Brooklyn Nine-Nine pulls off a satisfying series finale

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"Sitcom finales appropriately indulge in nostalgia," says Vikram Murthi of the beloved Fox/NBC police comedy's eighth and final season finale. "They’re the last chance for viewers to hang out with beloved characters they’ve been watching for years. It’s as much an opportunity for them to say goodbye to each other as it is to say goodbye to the audience. Naturally, it’s an emotional affair, and any plot mostly exists to service fond farewells. However, the best finales tend to illustrate that life inevitably goes on. Things change, people move on, but everyone keeps plugging away. The only difference is that we no longer get to check in on their progress. 'The Last Day' is far from Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s finest hour, but it deserves credit for checking off every series finale box while telling a fun story without going overboard on saccharine material. It runs through the series’ greatest hits while reuniting the original core ensemble and bringing back numerous guest stars without any of it feeling too labored. It also succeeds in being pretty funny and decently affecting, which is tough for any sitcom running out its eighth year. Most importantly, though, it delivers on expectations while having a sense of humor about those expectations. It’s the equivalent of someone dutifully following through on tradition as they smirk about the silliness of the tradition itself." Murthi adds: "It’s admirable how much 'The Last Day' is about the folly of creating a perfect goodbye, which can easily be extended to the folly of creating a perfect series finale. Along with being inherently sad, goodbyes are often messy and never as satisfying as you expect them to be."

ALSO:

• Brooklyn Nine-Nine cast and crew bid farewell: "What can I say?" tweeted Andre Braugher. "Words cannot express how much you all mean to me and how proud I am that #Brooklyn99 means so much to all of you. It's been nothing but a pleasure and I thank you from the bottom of my heart."
• Melissa Fumero recounts the final day filming Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Brooklyn Nine-Nine tried to land a Bruce Willis cameo

On Late Night with Seth Meyers, co-creator Dan Goor recalled pursuing Willis to satisfy the long-running fandom of Andy Samberg's Jake Peralta. Goor visited Late Night with his cast. "There are always pitches from a writers room that are like, the whole Nine-Nine is called out on a big case, and then he walks in and he's like, 'Hey, is there anyone here? No, I guess not,' and walks out," Goor says. Samberg adds: "I always just assumed it would be like, Jake sees him on the street and loses his mind. And he's like, 'Hey, you're doing good, kid.'"

ALSO:

• About 2.2 million watched Brooklyn Nine-Nine's series finale, up slightly from its Season 8 premiere
• Dianne Wiest films a video responding to the obsession Joe Lo Truglio's character, Charles Boyle, had with her.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine deserves credit for dealing with the controversy over policing in its final season

"It’s to Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s credit that in its final season, the series let its cop characters exist in the real world, reflect upon their roles in a racist system, and make significant changes in their lives as a consequence," says Tara Ariano. "A lesser show might have tried to confine its heavier content to the season premiere — let the audience see that the members of the squad weren’t in denial — and then returned to business as usual, with the light gags and the comical perps. That’s not what happened here. Rosa Diaz (Stephanie Beatriz) resigned from the department, changing careers to become a PI serving clients seeking justice for victims of police abuse. Her former colleagues’ anxieties about complicity and personal responsibility ran through the entire season, with Jake (Andy Samberg) deciding the best course of action was to facilitate an escape by reformed Pontiac Bandit Doug Judy (Craig Robinson) rather than delivering him to prison to serve time on a BS charge. Jake later realized his single-minded zeal had led him to abuse his power in another case where his instincts were completely wrong; while the next episode, a Knives Out riff involving Boyle (Joe Lo Truglio) and his many beloved cousins, was hilariously bonkers, Jake’s suspension still hung over the proceedings. The show made a true villain of patrolmens’ union head Frank O’Sullivan (John C. McGinley), an unethical jackass determined to resist positive change in the department if it meant inconveniencing any cop even a little. But when I also called the series a wish-fulfillment fantasy, it’s because of stuff like...Holt (Andre Braugher) and Amy (Melissa Fumero) getting gigantic promotions to oversee reform in the department, just a few months after deciding this was an issue they needed to work on...Ultimately, though, we didn’t watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine to see fictional characters get things right where their real-life counterparts got it wrong — this isn’t The Newsroom."