‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’ Episode 2: Is Captain Kim Too Good to Be True? (RECAP)
Spoiler Alert
[WARNING: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Brooklyn Nine-Nine Season 7 Episode 2, “Captain Kim.”]
To say the Nine-Nine has had an eccentric roster of leaders would be an understatement. There was the militant Dozer (Bill Hader), most memorable for kicking the bucket after he saw Jake and Amy kissing rather than working. There was the utterly ineffectual CJ (Ken Marino), whose bumbling idiocy became a headache for the squad. There was The Vulture (Dan Winters), who caused mayhem even Allstate couldn’t handle. Even Holt (Andre Braugher) is unusual, but lovable.
It’s that brand of lovable weirdness that the group is trying to restore to command in Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s second episode on its Season 7 premiere night, “Captain Kim.” To briefly recap, at the end of last season, Wuntsch (Kyra Sedgwick) demoted the Nine-Nine’s stalwart leader. He’s no longer captain, but if Jake (Andy Samberg) has anything to say about it, that’ll be a temporary state of affairs.
Jake swears he’ll have the new guy or gal gone by next week. That’s a goal easier spoken than fulfilled, mostly because Holt’s replacement appears to be a total sweetheart. But Holt and Jake are convinced she’s hiding something, and, as one might imagine, their attempts to dig up dirt on her land them both in a pit of chaos and hurt.
A Split Squad
From the moment Captain Kim enters the precinct, she has an aura of suspicious perfection. She says she’s never spoken to Wuntsch, she’s the first Asian-American captain in the NYPD and her “guilty pleasure is charity work.” Heaping more selflessness onto her expressed goodwill, she says once Holt’s year in uniform is done, she’ll move on. Amy (Melissa Fumero) likes her, but Jake’s not buying a word of it. “When people seem too good to be true, they are,” he says.
Jake’s game plan is to have everyone get dirt on Kim during their one-on-one sessions with her; he thinks she’ll slip up and reveal her true intentions. Quite the opposite happens. She’s excited about Terry (Terry Crews)’s kids and Amy’s organizational skills, and she offers Jake his second-best dream job. Still, Jake has reservations. He tells his pals that the form to transfer Kim came through Wuntsch, so the new captain (might have) lied to them.
Making a Scene
Jake and Holt are dead set on finding evidence that Kim and Wuntsch are in cahoots. They’re so fixated on this plan that while they attend a party Kim’s throwing at her house, they search tirelessly for anything even slightly shady. Although Amy stops them a few times and they’re almost caught by Kim, they get a lead when they watch her check a locked door and put the key in her pocket. “Looks like we just found the key to exposing Captain Kim,” Jake smirks.
Of course, because the key’s in her pocket, they have to cause a scene. This task falls to Holt, who flunks it twice — raising the volume of his voice “nine percent” isn’t getting the job done — but on the third try, he throws himself down the stairs. Kim runs over, concerned, and while she attends to Holt, Jake takes the key.
He makes his way up to the room and lets himself in, then finds an email labeled “Raymond Holt” in Kim’s inbox. But before he can click on it, a Pitbull charges at him… and then around him, and down the stairs to where the food is located. Needless to say, the party is ruined.
Gone By Next Week
After that, the jig is up. Kim finds out that Jake stole her key. The whole thing culminates in a group meeting where, at Kim’s request, Boyle reads the email Jake found aloud. It proves she didn’t know Wuntsch, and the latter felt her joining the Nine-Nine was idiocy. “I’m here for you,” Kim tells Holt, “because you’re my hero.” Yikes! Never meet your heroes, Capt. Kim.
When Jake and Boyle arrive to work, Kim’s nowhere to be found. She had a request for immediate transfer granted. And so, once again, the Nine-Nine is without a captain. But this time it’s entirely Jake’s fault, although he did achieve his goal: the new captain was gone by next week.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Thursdays, 8:30/7:30c, NBC
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