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Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Brooklyn Nine-Nine's MeToo Episode Is A Perfectly Imperfect Showcase For Its Brilliant Women

"I just wanted to help make it better for this one woman."

An awful lot of your favourite shows are going to be Doing A MeToo Episode this year if they haven’t already, and you’d better hope they were paying attention to the most recent episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine. 

Titled ‘He Said, She Said’ (and directed by Stephanie Beatriz, who plays Diaz) it sees Sergeant Santiago and Detective Peralta investigating a case where a woman hit a coworker in the penis with a golf club, breaking said penis. Hilarious and delightful premise – until you find out that she says it was in self defence after the coworker tried to rip her clothes off in his office.

(We’ll be talking about the whole episode, so don’t read past here if you’re not into spoilers.)

She’s offered a deal from the huge company where she works: $2 million if she signs an NDA about the incident. But when Santiago convinces her to try and press charges instead of taking the money, working the case brings out upsetting memories for Santiago and even sees her arguing with Diaz about whether it’s even realistic for victims of harassment and assault to try and get justice.

Despite the name, the way the characters respond isn’t split down the middle: men versus women, or cops versus criminals. The women, including the accuser Keri (the massively underrated Briga Heelan from Great News), get to talk about it between themselves, and have nuanced and differing opinions about how to handle this stuff.

The scene where Santiago tells Peralta why she’s taking it so personally is a case in point.

Watching it, I braced for the show to give Amy a big-T Traumatic Backstory – but her gross, entitled former boss-turned-harasser didn’t have to have been physically violent to make her doubt herself or find something triggering in this case, or to not want to raise it with her husband before now.

Six seasons in, we know that one of the worst ways you could hurt Amy Santiago is to make her feel that she hasn’t earned what she’s worked for, and that’s true of so many women who have felt undermined by the revelation that a man in their life had an ulterior motive for supporting them.

Jake’s support in this episode is unequivocal, humble, and not used as a cheap source of conflict in their still-new marriage.

It makes sense for the same character who once pointed out how transphobic the end of Ace Ventura is to sit up all night watching a documentary about feminism to better support his wife and the public he serves, and also for him to hilariously run his mouth in the middle of a serious conversation because he feels awkward.

“I feel like I shouldn’t be here… Or should I be here, because men should be part of the conversation? … I’ve landed on active listening, I will no longer be chiming in.”

The whole conversation isn’t just a way to jump on a bandwagon – it enriches all the characters.

And the way the case is resolved is perfectly imperfect as well. While justice will be served to the assaulter and his broken penis, it’s because another man came forward out of selfishness, and the woman he attacked still has to leave her job – and yet most of the women involved still feel like progress was made, and that it’s still important to keep trying.

Is it a perfect discussion of a serious topic? Good lord no. It’s a 22-minute sitcom that spends 9 of those minutes on a B-plot about a murderer called the Disco Strangler.

Is it a perfect episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine? No, because it contains neither a Halloween heist nor an appearance from Cheddar.

But it is a thoughtful, realistic and optimistic take on something that affects a massive number of people, and that TV shows are still working out how to tackle without being exploitative or overly earnest.

And it shows why a sitcom about cops is somehow one of the most progressive and emotionally intelligent shows on TV – one that deserves as many seasons as they want to make.