‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’: A Bad Arrest Leads to Real Trouble for Jake (RECAP)

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

The Setup

Season 8 • Episode 6

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[WARNING: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Brooklyn Nine-Nine Season 8 episode 6, “The Setup.”]

It’s no secret that Jake (Andy Samberg) likes being involved in, well, just about everything. When there’s an interesting or exciting case — or a case that closely resembles something that happened in a movie — he wants to be part of it. Desperately. But unfortunately, that leads him astray in “The Setup.” Or does it?

No one’s really sure whether Jake making a bad arrest is all part of an elaborate setup by O’Sullivan (John C. McGinley). Hijinks ensue as Jake attempts to prove someone’s out to get him — but in the end, he just might have really, really messed up. Here’s how it happens.

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Special Agent Finegold of the FBI steps in to take a case involving a bomb on a tour bus, which “ruins it” for Jake, who wants to “work a Speed.” Finegold doesn’t want Jake helping despite his protests, so he leaves… but he’s very much upset about not being part of the action. Later, he talks with Rosa and comes to a realization — while Finegold said the bomber was an idiot for setting the device to go off at midnight instead of noon, Jake thinks they meant it to go off at midnight and they’ll strike again. He goes to the scene, finds a man acting suspiciously and arrests him, so it appears he caught the guy. Except… he didn’t. The FBI already made the correct arrest, and the guy Jake caught was innocent.

Since the guy ends up suing the precinct because he lost his job as a result of the arrest, Holt (Andre Braugher) says he has to suspend Jake. But this gets Jake involved with the patrolman’s union, because he had another guy who was part of the union helping him when he made the arrest. O’Sullivan says he can “make all of this” disappear for Jake, but he has to “play ball” with him. Jake asks to speak to Holt alone in the aftermath — and he claims the head of the union is setting him up. Jake thinks O’Sullivan purposely did this to him to get back at Amy (Melissa Fumero) for her pilot program, which is meant to decrease needless interactions police have with civilians during the day. Since O’Sullivan has tried to blackmail them all before, Amy and Holt eventually, tentatively agree with Jake that it’s possible O’Sullivan was setting him up. But they need someone outside the precinct to investigate. That’s Rosa (Stephanie Beatriz)!

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They come up with a plan for Amy to get him drunk at Shaw’s and admit he set Jake up; Rosa will listen in on the conversation. Turns out there was a flaw with that plan — O’Sullivan doesn’t even get drunk, but Amy does. In the meantime, Jake makes another discovery; through a court summons, he realizes the guy he arrested lied about his address. Amy and Rosa try to solve their problem by having Rosa go out there and pretend to be Amy… but then they both get drunk, and O’Sullivan’s still more or less okay after fourteen beers. In the end, after plenty more beers, he admits… to having swapped out the candy in the precinct with healthy snacks. “Oh,” Amy says, “We’ve gotta call Jake.” Except Jake, by this point, is tailing the guy, convinced he’s part of a setup. Not. Good.

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Amy gets the victim’s address from Holt, and she drunkenly goes to meet her husband. She tells him O’Sullivan didn’t set him up, but the victim sees them and realizes he was tailing him. Again, not. Good. “Intimidation” is added to the charges against Jake, and he tells Holt he knows he did something wrong — and that’s where O’Sullivan comes in. He says they can settle the case and get everything back to normal, without suspending Jake.

This infuriates Holt. He “gets huffy” with O’Sullivan, saying that this type of thing makes the community see police as the enemy, which only leads to more distrust and resentment. At that point, Jake admits to everything and apologizes openly, saying he takes full responsibility and will do as much in a court of law. There’s no stopping it then — Jake will have to be suspended for five months. After O’Sullivan leaves, Jake says he learned a valuable lesson. That’s all fine and good, Holt says, but he hopes the day will come when Jake can learn that lesson without costing an innocent man his job.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Thursdays, 8:30/7:30c, NBC