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Recap / Brooklyn Nine Nine S 2 E 01 Undercover

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Holt: Welcome back, Peralta.
Peralta: Captain.
Holt: Everyone has a lot of work so you have exactly two minutes to share personal anecdotes. Those two minutes began when you entered. You now haveā€¦12 seconds left.
Peralta: Challenge accepted. Undercover highlights: Fixed a boxing match, smoked a whole cigar without vomiting, was once in a room with ten guys named Sal and missed you all so very much. Everyone back to work!

Undercover is the premiere episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine's second season.

Peralta's undercover assignment for the episode comes to an end with a large RICO bust. He returns to the NYPD but soon goes undercover again when it's discovered that some mobsters slipped through the net.

Meanwhile, Amy and Diaz are forced to deal with Jeffords and Holt putting them through constant drills and Gina tries to keep Boyle silent about their tryst from the previous season.

Tropes present in this episode:

  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Lampshaded.
    Peralta: Freddy's like the worst out of all those guys! Extortion, terrible breath, murder...I put terrible breath too high on that list.
  • Bedmate Reveal: Once again, Boyle and Gina end up sleeping together and screaming in horror the morning after.
  • Dresses the Same: Shown in flashback. One of the office highlights is that Amy Santiago and Charles Boyle wore the same outfit to work one day (it was a grey pantsuit and a salmon shirt).
    Amy: [angry] How does it look better on you?
  • Green-Eyed Monster: Boyle gets very jealous of Peralta's "Mafia best friend" Derek. Despite the fact that Derek was by no stretch of the imagination a friend of Peralta's, Mafia or otherwise.
  • Headphones Equal Isolation: Diaz tells Peralta while he's away that Captain Holt banned headphones in the office after the "Gina Incident", where Gina is wearing headphones and dancing, unaware that half a dozen cops are trying to subdue a criminal behind her.
  • Italian-American Caricature: Played straight and invoked: Jake, who has been undercover with the Italian Ianucci crime family since the Season 1 finale, gives the toast at a big Italian-American wedding, where Italian music is playing. Jake tells the newlyweds to "Make us proud, have a son", comments on one man's spray tan, and gets kissed by all the mob bosses. His codeword for the cops to raid the wedding? "The meatballs were a little dry."
  • Method Acting: In-universe and played for laughs. Jeffords refuses to break character during the drills Santiago and Diaz have to go through, be it his having to pretend to be an old woman, a young boy, or a backpack ticking away in a corner.
  • Reality Is Unrealistic: In-universe, Jeffords notes that the script Holt provided him for the lost child drill contains lines that are too eloquent for the average seven year-old. Holt reveals that the lines were taken verbatim from his own diary. In Jeffords's defence, Holt was apparently far from the average seven year-old.
    Holt: [On Jeffords impersonating a seven-year-old] Feel free to consult the script I prepared for you.
    Jeffords: Okay, but it's a little stilted. "I am feeling trepidation at the prospect of a parentless existence"? No kid talks like that.
    Holt: Those lines were lifted verbatim from my boyhood diary.
  • Refuge in Audacity: Diaz is completely fed up with Holt and Jeffords's drills and Jeffords's commitment to staying in character as a bratty seven year-old so she decides to go big and rent a bouncy castle for her, Jeffords, and Santiago to play in. It's successful in getting Jeffords to stop throwing tantrums and they'd have gotten away with it had their bouncing not caused the precinct building to start shaking.
  • Yes-Man: When 'complaining' about the drills to Holt, Santiago manages to do a complete 180-degree turn in her views over the course of a single sentence.
    Santiago: Captain, I hate to be harsh, but I think these drills are slightly unnecessary, possibly, although you are the boss and your judgement is impeccable, so I guess what I am trying to say is thank you.
    Diaz: I agree. With the stuff about the drills, not the spineless ass-kissing.

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