"Dillman" is the ninth episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine's seventh season.
Jake is angling for a position on the Special Tactical Operations and Auxiliary Strategic Response Citywide Emergency Investigative Unit for Emergency Operations, a task force Holt is putting together. However, as he's making his case, a glitter bomb goes off in squad room, covering Scully and contaminating important evidence needed for a trial. Thinking that this is his chance to show Holt that he deserves to be on the task force, Jake declares that he's going to solve the case. However, Holt believes that the stakes are too high for Jake's antics and calls in the best detective he knows: the titular Dillman (J. K. Simmons).
Unlike most episodes, this doesn't have a B or C plot.
This episode provides examples of:
- Amoral Attorney: ADA Green is revealed to have masterminded the glitter bomb because the murder case he's prosecuting is shaky and he'd rather force a mistrial by contaminating evidence rather than risk adding a loss to his record.
- Artistic License – Geography: Jake is said to be working on a murder on DeKalb Street. There is no DeKalb Street in Brooklyn. However, there is a DeKalb Avenue
. - Bat Deduction: Every action will have Dillman claiming he now "Knows everything there is to know about the person."
- Borrowed Catch Phrase: Rosa uses Jake's "Title of your sex tape" joke on Charles. Jake is miffed that everyone keeps taking his stuff.
- Bottle Episode: Except for one brief scene outside the precinct, the entire episode takes place within the Nine-Nine's bullpen.
- Brief Accent Imitation: Jake attempts to do a Belgian accent in an homage to Hercule Poirot, but, to paraphrase Amy, he ends up "sounding like a Nazi".
- Broken Pedestal: By the end of the episode, Dillman becomes this to Holt. Holt even freely admits that "he lost a lot of respect for" Dillman.
- Brutal Honesty:
- Dillman bluntly says that Holt looks bloated. Holt appreciates the honesty.
- Holt later returns the favor when he bluntly informs Dillman that he lost a lot of respect for him due to the events of the day. Dillman is clearly upset, but accepts it.
- Call-Back: In the first episode Terry describes Charles to Holt as "A grinder" and, the hardest working detective in the precinct because he's not exceptionally gifted. In this episode, while Jake and Dillman are competing to deliver elaborate summations, full of impressive deductions and shocking accusations, Charles quietly works in the background until he solves the case.
- Dillman was previously mentioned by Holt in Season 6 as one of the two best detectives he worked with.
- Jake makes a snarky comment about Dillman's baldness, Dillman reveals a tragic backstory behind it making Jake regret it, only to reveal that he was lying. This is similar to how Jake made a snarky comment about Seth Dozerman repeating the word "efficiency", Dozerman revealing that he has a stutter, making Jake regret his quip, only to reveal that he is only kidding.
- Chekhov's Gunman:
- Officer Howard seems like one of the many throw-away uniformed officers used by the show, but he turns out to be the villain of the episode.
- Dillman was mentioned previously in "The Crime Scene" by Holt as one of the two best detectives he's ever worked with (along with Montes). He makes an actual appearance in this episode.
- Covered in Gunge: Scully is the victim of the glitter bomb, and spends the rest of the episode with his face covered in red glitter.
- Dark Horse Victory: While Jake competes with Dillman to see who solves the mystery of who set up the glitter bomb, it's Boyle who ends up solving the case. Small wonder Holt chose him for the task force.
- Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the Great Detective who uses Sherlock Scan to solve crimes. Despite his arrogance and Holt's faith in him, Dillman's simply makes wild assumptions based on small details and his claim to know everything about a person through a brief interactions is shown to be wrong. In real life crimes are solved through hard work and investigating thorough leads which is how Boyle is able to find the real culprit.
- Dramatic Gasp: A Running Gag is Jake requesting that everyone gasp at his revelations. He scolds Boyle for gasping when Dillman reveals something.
- Does Not Know His Own Strength: Terry, as usual, as shown in the montage of glass breaking at the Nine-Nine.
- Feet-First Introduction: Dillman is introduced with a closeup of his feet as he exits the elevator to the strains of Edgar Winter's "Frankenstein".
- Foreshadowing: Dillman knowing "a weird amount about glitter" isn't just good detective work, but probably something he picked up from his job at Yarn Barn.
- The Friends Who Never Hang: Holt and Boyle, who rarely get storylines on their own. Jake lampshades this by when he learns that they had lunch together, noting that they are the "second least-common lunch combination".
- Fun with Acronyms: Subverted. "STOASRCEIUEO" is an awkward mouthful, but Holt thinks it's cool.
- Great Detective: Holt calls Dillman "The greatest detective I've ever known." A clearly jealous Jake tries to one-up Dillman to show Holt wrong.
- Glitter Litter: A glitter bomb is left on Jake's desk that not only covers everything in a yard's radius in red glitter, but shatters the windows and contaminates the only evidence from an open case on his desk. Jake tries to blame Terry by pointing out a hidden pair of suspenders with red glitter on them, but Dillman deduces the glitter is not from the prank but from Terry's twin daughters. It turns out the bomb was planted by the ADA who assigned the case to Jake, hoping to blame the lack of evidence on him, exploiting the trope).
- Hidden Depths:
- Rosa's revealed to be fan of BuzzFeed quizzes and knowledgeable about The Golden Girls.Rosa: I am not a Blanche!
- Rosa and Dillman are both fans of a Soap Opera named Drake's Hollow.
- Rosa's revealed to be fan of BuzzFeed quizzes and knowledgeable about The Golden Girls.
- Jerkass Has a Point: When Jake sneers to Dillman that no one likes a know-it-all, Dillman calmly retorts that Jake is married to a know-it-all, thus undermining his insult.Jake: [Petulant] You're married to one!
- Lampshade Hanging: This episode draws attention to the fact that the Nine-Nine breaks a lot of windows by breaking a lot of windows.
- Mystery Episode: A Whodunnit episode in a police comedy.
- No, You:Jake: No one likes a know-it-all.
Dillman: You're married to one.
Jake: (mockingly) You're married to one! - Right for the Wrong Reasons: At random Jake accuses Officer Howard of the Glitter Bomb, he is correct, but he's just choosing a suspect at random.
- Selective Obliviousness: Holt allows his hero worship of Dillman cloud his judgement when it comes to the Whodunnit mystery. He even suspends Jake on the spot based on shaky evidence that Dillman presented to him to frame Jake. Even after Holt disowns Dillman for being a shaky person for every reason, he never apologizes to Jake for wrongly suspending him.
- Sherlock Scan: Parodied. Dillman is able to determine "everything about you as a person" just from the first thing someone says to him. Or at least that's what he thinks he can do. In reality, it's just a long string of Bat Deductions.
- Even when he gets it right, he goes to extremes, as when glitter is found on Terry's clothes and he goes through an elaborate chain of reasoning to deduce exactly which elementary school project it came from. Jake lampshades that the same point could he made by saying "he's got kids".
- Shout-Out:
- Jake attempts a Belgian accent to evoke Hercule Poirot from Murder on the Orient Express, but ends up sounding like a Nazi.
- Dillman's 'Double back' is a reference to Columbo's "Just one more thing," used to interrogate suspects.
- Slow and Steady Wins the Race: While Jake and Dillman compete over who can find the culprit sooner, Boyle quietly investigates and solves it before anyone else. He only announces it after Jake and Dillman are at each others' throats blaming each other.
- Spotting the Thread: Jake realizes Dillman is no longer a real cop because he spoke about using a special database... which hasn't been used by any police force in five years. Dillman tries to brush it off as a mistake but Holt realizes there's no way he would make such a huge error.
- Strange Minds Think Alike:
- Dillman uses "Who has done this" instead of "whodunnit", just as Holt does.
- Stoic badasses Rosa and Dillman are both fans of soap opera Drake's Hollow.
- The Summation: A Whodunnit trademark trope. Deliberately subverted. Jake and Dillman both deliver dramatic summations identifying the culprit, and they turn out to be wrong each time. In the end, Charles delivers an accurate summation, but in a less stereotypical and uncertain way.
- Whodunnit: Jake immediately identifies the episode's plot as one when nobody confesses to setting up the prank. Holt finds the term a "grammatical abomination" and insists on calling it a "who has done this".
