Brooklyn Nine-Nine Takes Jake And Holt's Relationship To The Next Level

After last week's Coral Palms-a-Thon, Brooklyn Nine-Nine returns to the 718 for half the episode, letting us see how the squad's doing without its leader and their-- would we call Jake its soul? Anyway, in Holt's absence, the Nine-Nine is getting a new captain...again.

Captain Jason Stenley prefers to be known as C.J., and if the issue with Bill Hader's Captain Dozerman is that he was too strict, C.J. has the opposite problem: he doesn't want to be authoritarian and gives everyone everything they ask for. Gina gets an assistant; Diaz gets a cubicle; Terry gets a yogurt fridge; and Boyle gets a treadmill desk because of course he does, and of course he should stick to walking.

Only Amy worries that the squad will get soft without a strong commander to keep them in line, and after an urgent meeting, C.J. is made to appreciate the importance of telling people no sometimes. Gina will even fire her assistant's...assistant! ("Emily had a lot on her plate.")

Meanwhile, in America's Sticky Butt (™ Jake), Holt and Jake are running down leads of their own. Holt's pretty sure Figgis saw their go-kart fail because someone "with a thick New Jersey accent" called the Fun Zone wanting to meet its stars. Jake wants to call the squad, but Holt doesn't want the marshals to know about it, and thinks they can take on Figgis by themselves. They'll just need to buy some guns -- but in order to do that without a federal background check on their false identities (which will also alert the marshals), they'll have to bribe the gun store owner not to run their names. Hmm, sounds dangerous.

In this climate, Jake and Holt probably would have had no reason to concern themselves with local authorities interfering with any firearm-related plans they might make, except that a giddy Holt (giddy for Holt, anyway) runs a stop sign and gets pulled over by a sheriff when the back seat of his car is absolutely loaded with weaponry.

One failed Newlywed Game later...

...Greg and Larry end up in a holding cell. When they tell the sheriff the truth and give him their Marshal Service handler's number to call, they learn that things are worse than they thought: Figgis is on the line and says he's got their marshal and is coming to them next. Back in lockup, they're pretty sure they'll be able to escape and get past a sheriff who looks and acts exactly like Jerry Gergich if they can just start a fight he'll be forced to break up. Except apparently inter-prisoner fistfights are totally fine in Florida?

Finally, Jake thinks of something this sheriff absolutely will not tolerate.

And he's right!

Beat the snot out of your cellies all you want, but NO GAY STUFF.

Is anyone that surprised that Jake, having satisfied his need to make Holt his surrogate father, now might want to make their relationship weird in a completely different way? Regardless: it works, but when Holt calls Terry to tell him what's going on and Terry rallies the rest of the squad to get C.J.'s signoff for them to go settle the Figgis matter, it's right after C.J.'s been convinced that he needs to start being more of a hardass. But at least if the now-fugitive Greg and Larry get thrown back in the local lockup...

...we may find out if this guy is Hitchcock's literal long-lost twin?