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Recap / Brooklyn Nine Nine S 2 E 03 Halloween II

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Halloween II is the fourth episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine's second season.

It's Halloween, once again, at the Nine Nine, and Jake decides to challenge Holt to a second bet. This time: Jake has to steal Holt's watch off the captain's wrist. If Jake wins: Holt once again has to do the detective's paperwork for a week. If Holt wins: Jake has to admit that Holt is an "amazing police captain slash genius" and has to work five weeks of unpaid overtime.

Elsewhere in the precinct, Terry, Amy, and Rosa are putting together Halloween Safety Buckets for the district's children while Gina is off acting stranger than usual.


Tropes present in this episode:

  • Attack Backfire: Holt reveals that the other detectives in the unit except for Boyle turned on Jake purely for the joy of seeing him humiliated. Rather than feeling betrayed, Jake admits that this actually turns him on a little bit.
  • Batman Gambit: Holt's plan hinged on Charles being Jake's Yes-Man, that the rest of the detectives would happily double cross Jake just to see him be humiliated, and that Jake would go to great lengths to try and win.
  • Call-Back: Most of this episode references the previous season's Halloween heist.
  • Crazy-Prepared:
    • Jake began setting up his heist months in advance, even enlisting the help of a pickpocket, and roping in the other detectives to put together an elaborate distraction in order to get Holt's watch. Unfortunately for Jake...
    • Holt began planning his revenge the moment he lost his bet with Jake the year before and spent months subliminally influencing Jake's choice of target and putting together the pieces to get the upper hand, setting up a double cross that Jake never saw coming.
    • Then they start preparing for Halloween, 2015.
      Jake: "Be warned! I started planning next year's heist just this minute!"
      Holt: "Good. Then you're only three months behind."
      Jake: "You sick son of a bitch!"
  • Failed a Spot Check: Jake has apparently lived his entire life in Brooklyn without noticing the East River or the Atlantic Ocean:
    Jake: [Scaling a fence] Wow, look at the view from up here. I didn't know we lived near water!
  • Hidden Depths:
    • Gina reveals that she's been going to night school to complete her bachelor's degree, thus explaining why she's been acting flakier than usual.
    • Scully, as it turns out, is a fairly adept pickpocket.
  • Humiliation Conga: Holt didn't just want to win the bet, he wanted to beat Jake. Holt did so by pulling together a Batman Gambit that ensured that Jake would be utterly humiliated before even discovering that Holt had the upper hand all along.
    • Holt has Fingers double cross Jake and make it seem like the pickpocket ran off with the watch.
    • Holt tells Jake that the watch has immense sentimental value, thus horrifying Jake into making sure he gets the watch back.
    • Fingers, in exchange for telling Jake that he hid Holt's watch in Jake's car, demands Jake's shoes, preventing him from giving chase when Amy tows Jake's car.
    • Hitchcock and Scully, in disguise, pour beer all over Jake's clothes and steal his jacket and wallet.
    • Terry gets Charles out of the way so that Holt can play a recording of Charles that he'd made eight months previously, guiding Jake onto a party bus.
    • On board the bus, Rosa (wearing a mask) distracts Jake as Holt (also wearing a mask) pretends to be a drunken partier while stealing Jake's badge.
    • Jake makes it to the NYPD impound only to discover that he lost his wallet and credentials and has to climb over a barbed wire topped fence only to watch as his car is carried off to a crusher before he's arrested and hauled to the Nine Nine's interrogation room.
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
    • Terry realizes that Gina is depressed and does some digging to find out that she's been going to night school and became so focused on her classes that she began missing rehearsals with Floorgasm, her dance troupe, and was subsequently kicked out just before a major competition.
    • Holt wants to beat Jake so badly that he drops his usual stoicism and pretends to be a drunken buffoon in order to lift Jake's badge.
  • Paranoia Gambit: Jake's plan relies on Holt remembering what happened the previous year and taking precautions based on that knowledge.
  • Pet the Dog: Following Holt's Humiliation Conga of Jake, he admits that he didn't have Jake's car crushed after all, and instead had it cleaned.

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