A hacker is trying to break into the 99's server of undercover police officers. Holt has to bring in a Sergeant from I.T. (Sean Astin) to help, but he's not happy about it. Meanwhile, Jocelyn breaks up with Rosa, and Hitchcock and Scully prepare a lasagna lunch.
Tropes for this episode include:
- Alpha Bitch: Every single sorority girl the Nine-Nine has to wrangle is mean, spoiled, and shallow. There is one exception in the form of one girl who is ditzy and self-centered, but encourages Rosa to make up with Jocelyn, and shouts to Amy that she should hang onto Jake, since he "seems sweet."
- Bavarian Fire Drill: Jake can't follow any of the terminology that Sergeant Knox follows. It's revealed that Knox knew no one in the 99 knew anything about computers and was bluffing.
- Book Ends: The episode starts with Hitchcock and Scully making their lasagna and ends with them eating it.
- Bottle Episode: Takes place almost entirely in the precinct.
- The Calls Are Coming from Inside the House: The hacker is inside the precinct.
- Chekhov's Gun: Hitchcock and Scully's garlic bread. It burns in the toaster oven, just as they worried it would, and the fire alarm distracts Knox long enough for Jake to knock him down.
- Cool and Unusual Punishment: The 99 happily puts Knox in a holding cell with the sorority girls, as punishment for faking a hacking, trying to delete the record for his murder, and taking Holt hostage.
- The Cuckoolander Was Right: Amy's FOMOW (Fear Of Missing Out on Work) is made fun of, as she insists she needs to be at precinct so she can help solve the hacker situation. Jake tells her they can handle it without her, but it turns out her knowledge is actually needed to catch the perp, and Knox waited till she was out of the precinct so she wouldn't recognize him.
- Cut the Juice: Discussed as a solution to the problem and tossed aside - nominally because the servers have an extra power supply that wouldn't power down fast enough, in reality because Knox didn't actually want to succeed against the fictional "hacking" threat.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Rosa's plan to get back together with Jocelyn only so that she could break her heart and dump her to "win" the breakup (although later subverted in that Rosa secretly wasn't going to do that).
- "Eureka!" Moment: Both Jake and Amy have one; Jake when realizing that Knox is the hacker and wants to get Holt to delete the server files, and Amy when she realizes Knox is a suspect in her case.
- Foreshadowing: There are a few hints as to Knox's true nature, mostly having to do with the fact that he's the suspect in one of Amy's homicide cases.
- The option of erasing the database should the hacker get in is brought up, with Holt pointing out that it would erase all evidence in ongoing cases, meaning that criminals would go free before they're brought to trial. This turns out to be the hacker's true goal.
- When the phone Jake is video-calling Amy with is pointed at him, Knox quickly and surreptitiously moves his chair and hunches top focus on the screens.
- In the same conversation, The holding cells open up as a distraction for the cops just as Knox finds out Amy is on her way back to the Nine-Nine.
- The hacker is detected in a room just as Amy arrives; as she goes with the others to the room, she says she recognizes Knox from somewhere.
- While the Technobabble terms are genuine, the actual usage in Knox, Rosa, Holt and Jake's conversations are repeatedly used in the wrong contexts. Considering the action movie theme of the episode, and Jake repeatedly mentioning that he understands it (and clearly doesn't), it's a sign to savvy viewers that Knox is just throwing out words to distract them all.
- Genre Savvy: Jake tells Rosa not to go Killing Eve on Jocelyn.
- Hollywood Hacking: Averted for the most part. The hacker engages in classic, if a bit showy, social engineering to make other people give him what he really wants.
- Hypocrite: Captain Holt calls out Rosa (and later Jake) for bailing on the manhunt to fix things with Jocelyn, but doesn't call out Hitchcock and Scully for focusing on their lunch (although it's quite possible he simply didn't want them involved, given their track record)
- It's All About Me: Amy experiences some when she tries to get back to the precinct due to her FOMOW, stealing a cab and blowing right past the officer guarding the door.
- Mole in Charge: It's revealed Sergeant Knox is the hacker.
- Not Good with Rejection: Rosa is hurt that Jocelyn wants to break up with her; she plots to beg for Jocelyn's forgiveness, rebuild their relationship, and then break up cruelly.
- Not So Above It All:
- Rosa, when she admits she loves Jocelyn.
- Holt, when he tells Jake that "time is running out."
- Real Time: Except for a 96-second time jump, the episode's timeframe is contained in the twenty-one-and-a-half minutes it takes Hitchcock and Scully to cook lasagna in the office microwave.
- Overly Long Gag: The episode ends with 30 seconds of Hitchcock and Scully silently eating their lasagnanote .
- Red Herring: Invoked by Knox, who is deliberately leading them on a wild goose chase for a "mysterious hacker" in the building, when it turns out it was him the whole time; Knox was stalling them until time ran out so that Holt would erase the data on the server, thus erasing evidence of murder he committed.
- Running Gag: Jake exclaiming "Mamma Maglione!" (the brand of Hitchcock and Scully's lasagna) before every commercial break.
- Serious Business: Hitchcock and Scully treat their lunch this way, despite the literal emergency going on around them.
- Shout-Out: Killing Eve and The Hunger Games are referenced.
- Sinister Sorority Sisters: Parodied. The Nine Nine have a whole sorority in lockup due to being drunk and disorderly. They are famed for their cutting, vicious putdowns to anyone who gets close. The Nine-Nine are afraid to walk past them because they're so mean. They put Knox - who's a corrupt murderer - in a holding cell with them at the end, which is presented as a fitting punishment.
- Skewed Priorities: Scully and Hitchcock are more worried about their lasagna than they are about the hacker situation.
- Spanner in the Works: Amy. Or rather, Amy's FOMOW (Fear Of Missing Out on Work). Knox specifically chose the date for the attack because Amy was going to be away at the dentist and wouldn't be around to recognize him. Unfortunately, Amy's "crippling" FOMOW caused her to drop everything and rush back to the precinct at the first hint of trouble.
- Sustained Misunderstanding: Hitchcock and Scully spend most of the episode unaware of the server being hacked, so when Holt calls them by mistake, they assume there's something wrong with their lasagna. All of Holt's attempts to say that their's nothing wrong make them think something really bad has happened.
- Teens Are Monsters: Members of two sororities have been detained after they all fought each other. One is particularly brutal to Terry, putting him down by insulting his wardrobe. When Knox is captured, Terry is rather satisfied by the thought of the girls picking him apart for his stereotypical nerdy attire.
- Tranquil Fury: When Knox holds Holt at gunpoint, Jake snarls out, with a barely suppressed rage, "Knox, you're pointing a gun at an NYPD captain. Have you really thought this through?"
- What the Hell, Hero?:
- Holt tells off Rosa for letting her relationship woes have higher priority than the case.
- Amy has one towards Jake for not taking notes during the crisis.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Jake feeds Holt a line about "time is running out" from spy movies. Holt tells him there's something stuck in his teeth, and Jake lightly chides him for not acting like a hero in a spy thriller.
