Detective Peralta Shows How To Dress For Sting Operation Success

Though it's weird to think of Peralta as having been a detective long enough to have real nemeses, the latest episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine is the tale of one of them: The Pontiac Bandit. After a Doug Judy gets picked up on multiple counts of identity theft, he tries to make a deal by trading information on a guy who steals Pontiacs. Peralta's been trying to catch The Pontiac Bandit ("We just called him Bill." — Doug) for eight years, so he enthusiastically agrees to make a deal with Doug if Doug will help Peralta and Diaz with a sting operation to catch him.

This leads to Peralta and Diaz spending an afternoon getting charmed (Peralta) and hit on (Diaz) by Doug, who takes them home to meet his mom, chats about his laserdisc collection, and generally acts like the Craig Robinson character he is: mostly lovable; kind of a dirtbag. When The PB agrees to a meeting, Doug shows how eager he is to make it work, pointing out that Peralta's going to need a costume change. And then this happens.

Obviously, there is nothing wrong and about a thousand things right with this suit. The Boyz II Men burn is just the beginning: as Chekhov wrote, you can't show a giant, possibly "triple-breasted" suit in the first (okay, second) act without busting out a Steve Harvey joke in the third. And Peralta's enthusiasm not just for the suit but for the guy he is when he's wearing it is dimmed only a little by the news that Doug's father apparently died in it. It hardly matters that the go-between for the Pontiac Bandit says that his boss will only meet with Doug one-on-one, meaning that the suit didn't actually achieve the end it was supposed to: there's nothing hotter than a white three-piece suit worn with a band-collared shirt. And black Vans.

As indisputably great as Peralta looks in that get-up, though, there was a close contender for a second-best That Moment in the episode. Holt's husband's dog Cheddar (CHEDDAR!) has had an assignation with a neighbour dog named Karate, resulting in "two smaller dogs," a.k.a. puppies. In his efforts to place the puppies in a new home (Santiago can't take them because she's allergic; Terry wouldn't subject the puppies to the chaos currently underway at his house now that his twins Cagney and Lacey are learning to walk), Holt ends up walking around the precinct carrying the puppies under his arms in a way that makes them seem like they might, just possibly, be a cute new model of shoulder holster. They also have an unfortunate effect when he tries to chew out the squad for hiding from just-returned hero Boyle, who's getting on everyone's nerves.

The reason Boyle's back even though he's not actually physically recovered is that he was getting bored and lonely at home, so the solution to getting him to go back and continue healing is obvious: he can take possession of the puppies. Which is good for Boyle, but bad for the show. Holt/Puppies 2016!