Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you all had a safe, fun holiday season. It certainly was a great break for Brooklyn Nine-Nine; the show scored two Golden Globe nominations!!

Brooklyn Nine-Nine Season 1 Episode 12 kicks of the new year with a new partnership as Jake and Rosa work a case together, and we see the precinct deal with the return of an injured Charles Boyle. 

As usual, it was fun to watch.

I think out of all the case-working partnerships we’ve seen, Holt and Peralta are the most entertaining. But Jake and Rosa have the most comfortable and natural rapport.

We learn that they attended Police Academy together and the actors certainly do a good job of making it seem like they have a serious background as a tandem.

Rosa captures perpetrator Doug Judy (played brilliantly by The Office’s Craig Robinson) for identity theft, but he piques Jake’s interest when he says that he knows the “Pontiac Bandit,' a car thief that Jake has been trying to catch for eight years. 

When the choice comes to either book him for identity theft or to use him to catch the Pontiac Bandit, Jake invokes a trust pact with Rosa - 1,000 pushups - to do the latter.

Most of the humor in the main story came from Doug Judy himself - from his highly inappropriate flirting with Rosa (fear is a powerful aphrodisiac, apparently) to his blatantly racist but still hilarious cover-story with his mom. That said, the case was also really interesting.

With every development the case made, it got harder for me to figure out whether to side with Rosa or Jake. As Doug’s information led to runarounds, Rosa justifiably wanted to call off the Pontiac investigation and book Doug for what they had on him. Jake, however, understandably wanted to keep going to try to catch someone that’s eluded him for eight years.

Rosa was ultimately right, but not in the way I expected. I figured Doug Judy knew the bandit and was still an accomplice. Well, instead, he Keyser Söze’d the heck out of everyone. He turned out to be the Pontiac Bandit himself, pulling off an impressive Batman Gambit years in the making. I’ll be honest, I didn’t see that coming.

That ending had implications for Rosa and Jake’s working partnership, as their rapport and trust were tested through Jake’s break of their pact. Part of me wishes that she hadn’t forgiven Jake quite so quickly for breaking their pact, or at least countered him more strongly when he broke it in the first place.

Watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine Season 1 Episode 12 Online

It would have been interesting to see them deal with that in a subsequent episode, or to see Rosa deal with disappointment in a friend in more than a couple lines of dialogue. Still, Rosa and Jake are just such a comfortable pairing that I’m glad they were able to move past this.

Meanwhile, at the precinct…

Charles Boyle was back at work after taking a bullet to the butt, wreaking hilarious havoc as he navigated his way around while kneeling on a scooter. Captain Holt tried to encourage the rest of the precinct to be supportive, but as Charles (unintentionally) got increasingly needy and annoying, one by one, everyone ran for refuge to the storage room. 

I can relate to this;  I actually found TV Fanatic while at sick at home for extended periods of time. I can only imagine how my colleagues had to deal with my barely functional return to work. However, I can safely say that no one had to help me use the bathroom, eat weird stuff, or listen to increasingly hyperbolic stories...

Boyle: My doctor said that if the bullet was a fraction to the left and two feet up, it would have hit my brain!

However, I can relate to the isolation that Boyle must have been feeling while stuck at home, which is why I was happy when Captain Holt chastised the staff for hiding from him. 

Speaking of Captain Holt - oh my goodness, I could watch him carry those puppies around all day. SO CUTE! They really did totally undercut his intimidation. Those puppies were so cute they even made Amy’s perfunctory brown-nosing funny, as she almost died of allergies pretending to want Holt’s puppies.

Amy: My happiness is making my throat close up!

Another solid episode of Brooklyn Nine Nine Seaon 1. Great guest star in Craig Robinson, excellent work from Samberg and Beatriz during their pairing, and fun stuff in the precinct.  What do you think?

Other notes:

• Captain Holt has Twitter?!
• I love Hitchcock and Scully. They can’t even tell themselves apart. Awesome.