Saving 'Brooklyn Nine-Nine' Was Business, But The Love Of It Is Real

[TMC]

https://www.npr.org/sections/monkeys...-of-it-is-real

This piece discusses general Brooklyn Nine-Nine plot developments through the fifth season finale that aired on Sunday night.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that people become publicly infuriated when their favorite shows are canceled. It is another truth universally acknowledged that from time to time, shows are rescued — either by a network that changes its mind, or more often by a transfer from one home to another.

But it's a mistake to think that the first truth is necessarily the cause of the second. By the time a network cancels a show with passionate fans, it knows those passionate fans exist; inadequate devotion from the people who already watch is not the reason shows are canceled, particularly in a broadcast setting. (Cable and streaming models can be a little different, given that loving a show enough can justify subscribing.)

Consider the recent case of the police comedy Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which was canceled by Fox on May 10 and picked up by NBC on May 11. The outpouring — or the wailing, or the agonizing, or whatever term you want to use — seemed to startle a lot of people who didn't have it on their list of cult shows. Fans including Lin-Manuel Miranda and Guillermo del Toro expressed their dismay on Twitter, to say the least.

But nothing comes back to life in only a little over 24 hours because of an unanticipated Twitter explosion. When you read about the process of getting the show picked up, it's clear that those conversations about a new home for the show were starting before Fox announced the cancellation. They have more to do with boring things like ownership and who gets the revenue from various viewing habits than they do with an orchestra swelling as an NBC executive stands up and says, "Dammit, I can't let them take this show away from loving fan Mark Hamill! Get me the Benevolent Rescue Department on the horn, pronto!"

Bringing shows back is a business decision, and business decisions are often both boring and opaque. What's more interesting is seeing cult-show passion for such a traditionally structured program. The kinds of comedies people attach to at this level are often a lot more offbeat and niche-y than this — they're sci-fi, or they involve complex mythologies. Or they're like Community, which super-served fans with heavily referential, often experimental episodes that got weirder as the series progressed. Brooklyn is not like that; it's a very silly, very big-hearted ensemble workplace show. It's just very good at it.

So what are they doing right that's so beloved?