Brooklyn Nine-Nine Lets Captain Holt Show Off His Small Talk Skills

Pimento having gone into hiding to evade the Mob assassin(s?) on his trail, it's up to the rest of the squad to pull together and collar Pimento's would-be killers -- maybe not so much for his sake, since he's not just weird but also kind of gross, but for the sake of Diaz and her storybook-worthy love for him. (Speaking of weird and also kind of gross.) When Diaz goes undercover to the Texas prison where Maura, the sister of key Mob figure Figgis, is incarcerated to try to get intel out of her and immediately gets made by an inmate she collared a while back, it falls to Amy to take her place as inmate "Cortez." This despite the fact that no one believes Amy's hard enough to do it -- including her handler, Jake, who along with Boyle is posing as Cortez's OB-GYN.

Cute, show. ...No, I mean it!

While Amy, Jake, and Boyle are in Texas, the rest of the squad is strategizing how best to exploit Pimento's fake funeral for investigative leads. They don't know the name of Figgis's FBI mole, but they have learned that he has a scar across his right palm -- earning him, courtesy of Gina, the code name ScarJoe, which Holt approves: "Never heard that before."

Holt says he and Gina will greet mourners on their way in so he can inspect their hands, but Terry's not sure this is the best possible task for the Captain: "You hate small talk." But Holt -- who has possibly been doing some work on himself during Kevin's time in France -- begs to differ: "Oh, I can turn it on when it's called for." And then, thank God, he proves it.

Alas, ScarJoe doesn't show up for the funeral -- and Holt would know, since Gina came up with the idea that, instead of shaking the hands of the bereaved, she and Holt high-five them instead, claiming Pimento didn't want his service to be "stuffy." However, though the funeral hasn't been useful in advancing the case against Pimento's pursuers, it did let Holt learn something new about himself. After comforting a very slightly emotional Diaz with a promise that she can get through this pain by throwing someone off a roof, he offers his most heartfelt (and palm-felt) condolences.

Though no one wishes the worst for Pimento. But if he does end up being killed BUT the circumstances surrounding his murder are responsible for Holt's discovering his new affinity for hand-slapped greetings: worth it.