BROOKLYN NINE-NINE: Hope and Humanity in the 21st Century

NINE-NINE! Is a rallying cry we’ve been getting familiar with these past couple of years. The 99th precinct in Brooklyn has become one of the safest places to feel like a meaningful part of a community. It comes as a refreshing dose of reality in an era of bleak prospects as to the survival of our species, and global failure in leadership, especially in the US and its “Make America Great Again” “president” (redundant quote marks intended).

So, what makes Brooklyn 99 such a safe place for our generations, living the transition to a dire, fast-changing world we feel is completely out of our grasp?

The series has one extremely strong feature, that transforms it in the anthem of a generation. DI-VER-SI-TY. From its cast to its characters, there’s a definite step away from the all-white, homogeneous cast of Friends, How I Met Your Mother, or Full House. The cast and characters cultural variety helps represent a full -blown, dysfunctional but somehow fitting small-scale modern society: they belong to the LGBT+ community, or have Latino or African-American backgrounds (or both!), are young, middle-aged or seniors.

The crisscrossing of identity markers gives us the notion that even the “minority groups” are diverse and complex, avoiding the simple, fixed quota representation of the media in the end of the 20th century. Although the sitcom format doesn’t allow the show to really delve deep into social issues, it acknowledges the complexity of human identity in our society and gives it authority by making its characters law-enforcement representatives.

B99 also warms our hearts by giving us a safe place, where you can be yourself AND be flawed. The characters break all stereotypes, they’re not heroes, they’re real people, just as the Gellers and their Friends, or desperately idealistic Ted Mosby and pushover super-nice Marshall in How I Met Your Mother. We already have to thank writer Michael Schur for his wacky, sad but incredibly loveable characters from The Office, Parks and Recreations and The Good Place.

Here, Jake is childish and self-absorbed, Amy is obsessive and lacks self-confidence, Gina is a delusional nutcase, Captain Holt can’t show emotions and Rosa can’t control her temper. Charles, well, Charles accumulates what seems like every existing weakness: he’s clumsy, way too trusting, he has no real grasp of reality, human character or sense of immediate danger. But he is also as loyal as a dog, as whole-hearted and sensitive as a kid and is the ultimate I-don’t-care-what-anybody-thinks-of-me role model. In short, he is FREE and INSPIRING, as is Rosa with her strength and no-nonsense attitude, Jake and his ability to sacrifice himself in the face of danger, Amy and her organizational skills and high sense of good, Terry and his leadership and nurturing personality, Gina with her strikes of genius and well, she IS a goddess! Even Hitchcock and Scully, they… remind us to not care too much about anything!

In short, nobody’s perfect, except when we are all together.

Thanks for reading, it’s been a pleasure.

– Unknown

“Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. No doubt, no doubt, no doubt."

Season 2, Episode 16 “The Wednesday Incident”