Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Full Boyle Recap

Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Full Boyle (1×17)

Summary: When Boyle starts to go “Full Boyle” on his new girlfriend, Peralta tries to serve as a buffer to keep him from scaring her off. Diaz and Santiago are moved off a case after they make fun of a citizen known as Super Dan. Holt drafts Gina into helping him maintain the gay/lesbian organization he started years before.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

This episode felt kind of weird in the same way the Super Bowl episode did. Not as weird, but still a bit off.

Since the last episode, Boyle has started to date Vivian (Marilu Henner), the professor and food writer that Boyle hooked up with at the Captain’s party. It’s started to make him more confident, even to the point Gina is briefly attracted to him. However, Peralta worries as Boyle begins to plan for their twenty day anniversary that he is going “Full Boyle.” Which is when Boyle gets way too heavy way too fast in a relationship and women break up with him because of it. Boyle denies it, but when Peralta tests him to see if he can push the date back one night, Boyle can’t do it and realizes he’s gone way too far.

Not wanting to scare Vivian off, Boyle enlists Peralta to help him cool off. The two decide to make the date a double date with Vivian bringing her friend Bernice, who Peralta is certain he won’t be attracted to and will make it easier for him to keep an eye on Boyle. However, it turns out Bernice is very attractive and loves the Nets and Die Hard. Which in turn makes it hard for Peralta to concentrate on Boyle as the conversation gets more Full Boyle-y any time he talks to Vivian. When Vivian and Bernice go to use the bathroom, Boyle and Peralta decide to have Boyle leave on an “emergency call,” effectively ending the date.

It almost works, but then Peralta spots Boyle wandering around the restaurant outside looking nervous because he went the fullest of Full Boyle and bought an engagement ring at a pawn shop in a love fueled haze. Peralta knows Boyle has gone too far and takes the ring from Boyle, threatening to drop it into a hot vat of hot dog water at a nearby stand. Well, let just say it ends in the funniest moment of the episode where Peralta and Boyle spray each other in the eyes with pepper spray. It’s stupid how much I laughed at that scene while it was happening.

The next day, the two apologize to each other for the pepper spray incident, but Boyle wonders if he’s going to scare Vivian off. Jake assures him it will be okay since he still has his phone to keep him from calling her and the two proceed to arrest the cabbie they’ve been chasing for two days.

At the station, Peralta calls Boyle into the interrogation room to question the cabbie. However, it’s actually set up with a table, roses, and doves. Peralta set up the room that way because it turns out that Vivian is Full Boyle too, if her texts and voicemails to Boyle’s phone wondering if she’s moving too fast is any indicator. Peralta doesn’t know if Boyle is making the right choice, but he hands over the slightly melted ring and lets him find out.

Boyle gets engaged to Vivian in the interrogation room as Peralta and Santiago look on happily, but it quickly becomes a sex show when Vivian throws Boyle against the glass. Peralta is tempted to stop and watch, but Santiago ushers him out of the room as the episode ends. Ummm… okay Jake. I guess you’re cool with watching your friend and coworker have sex. Not my thing, but if Boyle’s fine with it, whatever.

That plot line felt perfectly in character for Boyle and Peralta. It was the other two that worried me slightly.

During the Potential Full Boyle Catastrophe of 2014, Santiago and Diaz were working on a drug case to try and catch drug dealers. However, Jeffords pushes them off the case and gives it to Scully and Hitchcock after the two make fun of a wannabe superhero named Super Dan instead of taking his statement on the drug dealers he spotted like they should have. You know, if this had been Diaz and Peralta, I would have understood this plot line better. But it’s Diaz and Santiago. Santiago is such a stickler for the rules that I feel like it would have been more accurate for her to take Super Dan’s statement and just make fun of him later. THIS IS NOT HOW YOU MAKE CAPTAIN, AMY. Luckily, the two learn from their mistakes and end up taking his statement after Jeffords puts them back on the case. Because you can’t leave a case like this to Scully and Hitchcock when Hitchcock knows he deserves to get slapped by Diaz and Scully eats frozen yogurt with his gun.

Meanwhile, Holt is approached by a young cop named Brian Jensen, who is a member of the African American Gay and Lesbian New York City Policeman’s Association (or the AAGNYCLPA for short). Jensen has great respect for Holt and the organization that he started, which is why he’s letting him know that he’ll be running for President. Holt is immediately dismissive of Jensen and sets out with Gina to “destroy him” in the election. Gina agrees to help by (poorly) attempting to dig up dirt on Jensen and having Floorgasm perform before the meeting in endorsement for Holt. Holt isn’t big on the dance troupe though and decides to stick with trying to destroy Jensen. Mostly because he fears leaving the organization he started 25 years ago in the hands of someone with considerably less experience. Gina wonder if that’s a bad thing, since Jensen actually seems to have some pretty good ideas and he actually seems to exemplify what Holt started the organization for: giving people like himself and Jensen a voice and make sure that people that follow after Holt didn’t have to struggle like he did. Holt considers this and immediately steps down to let Jensen become president. However, he does threaten to impeach him if he screws it up.

I know that Holt was mostly worried about leaving an organization that is essentially his baby, but the whole storyline played into the strangely power obsessed storyline from ‘Operation: Broken Feather’ that doesn’t feel very Holt like to me. I loved that it was Gina who talked some sense into him though because it’s an important thing to remember that behind all the weirdness, Gina is actually very smart and perceptive. I also love that they continued the joke that everyone outside of the 99 thinks Holt is hilarious with the weird oppression joke that everyone but Gina laughed at.

I’m still unsure about this episode. I liked some parts of it, but other parts left me cold and unsure. Maybe it was just an off day, but I don’t think everyone at the precinct is this… well… douchey. Let’s hope everyone is back on track in the next episode.