A Real Estate Opportunity Separates The Thrifty From The People Who Keep Mail In The Tub

I realize how boring it is for me to show up here week after week and say how great Brooklyn Nine-Nine is, but it's so great. I feel like it's practically unheard-of for a show this young to be so effective mixing up their characters, and establishing/evolving their relationships with one another in interesting and (more importantly) hilarious ways, but last night's episode did both.

At the office, our heroes have had to come in on the weekend because it's time for Holt and Terry to preside over their employee self-evaluations, which gives Diaz the opportunity to clap (side-)eyes on Lohank, the member of the weekend squad who uses her desk when she's not there and grosses her out by shaving at/on it. Which, let's face it, is one of the most revolting things a person can do, though at least he's shaving his face. Even though Boyle has a great relationship with his "desk buddy" -- sometimes they leave gifts for each other! -- he volunteers to help Diaz get revenge on Lohank, proposing that they fill his locker with shaving cream and hair from the floor of a barber shop. This turns out to be a move they regret, as they learn all about Lohank's terribly sad life...but it allows Boyle and Diaz to take a new run at their relationship now that he's engaged to someone else and no longer pining over Diaz. "I haven't been much fun to hang out with over the last year or so, on account of all the asking you out and smelling your hair and staring at you from point-blank range," he apologizes. "Yeah, you were a real weirdo," she graciously replies. But now they can be friends! And maybe turn their imaginative revenge plots against someone who hasn't just been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

But the main event stars Gina and Peralta. The latter gets excused from the squad so that he can try to deal with kind of a pressing issue: he needs to get together $430,000 so that he can buy his apartment. Gina volunteers to help: she and Peralta grew up together, and she has a lot of great memories of time she spent there when it was his grandmother's place, so over an ice-cold 40 (obviously), she reviews Peralta's finances so that she can see whether he has any hope. Unfortunately, it appears as though Peralta has "a debilitating spending problem," and her enumeration of his foolish purchases yields some great runner-up "That Quote" candidates. "You have six massage chairs." "Well, they don't make a massage couch!" When he shows her how he's trying to teach himself how to spin with the three turntables he bought -- except the only vinyl he has are his grandmother's old Klezmer records, Gina yelps that he's terrible: "It sounds like Joy Behar falling down some stairs!" How much does he have to cut back to buy the place? "Infinity percent."

Obviously, Peralta is a terrible risk for any bank to back, and the head of the co-op board is not reassured by the $20,000 cash Peralta tries to hand him after getting it from a loan shark. But there's a solution: Gina could buy the apartment and be Peralta's landlady while he tries to get his finances in order and perhaps, down the road (twenty-five or more years in the future, I would say) buy it from her. Peralta having spent the episode trying to convince himself that his atrocious irresponsibility is just typical thirty-three-year-old behaviour (and being horrified to learn that the bald, suit-wearing head of the co-op board is actually younger than he is) (and by the way non-verbally indicating the man's baldness does not endear Peralta to him one little bit), Peralta is particularly shocked and offended to learn that Gina may have the capital to buy his or any apartment. She explains that she's "thrifty" -- cuts her own hair, walks to work, steals Scully's lunch every day -- but Peralta will not accept that Gina might be more grown-up than he is. And just as she threw his shopping problem in his face (though she did it nicely), he starts listing her character failings. She dreams of going on Wife Swap, and considers Ray J "a national treasure." And also...

What you need to know when I tell you that we had to pause the show at this point to recover is that last week I put three packs of gum in the car and, when I got into it yesterday, saw that all that was left were four pieces of the one remaining pack, and that the number of pieces I had was zero. What else you need to know is that my esteemed colleague Dave literally only sets butt in the car twice a week, when he's taking the dog to and from the dog gym (real thing), which is AT MOST a seven-minute round trip.

"How many pieces of gum do you eat at a time?"
"One."
"That's not possible."
"One at a time."
"Okay, but--"
"Careful phrasing."
"So you unwrap one piece of gum..."
"Yes."
"And then how many more pieces of gum do you also put in your mouth in the same car ride?"
"I don't know! I LIKE GUM!"

And this is why "You call gum 'the dentist'!" is now in our permanent household vocabulary. Congratulations to Brooklyn Nine-Nine for starting down the path of maybe, someday, being as well represented there as The Simpsons, Frisky Dingo, and Mr. Show.