Brooklyn Nine-Nine: The Apartment Recap

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA62EC8MRtw]

Brooklyn Nine-Nine: The Apartment (1×18)

Summary: Gina helps Jake figure out his money situation in order to buy back his Nana’s apartment. Santiago stresses over her self-evaluation. Boyle helps Diaz plot revenge on the weekend crew officer who keeps shaving at her desk.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Oof. Man, did this episode hit close to home.

After an embarrassing incident of Peralta calling Holt “Dad,” the squad comes in during the weekend for their yearly evaluations. Jeffords is excited because he’s super proud of how far his squad has come in a year.

Of course, it starts going downhill the minute Peralta steps in because he asks Holt and Jeffords for half a million dollars to buy his Nana’s apartment from the co-op board that has just been put in place in the complex. They refuse, but Gina offers to help him since they grew up together and Jake’s Nana made her the “intelligent, sensuous woman [she is] today.” Man, how weird was Jake’s grandmother then?

Also, yes, Gina and Jake have known each other for years. Welcome to backstory land, kids!

Since Gina isn’t much help to Holt and Jeffords, she goes to help Jake figure out how to buy his Nana’s apartment. The problem is though is that Jake has a massive spending problem. Three turntables and five massage chairs? No wonder Jake is in crushing debt. Needing a quick way to make the money, Jake goes to a loan shark for the down payment, despite Gina telling him that’s a bad, bad idea. Little Mermaid metaphors are used. That’s how serious that is.

However, Gina doesn’t get to have an “I told you so” on the loan shark since Jake’s payment is rejected by his landlord and he is told to move out by next week. Gina tells him that they’ll find him a new apartment (all while calling him “girl”) and they start the hunt, but everything they come across in Jake’s price range sucks out loud. I was rather fond of the dingy warehouse style loft, but you’d probably have to put more into maintenance and refurbishment than you’re paying in rent.

And the toilet in the middle of the room is an understandable turnoff.

With certain homelessness on the horizon, Gina offers a proposal to Jake: She’ll buy the apartment as a “real estate opportunity” and be Jake’s landlady until he finds a new place. She has been saving after all. Annoyed by the fact Gina would even propose that, Jake kicks her out of the apartment.

Later, Jake manages to talk through his issues with… er… at Santiago and realizes that he’s more upset over the fact that Gina, who has a job at the department because of Jake, has her life more together than he does. Jake goes to apologize to her and tells her to go ahead and move into Nana’s old apartment. He’ll sublet Gina’s old apartment from her since it’s a good starter apartment. Awww… look at Jake growing up and stuff.

Back at the department, Diaz is grousing over the weekend crew while waiting for her evaluation since her desk buddy Detective Lohank constantly shaves at her desk and denies it later. She catches him in the act and is ready to beat him up, but Boyle suggests that they fill his locker with shaving cream and loose hair instead to get back at him. Diaz agrees and the two end up bonding as they trash Lohank’s locker. However, they feel really bad about it almost immediately  after when they talk to Lohank and find out that his life is currently really terrible between his wife being addicted to pain meds, his dog getting hit by a drunk driver, and being diagnosed with prostate cancer himself. They try to clean out his locker surreptitiously, but get caught by Holt and Jeffords in the act. Still, the two manage to do it before poor Lohank sees.

As the two are leaving, Boyle apologizes to Diaz for being obsessed with her for the past year, which I was really impressed with since a lot of shows wouldn’t even bother having their characters do this. Brooklyn Nine-Nine isn’t most shows though. Diaz forgives him and tells Boyle he’s much more fun when he’s in love with someone else. I hope this leaves the door open for them to have a bigger friendship in the future.

While all of this is going on, Santiago goes in for her evaluation, being her usual over-prepared self. However, Holt catches her off-guard and asks her what she thinks her biggest flaw is. She answers with the usual positive “flaws” that we all answer with when we don’t want to admit that we procrastinate or are assholes at trivia because we have way too much pop culture knowledge. Holt doesn’t seem impressed though and in a panic, Santiago goes off to reassess herself and comes back with a whole laundry list of flaws about herself in order to figure out what exactly Holt wants. When he still seems disappointed, Santiago goes off to have a shame cigarette and ask Peralta what exactly Holt wants. He predictably answers with, “Who cares what Holt thinks?”

Between Santiago and Scully and Hitchcock only having a collective 14 arrests, Jeffords goes to Holt and chews him out for playing mind games with Santiago, tells him that Scully and Hitchcock are up more than half from where they were last year, and that Peralta has actually grown up a lot since Holt came around. Holt admits to all of this and tells Jeffords that he has a lot to learn from him and that he should be proud of his squad. Yay for mutual respect and willingness to call the other out!

Even better? Santiago thinks on what Peralta says and tells Holt that her biggest flaw is that she cares too much about what he thinks about her and that she’s not going to do that anymore. Which appears to be the right answer, but Amy doesn’t care. Awww yeah character development.

This episode was pretty standard for Brooklyn Nine-Nine, but not a bad one in the slightest. I certainly loved all the character development that happened in the episode. It was also just a close to home one for me since I could relate a lot to Peralta figuring out how to grow up and Santiago trying to figure out what actually impresses people she wants approval from. It just goes to show how much Brooklyn Nine-Nine is the best and realest comedy on TV right now.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yOfYH17Lbs]