Brooklyn Nine Nine getting cancelled was the best thing that could happen to the show.
There, I’ve said it.
It’s out there, and I won’t take it back.
In fact, I’ll say it again, in BIG BOLD TEXT.
Brooklyn Nine Nine getting cancelled was the best thing that could happen to the show!
Sure, you’re upset. And sure, you may not agree with what I’m saying. To such people, I say, “bring it!”
But I’m standing by my statement.
Why?
Read on.
The show has great comic timing, engaging stories, and some very interesting characters. All this is held together by a pretty good cast and writers who wove together characters that you really care about.
Gone were the boring, monotone personalities.
Gone were the mashups of every other sitcom stereotype, trope, and crutch, ala Barney Stinson (How I Met Your Mother) and Joey (Friends) playing the role of the womaniser, or Ted (How I Met Your Mother) and Ross (Friends) portraying the luckless lover.
Enter Andy Samberg’s Jake Peralta. A detective who loves the work he does... just a LITTLE TOO MUCH.
Jake is FAAAR from your conventional lovelorn, down-on-his-luck, sappy romantic-dork lead.
Let’s just say.... Jake is an unconventional lead. But GOD is he entertaining!
Detective Peralta is flanked by Detective Amy Santiago (Melissa Fumero), Gina Linetti (Chelsea Peretti), Sergeant Terry Jeffords (Terry Crews), Detective Charles Boyle (Joe Lo Truglio), Detective Rosa Diaz (Stephanie Beatriz), and Captain Raymond Holt (Andre Baugher).
Three women, one gay man, and a mountain of muscle. Oh! and Boyle is a man too, but we’ll get to that later.
The most refreshing thing about these characters? The women ace the Bechdel Test, spending long hours NOT discussing men. And Gina Linetti is, by far, one of the most entertaining female characters on television.
The muscle-bound Terry Crews is a caring, extremely sensitive (sometimes hilariously so) father, and LOVES to break dance.
Captain Ray Holt is a gay, happily married, black police officer, who is at the head of the precinct in the show. And he DOESN’T SPEND THE ENTIRETY OF THE SHOW PORTRAYING STEREOTYPES.
Instead, his deadpan delivery adds a fun element to the show.
But back to why the show getting cancelled was the best thing ever.
A number of amazing shows which received critical acclaim were cancelled, pulled off the air, or changed networks.
Community faced repeated cancellation fears and conflicts. The show has had the most fun range of episodes, paying homage to paintball, westerns, zombie movies, Star Wars, video games, and more. Oh! Also, on a side note, Donald Glover, AKA Childish Gambino, is AWESOME in Community.
Hannibal, a visually stunning feast about the eccentric and cannibalistic Doctor Lecter, was cancelled after three seasons despite near-perfect visual storytelling.
And let’s not even talk about the fiasco that was Firefly.
Firefly, a critical hit, was cancelled after ONE season, much to its audience’s dismay.
Community, after being dropped by NBC, was picked up by Yahoo! Entertainment for a sixth season. And while the show’s quality HAD dropped after the third season, the sixth season of Community was a train-wreck.
The show’s original showrunner, Dan Harmon, had left the show after conflicts, and it...well...SHOWED.
Slowly its quality fell, it got boring, and eventually, I couldn’t sit through it.
It could have quit when it was ahead, and when people still loved it. But it didn’t.
The show should have stopped and died a peaceful death after its third, or perhaps even fourth or fifth season. This would have been fine. No good thing lasts. But that’s where the beauty of anything lies. Its transience. Its impermanence.
Like Tyler Durden says in Fight Club, you can’t hold on to perfection. It’s a fleeting, momentary thing. And we should be happy with that.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine is a beautiful show. It gets so many things right. And many other shows could learn a LOT from it.
But as it goes on, it stands the chance of new seasons, often forcibly pushed out, retroactively aborting the goodness of the show(especially now that it’s been renewed). With more seasons, we run the risk of the show slowly losing its spark. Will it become a show that WAS good, but became awful. Possibly.
And that would hurt, wouldn’t it?
Its like Harvey Dent says in The Dark Knight:
You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.Harvey Dent/Two-Face, The Dark Knight
So, let’s not let Brooklyn Nine-Nine become the villain. Let’s not let it die a slow painful death. Instead, let’s celebrate the show for what it is, what it was, and what it will always remain in our memories... and MOVE ON!
PS- Brooklyn Nine-Nine can still be picked up by Netflix or Hulu, or another network, so keep those fingers crossed!
PPS - Brooklyn Nine-Nine was picked up by NBC for a sixth season, a day after it was cancelled by Fox. So, I guess crossing those crossed fingers really worked!
(This is an opinion piece. The views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same)
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