Recap / Brooklyn Nine Nine S 5 E 05 Bad Beat

Bad Beat is the fifth episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine's fifth season.

Jake and Terry go to Holt to get permission to conduct a sting on an arms-dealer during a high-stakes poker game. However, Jake and Terry are absolutely horrible poker players, forcing Holt to step in and assist them using his heretofore unseen prowess at the game. Unfortunately, this also causes Holt to have to confront the reason said prowess was heretofore unseen: his long-dormant gambling addiction.

Meanwhile, Rosa joins Hitchcock and Scully in sorting through the precinct's files and finds herself in her own bet against the two when they question her ability to sit in a chair for an extended period of time. What proceeds is a "Buttlympics" as the three stay sitting for hours on end.

Also, Charles and Amy invest in a food truck but Charles' decision to purchase one that was the scene of a brutal murder-dismemberment and that subsequently gets trashed (before the insurance kicked in) turns what should have been a simple venture into something much more complicated.

This episode provides examples of:

• Basement-Dweller: Holt gives Jake the undercover role of an online gambler who lives in his mother's basement and is also a virgin. Later, Holt confesses that he came up with the backstory purely for his own amusement. The virgin part was Jake's own (unintentional) embellishment.
• Body Horror: Scully has long since lost all feeling below the waist and stabs himself with a pencil to demonstrate it.
• Call-Back:
  • Holt told Amy about his gambling addiction in USPIS. It forms the basis of the A-plot here.
  • Terry's food issues were first alluded to all the way back in the pilot.
• Compressed Vice: Holt's gambling addiction has been mentioned before, but only in passing and brief flashbacks. In this episode, he basically plunges to rock bottom in record time. Justified, in that it's an addiction, which means that Holt very consciously kept gambling out of his life, and he's the kind of person who would rarely discuss such personal things. Like most addictions, when someone falls off the wagon, they can go from nothing to a serious problem in a very short period of time.
• Continuity Nod:
  • When Peralta wins several hands of Poker in a row at the first game, Holt instructs him to utter the same exclamation that went viral as a meme in season 2:
    Holt: [to Jake] Peralta, say, "Hot damn!"
    Jake: Hot damn!
    Holt: [to Terry] Now you say it.
    Terry: Hot damn!
  • Also, a subtle one, back to The Slump. The unwashed hoodie and the mother's basement play a similar role to the rabbit's foot:
    Holt: I was just messing with you.
• Continuity Snarl: In Christmas, Jake noticed that Holt's tell was the side of his mouth twitching whenever he lied. In this episode, Jake spent a lot of time trying to figure out what Holt's tell was, and it turned out to be using contractions.
• Funny Background Event: While Amy and Charles are discussing their food truck business, Rosa can be seen in the background scooting around on her chair.
• Inherently Funny Words: "Yabba-Dabba-Doo" is funny on its own but Holt's overly-dramatic Punctuated! For! Emphasis! elevates it to another level.
  Holt: I'd like to bet 20 thousand dollars [Slams down a stack of bills] on Yabba! Dabba! [beat] Doo!
• Meet My Good Friends Lefty and Righty: Terry calls his right pec "Eugene" and angrily berates it for twitching when he bluffs at poker.
• Not So Above It All: Despite looking down on Hitchcock and Scully at the beginning of the episode, Rosa comes to get quite invested in and even genuinely enjoy the Buttlympics between them.
• Odd Friendship: Rosa comes to develop a level of respect for Hitchcock and Scully and becomes considerably friendlier towards them.
• Off the Wagon: Holt experiences this regarding his dormant gambling addiction.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Jake realizes that Holt never uses contractions when he normally speaks and realizes that something is wrong when Holt uses a double contraction when speaking over the phone while being held hostage.
• Pec Flex: Terry's tell is that his right pec twitches when he bluffs.
• Playing the Victim Card: Charles interprets Amy's very justified disapproval of him buying a food truck from a police auction that was the site of a murder and still contained human body parts without insurance as her thinking his entire dream of owning a food truck is stupid and destined to fail. He spends two scene's sulking about this and in the end Amy has to apologise to him to spite doing genuinely nothing wrong.
• The Tell: Holt is able to tell that Terry is bluffing because his right pec flexes involuntarily. Holt mentions that his own tell is subtle, but it takes Jake and Terry a while to get it. It turns out to be Holt using contractions, which later alerts them to Holt getting held hostage, as he uses "shouldn't've" while communicating.
• Waxing Lyrical: "Might as well face it, you're addicted to math. Robert Palmer."

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