he? It’s a property baby!”
  • “He works for a snow apparel company that donates snow to the poor.” “Water.” 
  • “How you feeling?” “Good. Good. I was just working on my innocent face. Check it out: I’m a nice boy.” “Oh no. I don’t think that’s doing what you want it to at all.” “Oh. Okay. Well, it doesn’t matter because my normal face is my innocent face because I’m innocent.” 
  • “You questioning my abilities? Watch this. What’s your name?” “Why do you need my—” “Terrence Vincent Jeffords.” “Wait. What’s happening?” “You’re getting hacked bro, that’s what’s happening.” “No, don’t do that!” “I’m in your home computer…” “You are?! Get out!” “You got a lot of songs by Natalie Imbruglia.” “I bought those back in the 90s.” “Nope. Downloaded on Thursday.”

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