Gina Saves Boyle From Himself, With A Ghost Story

Of all the problems faced by Brooklyn Nine-Nine's Boyle — and they are many — candor has never really been one of them. This is a guy who's too gormless to be deceptive about everything from his misplaced hero-worship of Peralta to his ultra-nerdy foodie obsessions; he can't even dissemble when it comes to his dorky Thanksgiving traditions even once he knows that observing them is opening him up to the mockery of all his colleagues, even the really useless ones.

Given this character profile, you might think it wouldn't be such a big deal when Boyle has to double up on his painkillers after falling off the stage at his medal ceremony (damn you, Sgt. Peanut Butter!) and, as a result, starts cheerfully (and kind of obliviously) dropping truth bombs everywhere. The lack of inhibition causes Boyle, for instance, not just to fake a text to make an elevator ride with Holt less awkward, but to announce that he's going to fake it; he even throws in a "boop!" to...make it more believable? He thinks? Mistakenly?

Anyway, Gina's seen this kind of thing before — when her dad "got his vasectomy un-reversed" — so Holt assigns her to shadow Boyle for the rest of the day and make sure that his excessive honesty doesn't get him murdered. And while she doesn't manage to keep him from telling the Deputy Chief who gave him his medal that the man has terrible breath, she does intervene in what is potentially a much more dangerous interaction. Since Boyle, who is known to be in love with Diaz, keeps telling her he needs to talk to her, she's been posted up in a corner of the bar where everyone's out drinking to celebrate Boyle's medal, staying out of his way, because she's afraid that the painkillers will make him even more earnest than usual and finally get him to tell Diaz, in so many words, that he's in love with her. Recognizing what a catastrophe this would be, Gina promises to keep Boyle away from Diaz, whereupon Boyle immediately appears behind her. As Diaz quickly sidles off, Boyle asks if Gina's seen her, and without missing a beat, Gina shoots back a perfect and incontestable response.

I don't know why "eight years" is the exact right length of time. I just know that it is, and that the craft behind this line plus Chelsea Peretti's timing has made me literally laugh out loud at it every time I remembered it all last night, up to this moment, and for the foreseeable future.