Monday, May 7, 2018

Brooklyn Nine-Nine 5x18 and 5x19 Recaps: “Gray Star Mutual” &“Bachelor/ette Party” (Food Truck Fires and Bach Boys) [Contributor: Alisa Williams]


“Gray Star Mutual”
Original Airdate: April 22, 2018

We’re in the last few weeks of the season for Brooklyn Nine-Nine and lots is happening, so let’s dive right in! A water main has broken downtown and it’s causing quite a few headaches. It seems Captain Holt’s main competition for the commissioner’s seat, Captain Olivia Crawford, tweeted a statement showing support for the city employees working hard to fix the water main, and the mayor retweeted her. Holt doesn’t get why this matters, but Gina and Terry are quick to fill him in. They’re insistent he needs a social media presence if he’s going to ever have a shot at beating Crawford but he refuses. The commissioner position is a serious job and shouldn’t be treated like a popularity contest, says Holt.

When they can’t convince him to join Twitter, they take matters into their own hands and decide to set up a Twitter account for Holt’s adorable dog, Cheddar. Holt walks in on Gina, Terry, and Cheddar in the middle of a photo shoot. Cheddar is sporting swim trunks and is standing on a surf board. Holt finally acquiesces to a Twitter account of his own to spare his dog ridiculous outfits.

Meanwhile, Boyle confesses to Jake that he’s gotten himself into deep water with his food truck. It’s hemorrhaging money, he never sees his family, had to fire his only employee, and he’s stressed out all the time. He took out a huge loan to get started in the food truck business, and even got Amy to invest, but he’s just not earning enough back to pay off his debts, let alone make a profit. Just as he finishes telling Jake how awful everything is, he gets a call saying his truck has burned down.

When they get to the scene, they’re shocked to find Adrian Pimento, Rosa’s ex-fiancé, leading the investigation for the insurance company, Gray Star Mutual. Adrian has declared it arson and is convinced Boyle did it to collect on the insurance money. Boyle is able to eventually convince Adrian that he didn’t do it and it must have been Troy, a fellow food trucker and Boyle’s fiercest competition. They head to Troy’s place to stake it out and Jake lets slip to Adrian that he and Amy got engaged. Adrian’s furious that no one told him. When he finds out there’s been a lot of things he’s missed over the last few months, he storms off.

When Troy finally arrives home, Jake and Boyle confront him but he has a rock-solid alibi and couldn’t have burned down Boyle’s truck. So, they head back to Boyle’s apartment. where Adrian is waiting in the dark like the creeper he is. He’s back to being convinced Boyle burned down his own truck. Though, in reality, Adrian’s still just upset no one kept in contact with him. He also discovered turpentine in Boyle’s apartment, and turpentine was the accelerant used to start the food truck fire. Even though Boyle tries to explain that his wife uses turpentine when she paints, Adrian still denies the insurance claim.

The next day, Jake and Boyle take a trip to Gray Star Mutual to file a complaint against Adrian, and ask for a new investigator to look into the fire, but it doesn’t go well. Adrian was listening in and after his boss leaves, he storms into the room and locks himself in with Boyle and Jake. Adrian’s boss tries to get him to open the door but he refuses. He gives Boyle and Jake a pop quiz on himself, convinced they don’t know him at all. But they ace the test and just as Adrian forgives them for not keeping in touch (and admits he didn’t keep in touch either), his boss comes back in and fires him. The boss also lets Boyle and Jake know that they’re upholding the denial of Boyle’s claim.

Meanwhile, Rosa and Amy are investigating a string of bodega robberies. Rosa notices Amy keeps getting distracted by wedding dresses. Amy tries to deny it at first because she feels ashamed for caring so much about finding a dress when she thinks she should be focusing on her new job as a sergeant instead. Rosa sternly tells her she can be both a great sergeant and a woman who cares about finding the perfect dress and tells her they’ll be using their lunch break to try on dresses. But just as Amy is trying on the first one, they get a call that another robbery has just occurred nearby and then they see a suspect go running by the bridal shop window. Amy takes off after him in the wedding dress, dodging pedestrians, jumping over vehicles, and finally tackling him and tying up his hands with the sash from her dress.

Rosa gives Amy a pep talk about how incredibly she’s proved herself time and time again and she shouldn’t feel bad about wanting a great wedding dress, nor should she care about anyone else’s opinion. After all, she just leapt over a car and took down a perp, and no one can deny she’s a great cop, whether she’s wearing a wedding dress or a sergeant’s uniform.

Things aren’t going nearly as great back at the precinct. Terry and Gina show Holt another tweet from Captain Crawford, and this one was retweeted by both the mayor and the governor. Holt’s not worried. He’s set up his Twitter account and is ready to send his first tweet. There’s one slight problem, though. Twitter thinks he’s a bot because he’s used an obscure all numbers Twitter handle and his first tweet is gibberish to anyone who’s not law enforcement (and probably most who are). Much to his outrage, his Twitter account is deactivated.

Despite contacting Twitter, they aren’t able to get Holt’s account reinstated. Holt says that’s okay. He just got off the phone with the commissioner’s office. Apparently, one of the other candidates had tweeted a photo of the water main break and accidentally included a link to a porn site in the tweet. That candidate has now dropped out, leaving only three competitors. Though Captain Crawford is still in the running, Holt feels vindicated in not falling prey to the allure of social media. Terry and Gina, however, notice that Cheddar, who is asleep on the sofa, is wearing a very fetching beret. Holt admits that his husband, Kevin, liked the photos Gina and Terry had taken earlier and decided to set up an Instagram account for Cheddar, who now has 14,000 followers.

Jake, Boyle, and Adrian are still on the hunt for who might have burned Boyle’s food truck down. The only other person Boyle can think of is his former employee, Ted, who he couldn’t afford to keep on. Apparently, it went very poorly when Boyle fired him. Boyle had taken him out to dinner, and poor Ted thought he was getting a promotion and brought his whole family along, who then had to witness the firing. Boyle, Jake, and Adrian pay a visit to Ted and sure enough, he has turpentine, matches, and magnesium strips. They’ve caught him red-handed, and Gray Star Mutual retracts their denial and Boyle gets his money after all.

Bullets on the Bulletin Board:
  • “That was the most stressful thing I’ve ever gone through. And I was wrongfully imprisoned last year!”
  • “The only way out of this hole is to keep digging.” “That’s not how holes work.”
  • “I’m the creepy guy that’s supposed to be at stuff that you have happen!”
  • “Twitter thinks you’re a bot.” “WHY?! I’m a human! I’m a human male!”


“Bachelor/ette Party”
Original Airdate: April 29, 2018

It’s time to party! Jake, Holt, Terry, and Boyle are off to Jake’s bachelor party, while Amy, Gina, Rosa, Hitchcock, Scully are headed to Amy’s bachelorette party. (Amy lost a bet to Jake and that’s why she has to put up with Hitchcock and Scully.)

Boyle’s been planning Jake’s bachelor party for literally a decade and is super excited for the festivities to commence. He even had special “Bach Boys” fanny packs made for all of them. They head outside where a mysterious limo pulls up and throws a bag out the window before speeding off. It turns out Boyle has organized a scavenger hunt and the bag contains the first clue.

Amy’s party was organized by her BFF, Kylie, who wants to start their time together with a discussion on the etymology of the word “bachelorette.” Before that can get started, Rosa takes over and decides they’re going to play Never Have I Ever. The problem is, Amy’s never done anything wild or crazy. They try to scale it down, but she’s never done anything even remotely wrong like changing lanes without signaling or clicking accept without reading the full terms and conditions. She’s never even used more than the recommended amount of conditioner on her hair. While the rest of them are pretty drunk by now, Amy hasn’t even taken a sip. They try to change to a different game but Amy’s insistent there will be something she’s done, too.

Finally she comes up with the fact that she had a one-night stand with the lead singer of the band at Kylie’s wedding. Unfortunately, Kylie didn’t know and told Jake that Amy really liked that band and so he booked it for their wedding as a surprise. Oops. Now Amy’s panicked. She can’t have some creeper one-night stand at her wedding. But she also can’t cancel the wedding band without telling Jake why. They decide to head down to where the band is playing tonight and convince the one-night stand guy, Constantine Kane, to back out of the wedding. While Amy, Kylie, Rosa, and Gina head out, Hitchcock and Scully head to the hospital so Scully can get his stomach pumped. This is a regular occurrence for Scully, so no need to worry.

Meanwhile, the Bach Boys have been wandering around for hours on the scavenger hunt. Everyone’s starving but Boyle’s not done yet. The limo pulls up again and this time the driver “kidnaps” Boyle. Their task is to solve where Boyle’s been taken, but after another hour and a half, the clues the limo driver left have given them nothing and they’re too hungry to think straight. Terry says that if they can just figure out where Boyle will be at the end of the night, they can have fun in the meantime. Jake agrees, as long as they don’t tell Boyle they did any bachelor party festivities without him. Terry hacks Boyle’s email and figures out where he’ll be hiding and then they head to a fancy restaurant.

Over at the bachelorette party, they’ve tracked down Constantine Kane and while he’s singing a truly horrible original, Amy confesses to the ladies that it was more than just a one-night stand. When she tried to sneak out the next morning, he started crying, then his mom Facetimed and he introduced her as his girlfriend. She felt so bad that they ended up dating for three months. Just then, Constantine spots her in the audience, and shouts out that Amy Santiago, the love of his life, is here!

The Bach Boys have finished up at their fancy restaurant, and are quite full of steaks and shots. They try to act sober as they make their way to a giant yacht that Terry found a rental receipt for in Boyle’s email. Sure enough, Boyle’s there and he’s rented the yacht and is serving… steaks and shots! Jake, Holt, and Terry now have to act both sober and hungry, even though they are definitely neither at the moment.

During dinner, Boyle asks how Jake liked meeting Reginald VelJohnson, from Die Hard. Apparently, he was part of the scavenger hunt, which Jake skipped. Jake’s always wanted to meet him and now he’s feeling super sorry and guilty for skipping out on the night Boyle planned. Boyle then asks them to produce their gold coins, but of course they have no idea what he’s talking about. Terry says he lost his, which is when Boyle informs him that each gold coin cost $800, but that’s fine, because he knows Terry will pay him back. He then asks Holt to produce his coin, but Holt says he ate his, thinking it was chocolate. Boyle starts to get suspicious. Holt hates chocolate so clearly something is going on. Boyle finally realizes they skipped his scavenger hunt. Not only that, but Holt lets slip that they changed their bachelor party name from the Bach Boys to the Steak Studs. This is unforgivable.

Things aren’t going well with the bachelorette party either. Amy asks Constantine to cancel the wedding gig he has coming up, but he already knows it’s her wedding, has written her a love song, and plans to sing it at her wedding and win her back. She says fine, she’s just going to tell Jake everything and cancel Constantine’s band, but it seems Constantine’s a bit craftier than she gave him credit for. When he realized it was Jake and Amy’s wedding, he put a huge kill fee of $15,000 in the contract, which of course Jake signed without reading. This is why you always read the terms and conditions!

Rosa says the only thing to do is to steal the contract and destroy it. Amy’s against stealing legal documents, but Rosa says she doesn’t have to be part of it. They’re her bachelorettes and they have her back! Unfortunately, Constantine has seen all of them, so they can’t approach him. He hasn’t, however, seen Hitchcock and Scully yet, who are back from the hospital. They pretend to be record executives interested in signing Constantine, while Rosa sneaks over to Constantine’s man purse to grab the contract. But it’s not there! Constantine catches Rosa and shows her he had the contract with him the whole time. While he gloats, Amy races up behind him, grabs the contract out of his hand, races over to the bar, jumps on top of it, and dunks the contract in alcohol then sets it on fire. She’s so excited about destroying it she declares free shots for everyone, and as she’s telling Constantine to suck it, she slips and falls right off the bar. But she’s okay! She has a nasty gash on her head which will probably lead to a permanent scar, but the contract’s destroyed and she broke the rules for the first time in her life!

Over on the yacht, Boyle has stormed off and Jake feels terrible. They decide the only thing they can do to redeem themselves is to solve the whole scavenger hunt. They need to find those $800 gold coins to prove they did it, and then they can present them to Boyle and beg his forgiveness. But the scavenger hunt is just too tough, so they decide to track down Reginald VelJohnson at his apartment first and enlist his help. He’s not happy about being disturbed late at night by three drunk guys who stood him up earlier, but he finally agrees to help just to get Jake to leave him alone.

VelJohnson takes them to where Boyle is. Jake apologizes, and Boyle apologizes, too. He realized he made the scavenger hunt too hard, and that he’s really just upset that things are going to change when Jake gets married. But Jake assures him that they’ll always be best friends.

Both parties meet up at the bar afterward, where Amy confesses she had to cancel their band because she once dated the lead singer. Jake already knows because Constantine left him a very long, very detailed message about it, but he doesn’t care. What’s important is they’re getting married!

Bullets on the Bulletin Board:
  • “I’ve been planning this bachelor party for 10 years.” “But I met Amy eight years ago.” “What does she have to do with this?”
  • “You’re in luck! The fanny pack is full of granola!” “Mmm... loose granola...” “I DON’T WANT FANNY GRANOLA!”
  • “Captain, your coin please.” “... I ate mine.” “You ate it?” “Yes, I thought it was chocolate.” “But you hate chocolate. It has too much taste.” 
  • “I can’t believe you pissed off Reginald VelJohnson just to find me!” “Oh, he’ll get over it.” “No, I won’t! You’ve made an enemy for life. And I’m telling Bruce Willis you suck.”

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