The Bimbo is the thirteenth episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine's sixth season.
Captain Holt and Jake investigate a case of stolen coins at Kevin's university in hopes of proving Holt's intellect to his husband's colleagues. Meanwhile, Terry and Amy have a competition over who can raise their squad's morale with lunch.
This episode contains examples of:
- Analogy Backfire: When Jake compliments Holt on his "rock hard brain", Holt points out that a healthy brain should be soft and wet.
- Anything but That!: Holt giving personalized high-fives to everyone but Jake as punishment for his lateness.
- Backhanded Apology: Amy accidentally shoots Gary with a paintball gun, twice, and when she apologizes she passive-aggressively implies he's being too sensitive about it.
- Bilingual Bonus: Charles as Terry's teppanyaki chef says, "Moshi moshi, losers!" Moshi moshi is a Japanese greeting.
- Call-Back: Kevin says he initially doesn't want Holt investigating the stolen coins because Holt gets too overprotective, and brings up the safe house fiasco.
- Gary Jennings returns as part of Amy's lunch team.
- Jake mentions hiding the crown in his desk during the third Halloween Heist.
- Amy mentions shooting Jake in Coral Palms Part 3.
- Continuity Drift: Holt mentions that he has always felt intellectually inferior to Kevin's friends from the academic world, and gets flustered in their company. However back in Season 1, several of Kevin's Professor friends attended Holt's birthday party and Holt conversed with them with ease, and they seemed entirely impressed by him. Possibly justified in that the party was an environment they controlled, and would reasonably have only invited professors that they both liked.
- Cool and Unusual Punishment: The Cold Open sees Captain Holt punishing Jake for his tardiness... by performing an intricate, personal high-five with each and every person in the briefing room, except him. And that includes the Xerox employee who did a tutorial for the new copier. Jake's reaction as he is Forced to Watch shows the effectiveness of Holt's plan.Jake: But you hate high-fives.
Holt: Yes. Every minute of it was hell, but it will be worse for you. - Dean Bitterman: Wesley Allister, dean of Kevin's university, who looks down on Holt for not being a professional academic.
- Escalating War: Terry and Amy get more and more competitive, going out of their way to make each of their lunches more spectacular than the other's. Eventually both of their teams get sick of the competition because they rack up higher and higher expenses doing spectacular things in inconvenient locales instead of actually eating lunch.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Jake telling Holt that the professors underestimating him is an asset because he's under their suspicion makes Holt realize who the real thief is.
- Height Angst: Jake brags that he's above average height... according to the 1940 U.S. census. Ironically, the average male height at the time of the episode's release (69.1 inches) was actually very slightly shorter than it was in 1940 (69.3 inches).
- I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: Amy accidentally shoots Gary twice with a paintball gun, saying that it doesn't have a safety but doing nothing to point it away from people.
- Gary himself treats it as if he were actually shot.
- Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Amongst regular people, Holt is a cultured intellectual, with the rest of the Nine-Nine holding him in high esteem. However, according to Kevin's coworkers, he's a "bimbo". Kevin doesn't believe this and tells off Allister and the other professors for demeaning his husband. When Jake tries to reassure Holt of his intelligence, Holt replies that, amongst Kevin's people, he is "the Jake", while Jake himself would be "the Hitchcock".Jake: Oh my God, you dropped down so many more levels than I was expecting!
- Not So Above It All: Rosa willingly goes along with Amy's ideas and expresses her support for the competition.
- Offscreen Teleportation: Somehow, Hitchcock and Scully are able to go to both Terry's and Amy's respective lunches, despite being held simultaneously two miles apart. Apparently, they just like free food that much.
- Oh, No... Not Again!: Kevin is less than happy that Holt gets involved in this case.
- Red Herring: At first Holt suspects Dean Wesley Allister as the thief. When the coins are found in the wastebasket of another professor, Holt still believes Allister framed that person. But when Holt confronts him, Allister refutes all his evidence. Eventually, however, Holt realizes that the real thief was the janitor who claimed to find the coins in the trash.
- Shout-Out: "Free food. Life finds a way."
- One of the teachers at the college is named Professor Port.
- Smug Snake: Even if he turns out to be innocent, Dean Allister is still a snobby jerkass. Kevin telling him off was a fantastic moment.
- Squick: In-Universe.Holt: If anything I’ll say, "I am Raymond Holt and my brain is soft and wet."
Jake: No, don’t say that. It’s gross and I hate it. All right, let’s go do some cop stuff. - Starving Artist: When Terry questions the expense of hiring actors to play zombies in their paintball arena, Rosa explains that New York has so many struggling actors it was easy to hire them for only $10.
- Stating the Simple Solution: Jake asks Kevin why not ask his husband for help with the case. Kevin responds that Holt takes cases involving him too personally and makes thing complicated.
- Title Drop: Holt feels he is intellectually inferior to Kevin's colleagues and calls himself a 'bimbo' compared to them.
