Here is the story of Thanksgiving for the Nine-Niners:
Jake
The hotshot man-boy detective doesn’t like Thanksgiving, because it reminds him of being alone at home after his dad left when his mom was out working. He invented things like “mayo nut smoothie” (which is revolting, but his sad backstory trumps the insult), and watched football by himself. After getting some more of Jake’s backstory in this episode, the light sprinkling of backstory in the previous episode (with Sal’s Pizza) makes a lot more sense as set-up. This way viewers can understand Jake’s situation, without having to take in his history at the same time. Luckily, Jake once again learns a lesson from Holt (although this lesson was less didactic and more integrated into the “spirit of holidays” as it were), and in the end Jake dresses up and is thankful for his co-workers/family. And probably thankful that he didn’t have to eat Amy’s food…
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Captain Holt
While Holt was all on board with Amy’s Thanksgiving celebration, as his husband was out of town, he got called back to the precinct after money was stolen from the evidence room. With Jake by his side, the two became the crime-solving duo of Barley and Jimes - an identity Holt fully embraced in order to get a fighting family to shut up, which was certainly one of the laugh out loud moments of the episode. The two solve the case, and Jimes (Holt) reminds Barley (Jake) that the “beauty of being an adult is that you can make a new family, with a new tradition.” Holt, you may seem like an unfeeling robot, but you’re a pretty cool guy.
Amy
All Amy ever wants is for the Captain to notice her. She even plans a whole Thanksgiving at her (old lady) house in order to give a speech (8 pages, single-spaced, double-sided) to impress him. But when that Thanksgiving falls apart, between the crime at the precinct and the awful food, Thanksgiving moves to the bar. But Amy’s desire to “be bad” like Jake to someday get the Captain to notice her end up breaking a shelf of glasses and alcohol, and getting everyone kicked out. In the end, Holt reads her toast and marks it up where he felt the word choice could have used some work - “I marked them “awk” for awkward.” Which is all she ever wanted. Amy’s brown-nosing can be a bit grating sometimes, but her understandable jealousy of her partner (since Jake is called before Holt much more, whether for good or bad), was resolved in a way that made sense for both Holt and Amy. He can critique her in his robot way, and she’ll be glad for anything that borders on mentorship.
Boyle saved Thanksgiving! Or at the very least saved Sergeant Jeffords from eating all the packing supplies in the precinct. Although everyone mocked Boyle’s general enthusiastic, and somewhat predictable, behavior in their game of “Boyle Bingo”, he’s the guy that would be the best to have around when things go wrong. He’s got a can-do spirit, and always tries to help people out. Boyle’s dopiness can be used to great comedic effect in the show, but it’s nice to have a reminder that in reality, he’s probably one of the best guys in the Nine-Nine.
Sergeant Jeffords
He just wanted food, after his (ginormous) lunch was spoiled when the fridge door was left open. Unfortunately for the Sergeant, food wasn’t really in the cards this Thanksgiving. The food at Amy’s was inedible, as she felt baking soda and salt were comparable, the cook had gone home from the bar, and Scully’s ceiling stash was found first by the rats. Along the way he ate some pretzels, and eventually moved onto packing peanuts, the sign of a truly desperate man. Luckily when Boyle got take-out for the precinct, Jeffords didn’t wait for toasts before digging in.
These girls were rooting for failure on Thanksgiving, watching the holiday like it was a bad reality show. Dull and happy is not their thing. Rosa watched with slightly psychotic glee as disaster struck again and again, and Gina tried to help things along by giving Amy’s toast to the Captain to read - granted it worked out and that was cool, but she would have been happy if it didn’t. While both of these characters are a lot of fun, they sometimes come across a little similarly sadistic, as they did in this episode. It would be great to see the difference between the two to get a little variety between the precinct’s three female characters.
Scully & Hitchcock
Scully hid food in the ceiling and sang opera. Hitchcock took his shirt off, because you can’t stain a shirt if you’re not wearing one. Oh these two.
All the characters were used to effectively in this episode, each with their own agendas within the Thanksgiving celebration, and it was fun to see all the characters in the same story. And congrats to Jake for winning this Thanksgiving game of “Boyle Bingo”!
Was the chaos of the Nine-Nine’s Thanksgiving anything like yours? What was your favorite part of the holiday episode?
Bits from the Police Scanner
- “My super weird family with two black dads, two latino daughters, two white sons, Gina, and I don’t know what you are, a giant baby?” - Jake, on the precinct family
- Jake trying to take down bad guys without catching the score of the game.
- “My wife was murdered by a man in a yellow sweater, it was the one case I can’t solve!” - Holt, as Jimes
- “I’m a textbook people pleaser, it’s a problem.” - Boyle
- Holt pointing out that Amy’s turkey is wearing a top hat, not a pilgrim hat - “Where’s the buckle Santiago?”
- “Happy Thanksgiving, your apartment was very easy to locate.” “Thank you, you look beautiful.” - Holt/Amy, awkward as always.
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