PERFECT? HAH!
Flawed but funny cops of ‘Nine-Nine’ return
The cops of “Brooklyn NineNine” aren’t perfect and it’s funnier when they’re not.
But the imperfections of police officers outside the fictional 99th Precinct in the NBC comedy are even more important to the story for showrunner and co-creator Dan Goor.
“Even from the beginning, we’ve tried to show that there are good police and bad police,” Goor told the Daily News, citing a first-season episode about a deputy commissioner who gets his son off the hook for graffiti. “We try to just not paint a sunny picture of police.”
That’s been a semi-recent trend for cop shows, the shift from propaganda-like series including “NCIS” and “Law and Order” to more realistic, sometimes flawed portrayals like “The Red Line,” last year’s limited series about a Chicago officer who accidentally shoots and kills a black man.
Goor says Season 7 of “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” debuting Thursday at 8 p.m., will include a storyline about undocumented witnesses “and the difficulties that exist in the current climate for the police when it comes to dealing with the immigrant community.”
But the balance of tone on “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” is important.
“We’re a comedy show,” Goor said. “We still want it to be funny, not preachy.”
Long before former Mayor Mike Bloomberg launched his presidential bid, “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” took on stop-andfrisk in Season 6 and the dangers of racial profiling in the devastating Season 4 “Moo Moo” episode. Last season wrapped with a multi-episode arc about illegal wiretapping. A #MeToo-themed episode, “He Said, She Said,” dove into the delicate nature of sexual assault allegations and workplace harassment.
Actress Stephanie Beatriz, who plays the leather jacketclad Detective Rosa Diaz, compares storytelling on “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” to a “22-minute scripted, three-act little play.”
“Some of us are able to go to live theater, some of us are able to go to movies,” Beatriz, 38, told The News. “The great thing about TV is that if you’re able to have a laptop or a phone, you can partake in that storytelling. We’re gently reflecting back the issues of our time back to us.
“It’s a balance between this story that deserves to be told in our world and one that also still fits in our world, that still fits in the ‘Brooklyn NineNine’ comedy that we’re known for.”
Season 7 picks up almost immediately after the last one, with Capt. Holt (Andre Baugher) taking on his new job as a traffic cop, demoted to finish his training by nemesis
Madeline Wuntch (Kyra Sedgwick) and partnered with guest star Vanessa Bayer.
The rest of the Nine-Nine continues apace and with mostly the same old hijinks.
“Capt. Holt is a uniformed officer. [Detective] Jake and [Sgt.] Amy are progressing in their married life. Rosa’s still wearing her leather jacket,” Beatriz said. “Some things change, but some things will always stay the same.”
Goor, who went to high school in Brooklyn Heights and grew up at another NBC sitcom, “Parks and Rec,” alongside Michael Schur (“The Office,” “The Good Place”), said he and the other writers take care to give time to all of their wild characters, even if it’s a struggle to fit everything in a 22-minute episode.
“We’re really as committed as possible to making sure the A-story, the Jake story, is Jake and a different character almost every week,” he said of his lead character, played by Andy Samberg.