Brooklyn Nine-Nine Shows Why You Never Leave A Man Behind, Especially During The Holidays

The meat of Brooklyn Nine-Nine's fourth Christmas episode may be (a) Boyle's elaborate plan to recover a lost Captain Latvia toy for Nikolaj's first Christmas in America (short version: the Latvian Mob is involved), and (b) Holt's attempt to win a Christmas caroling contest against the squad's sworn enemy -- the MTA -- with the help of a silver-throated yet drunk perp (which fails). But the most delightful moment comes before any of that, in a cold open that works like a motherfucker both in its sketch-esque self-containment and brevity, and in its deployment of the physical comedy skills of one Mr. Terry Crews.

For reasons unknown, Jake has been tasked with the lighting of the squad's Christmas tree. But instead of a standard fir or pine, he's invested in an inflatable tree-shaped decoration -- in fact, he unpinched enough pennies to get the Jumbo option! Unfortunately, he remains a somewhat careless consumer: the Jumbo inflatable tree is 10 meters tall, or over 30 feet tall. And it doesn't take long for the situation to get far enough out of hand that Jake can't halt the inflation.

Everyone flees to avoid suffocation. Well, almost everyone.

"Well, Terry's trapped in the break room forever," says Jake. "Only thing we can do now is move on with our lives. It's what Terry would have wanted." It's clear soon enough, though, that Jake has underestimated both Terry's will to survive, and Terry's ability to act as a projectile.

God bless us every one, too.