Brooklyn Nine-Nine will be ending its fourth season on FOX soon. It has already been renewed for a fifth season, and during that time it will hit the 100-episode mark. At the moment, it’s airing on Tuesday nights in hour-long blocks, which is not what happens with shows that are hip and trendy. That’s fitting, because that’s not what Brooklyn Nine-Nine is. It’s a long-running sitcom that has settled into a groove. Shows like that are overlooked and forgotten. That’s a shame regarding Brooklyn Nine-Nine, because it’s still a fine, funny comedy that deserves to be lauded.
To be fair, people aren’t necessarily being critical of Brooklyn Nine-Nine. It just sort of exists. Some people watch it, and many of them like it, and that’s about the extent of it. It does not exist in the zeitgeist. Network sitcoms rarely are these days, especially when they’ve been airing for a while. The increasingly fast-paced entertainment world just expedites that process. Brooklyn Nine-Nine hasn’t even aired four full seasons, and it feels like it has been around forever. To think that many hit sitcoms have run for a decade or more.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine could do that, in theory, because the show hasn’t really lost any quality. Sure, it’s lost a bit of that spark, because it’s a sitcom that has had to tell almost 90 stories, but that’s a fairly minor quibble. Andre Braugher is still doing tremendous work as Captain Raymond Holt. Nobody does deadpan better on TV right now. The coupling of Andy Samberg’s Jake Peralta and Melissa Fumero’s Amy Santiago hasn’t hurt the characters at all. Even Scully and Hitchcock remain amusing, even if all they’re doing is splashing ranch dressing around and angrily calling each other “cucks.”
Considering that the show is set in a police precinct, one would assume the storytelling opportunities remain plentiful. If it avoids falling into a rut, Brooklyn Nine-Nine should remain a fun show for a few more years. Nobody will talk about it, and then when it’s gone we will realize what we’re missing. Don’t take Jake, Captain Holt, Gina, and the rest of the gang for granted.
