Is Brooklyn Nine-Nine Turning Into a Rom Com?
EntertainmentI love autumn: it’s TV’s cuffing season, when all sitcoms suddenly become rom coms. In both The Mindy Project’s Season 4 premiere earlier this month and Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s start to Season 3 this week, relationships got serious. For two seasons, Brooklyn Nine-Nine ran on the steam of detective Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg) and Amy Santiago’s (Melissa Fumero) sexual tension, but the “Will They or Won’t They But Obviously They Will” between them was finally acted upon in this week’s premiere. Is this the moment in which Brooklyn Nine-Nine stretches out and settles into official coupledom?
Up until now, Brooklyn Nine-Nine has seemed invested in playing the long game. The first season ended with Jake confessing his love to Amy, and the most recent closed with them finally making out. But since this isn’t the first time the show has flirted with Amy and Jake’s dating potential, a makeout scene wasn’t any particular reason for us to hold our breath.
But, this week’s premiere laid it out: Amy and Jake began—and are still!—dating. For the world of sitcoms, this is a major game changer. Everything about the show, which significantly revolves around Jake and Amy’s sexually-charged and endearingly mean banter, has to shift with this new romantic commitment. And since Brooklyn Nine-Nine is technically a workplace sitcom, the consequences of its two main characters working—on top of sleeping—with each other means there will be adjustments for everyone.
After Frasier, The Office, Parks and Recreation, and, I guess, The Mindy Project now, Brooklyn Nine-Nine is certainly not unaware of the risks that come with blurring the work/life binary. But as co-creator and executive producer Dan Goor said in an interview, the show is not so much interested in Trying A New Meta-TV Trick, as it is in relationship realism: