By Jack Deegan
Correspondent
After eight long, emotional years of memorable seasons, network cancellations and an NBC revival, “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” aired its final episode, “The Last Day,” on Thursday, Sept. 16. Created by Dan Goor and packed with a star-studded cast that includes Andy Samberg, Melissa Fumero and Terry Crews, the fan-favorite show bid farewell with one last, perfect heist.
The crew of “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” had a tall task ahead of them with having to wrap it’s final 10 episodes in a satisfying way, all while shooting in the midst of a global pandemic. Thankfully, they managed to pull off a successful and rewarding final season that not only took the series in a new direction, but stayed true to itself and delivered on fan expectations.
Between the seventh and eighth seasons of “Nine-Nine,” a lot had changed in the world, most notably the rise in police brutality protests after the cruel and heartbreaking death of George Floyd. Since “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” follows a police precinct, it would have been rather tone deaf of them to not acknowledge any of the social unrest and distrust of the police; the writers handled that situation incredibly well.
The characters explicitly mentioning the incident and how the public perceives police is a nice touch that gives the show more validity as they clearly weren’t afraid of shining a light on the subject. In its finale season, “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” dedicated a majority of their episodes to a storyline about dirty cops — they shared an honest look at how corrupt the system truly is. They even had a core character quit the force entirely after realizing how corrupt it all was, and included an entire subplot about whether it was morally right to be a police officer in the first place.
The final season itself offered some of the most memorable storylines and episodes of the entire show, all while being funnier than ever and packing a surprising amount of emotion into every moment. Season eight dives into new directions with characters, tells important stories about rekindling love and balancing parenting with workplace responsibilities, and, of course, features another great moment with Doug Judy, AKA The Pontiac Bandit (Craig Robinon). The eighth season of the show is one that will be remembered for a while, especially when it comes to the finale episode, which might be the strongest episode of the entire series.
The finale centers around the traditional heist that occurs every season, and this year, the winner is crowned “An Amazing Human/Genius and the Grand Champion of the 99,” as they try to steal a replica Medal of Valor. Each individual member of the squad uses the heist as a way to say goodbye, as they are all headed off in separate directions. One of the most fun parts of every heist is how complicated the plans get as everyone tries to one up one another; this year’s elaborate heist did not disappoint.
For the heist, everyone is broken up into teams and, right out of the gate, the double-crossing begins. The heist leads us on a trip down memory lane as we come across familiar faces and revisit meaningful locations. Along this trip down memory lane comes shocking reveal after shocking reveal, coupled with some of the most fun gags of the entire series and some of the biggest changes to the status quo yet. One of the best parts of this hour-long special is all of the callbacks and meta jokes throughout the episode; so many references were made to some of the series' most memorable moments.
What really made this episode special was how they handled wrapping things up in a satisfying way that made sense. They had a lot of pressure to give the fans the finale they deserved, and it was easy to see all of the love and care put into this finale. Every character got an ending that made sense and emotionally resonated with me. There’s one scene in particular between Holt (Andre Braugher) and Jake (Andy Samberg) at the end that I’m going to remember for a long time to come.
While this show will be dearly missed, it gave us eight years full of incredible stories, characters and laughs.
This near-perfect show wrapped in the perfect way.
