AN ODE TO ‘BROOKLYN NINE-NINE’ FOR CELEBRATING AMBITIOUS, PERFECTIONIST WOMEN

[TMC]

https://www.nylon.com/articles/brook...melissa-fumero

When word came last Thursday afternoon that Brooklyn Nine-Nine had been canceled, my reaction was a kind of panic; I went through all the Kübler-Ross stages, save acceptance, at once. A gasp and, “No! Doesn’t everyone love this show?” bargaining in the hope that another network or streaming service would pick the show up (not so delusional, as the news played out, word came that the show has been given a second life by NBC). And then depression set in, as did a clear sense of what would be lost. It wasn’t just the disappearance of a lovely half hour every week, funny and weird and gentle, surprisingly incisive, too, but also of a character who’d become a touchstone for me: Melissa Fumero’s detective—now sergeant—Amy Santiago. Amy is a controlling, perfection-striving, overachieving Type A woman who not only was never made out to be a monster or a bitch but, also, was honored for who she was, making her a pop culture unicorn.

Like everything about Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Amy’s character has matured and deepened over the show’s five seasons. At first, she was almost purely a trope, an overachieving Goody Two-shoes who sees the precinct’s new captain as a potential mentor toward her own future captainhood. (Though even when she was more one-dimensional, because this show is so damn good, she was teased but never mocked for her quirks.) In the very first scene of the pilot, Jake (Andy Samberg) is charmingly goofing off at the scene of a robbery. Amy is the killjoy who tells him to get it together, who does the thankless work of keeping them on task. Yet Jake is the one who solves it, seemingly pitting cool guy spontaneity against Amy’s by-the-book sensibilities.

From the first episode’s opening scene, Jake and Amy were set up as that familiar trope of a partnership: the uptight, controlling, bossy woman, and the freewheeling, fun-time cool guy man-child. When Jake cracks the case, it’s fully in line with what pop culture has taught us to expect—this woman becomes a shrew, this man knows better than her, and, if she’s lucky, after several scenes or seasons of her scoffing at him, he’ll teach her to loosen up a little.

But Amy can’t help but smirk at Jake’s antics. Not because he’s so charming—though he is—but because underneath his goofiness, he’s as ambitious and devoted a detective as she is. He’s just also a big doofus. (I hope an ambitious, doofy guy somewhere is writing his paean to Jake.) Now, years later, they’re engaged. Their wedding planning has been a running thread of the show’s latest season, a clever way to maintain tension, the couple against the world instead of each other. And they are on the same team—remarkably so. In fact, it’s the wedding arc—a narrative treatment almost always designed to mock a bride’s intense enthusiasm—that made me realize how amazing and rare the show’s treatment of Amy is.

[Yong Fang]

I watched this show for about three seasons and then gave up on it. The lead character was very annoying (like a poor man’s Adam Sandler) plus very silly storylines. I think what kept me going was Stephanie Beatriz in her tight jeans. But not even sexual attraction kept me interested in this for long. Just my opinion.