Recap / Brooklyn Nine Nine S 6 E 11 The Therapist

"The Therapist" is the eleventh episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine's sixth season.

Boyle asks Jake to help him out with a case in which a therapist reported his patient may have killed his wife. Jake agrees, but is incredibly suspicious of the therapist, due to an intense distrust of them. They find the body and then look for the suspect, but cannot find them. While searching the suspect's apartment, Jake believes that the therapist killed the wife. He secretly searches the therapist's office, and finds the therapist's real notes, confirming Jake's suspicion. However, when the doctor comes back, he hides in the neighboring office. The therapist who works in that office then comes in, and believes Jake is her new patient, who has multiple personality disorder. He pretends to be the patient until the therapist he's investigating leaves, but when he gets in his car he finds the therapist in the back seat, who holds Jake at gunpoint and forces him to drive to an alley, where he plans to kill him. However, Jake stalls him by letting the doctor treat him until Boyle shows up, who then arrests the therapist.

Meanwhile, Captain Holt is upset that Diaz won't let him meet her girlfriend, Jocelyn. Rosa agrees to bring her to a restaurant where they can meet, but it turns out she hired an actor. While in the breakroom, Holt and Jocelyn accidentally meet, and Rosa reveals she didn't want them to meet because she was worried Holt wouldn't approve of her.

Also, Amy gets a package that was intended for Terry, which contains an embarrassing book. Terry denies it is his, going so far as to put up fliers for it. Eventually, Scully claims it, and then gives it to Terry, who didn't want people to know it was his.

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This episode contains examples of:

• Added Alliterative Appeal: The entire cold open.
  Jake: Behold, Brooklyn buddies, Boyle bullpen bottle bowling.
  Boyle: Beautiful.
  Jake:' Be brave, bro. Be brave. Bowl!
  Rosa: Bam!
  Boyle: Bull's-eye!
  Jake: Booyah!
  Random Slavic woman: Babushka!
  *Beat*
  Everyone: BABUSHKA!
• Call-Back:
  • Terry makes several when questioning why Jake has never been to therapy:
    • Amy shooting Jake.
    • Jake being held at gunpoint and forced to record a fake suicide message.
    • Jake being framed for bank robbery, and doing meth in prison.
  • Scully mentions that he’s still seeing Cindy Shatz from Cop-Con.
• Chekhov's Skill: Subverted. Jake says he's learned to text without looking at his phone and claims it saves his life once Tate has him cornered in his car. However, it turns out he just sent a text full of random characters to Amy (not Boyle), and only got out because Amy forwarded it to Boyle.
• Danger Takes A Back Seat: Dr. Tate hides in the back seat of Jake's car and pulls a gun on him when he gets on.
• Freudian Excuse: Throughout the episode, Jake denies needing therapy. After being held at gunpoint by Dr. Tate, he spills that he went to family therapy after acting out at school, but that led to his parent's marital problems being opened up, and eventually, their divorce.
• Gallows Humor: Lampshaded. Boyle says that he and Jake make jokes around murder as a way of coping.
  Boyle: It's self-preservation through disassociation.
• Innocent Innuendo: Boyle makes several subconscious ones, even after the therapist calls him out on it.
• I Resemble That Remark!:
  Rosa: You can be a bit judgmental.
  Holt: What a stupid thing to say. Name one time when I have been judgmental.
  Holt: [in flashback] What a stupid thing to say.
  Holt: Oh, I see. Mere seconds ago.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Even though Jake starts out hating therapists, and even though the Dr. Tate himself is a murderer, he's still a pretty good therapist, as shown by the conversation when he's holding Jake at gunpoint:
  Jake: When I was a kid, I was acting out at school, so they made me and my parents do family counselling, but instead of helping me with my problems, the stupid therapist just brought up all my parents' issues. And once it was all out in the open, they fought all the time and eventually got divorced, and everything good in my life just went away.
  Dr. Tate: Interesting. So you actually blame yourself for your parents' divorce?
  Jake: No, I blame the therapy, which we only had to do because I...oh, my God. I do blame myself.
• Just Between You and Me: The therapist, who accidentally reveals to Jake (who hadn't yet known at the time) that he had killed not only the husband, but another couple as well.
• "Last Supper" Steal: Although the audience doesn't see it, Boyle finds a McDonald's themed version of the painting in the victims' apartment. Jake asks who was Judas, before he realizes it obviously would be the Hamburgular.
• Not the First Victim: Dr Tate reveals offhandedly to Jake that not only did he kill the couple that Jake and Charles are investigating, he also killed another couple before, and that "nobody misses them." Even Jake is taken aback by how dark it is.
• Office Sports: Boyle bullpen bottle bowling. Jake tosses huge barrels of water with a swivel chair while Charles is sitting in it.
• N-Word Privileges: After getting caught in another therapist's office investigating Dr. Tate, Jake has to pretend to be her patient with DID and stalls by pretending to take on all his personas. He pointedly hesitates when she brings up the identity of an African-American man from the 1900s, but when pressed dives into an impression of Morgan Freeman's Red.
• Precision F-Strike: Jake gives a censored one directed at Boyle.
  Dr. Tate: Are you normally so cavalier around murder investigations?
  Boyle: Yes, we see a lot of darkness in our line of work, and humor is one of our coping mechanisms. It's self-preservation through disassociation.
  Jake: What the [bleep]?
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Subverted since he's not actually able to do it, but Dr. Tate delivers an admittedly clever one before trying to shoot Jake, which the latter Lampshades
  Dr. Tate Now, I'm sorry, but our session is coming to a close. I guess I'll have to bill your widow.
  Jake: Wow, that is coldblooded, but I got to hand it to you, it's a pretty dope kill line.
• Properly Paranoid: Jake actually turns out to be correct when he suspects the therapist of being the murderer. He even gets the motive right: the therapist was having an affair with one of his patients.
• Psycho Psychologist: Discussed; Jake says that therapists in movies are all creeps who turn into "super sophisticated, Chianti-loving cannibals."
• Right for the Wrong Reasons:
  • Charles arrives just in time to save Jake because Jake has trained himself to text without looking at his phone. Or so he thinks: the text was just random letters and was sent to Amy instead of Charles, but Charles was able to deduce from that that Jake was in trouble and tracked his phone.
  • Jake, regarding the case. He's right that the therapist did it, and he's right that it was because he slept with his patient, but his suspicion was (at least, in part) due to his overall bias against therapy.
• Shout-Out:
  • As proof that therapists are creepy, Jake mentions Hannibal Lecter of Silence of the Lambs.
  • Jake promises not to break into the therapist’s office. The scene immediately cuts to him breaking into the office, saying, “NOT! Wayne's World.”
• Skewed Priorities: Jake himself notes it's not the right thing to focus on, but he really likes the new yarn Boyle is using for his evidence board.
• Spoof Aesop: Terry admits that Scully's attitude of not caring what people think about him is rather inspiring and allows Scully to not have to worry about embarrassment - right before Terry remembering that Scully also doesn't care about stuff like bathroom privacy, as Scully has no shame in using the toilet with the door open, with Terry standing in front of him.
• Spotting the Thread: Jake figures out that the therapist is the murderer when the therapist points out where in the victim's apartment the bathroom is. His logic is based on the idea that bathrooms are never placed logically in New York, so one must have to be familiar with a location to know where one is.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Jake literally has one about being in denial.
  Dr. Tate: I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to trigger you.
  Jake: Ok Doc, you're not in your office. You don't have to use words like "triggered" or "in denial".
  Dr. Tate: I didn't say "in denial". Are you in denial?
  Jake: No, I am not. (mocking) And before you say anything, I don't wanna "sleep with my mom" either.
  Dr. Tate: Now why would you bring that up unprompted?
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: Jake to Hitchcock.
  Hitchcock: Jake and I are like two penises in a pod.
  Jake: Damn it, Hitchcock, we talked about this. It never helps when you back me up.

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