Brooklyn Nine-Nine was, in fairness, a very good idea. Cop shows are one of the most enduring dramatic engines on television: taking the police procedural and crossing it with the workplace sitcom was, if not inspired, certainly a clever conceit, offering a premise that could easily sustain ninety-nine episodes and then some. Really, it’s no wonder that Brooklyn Nine-Nine is as popular as it is. It’s smart and it’s funny, the cast are fantastic, and it’s reliably charming in a way that makes for perfect comfort-food television. It’s better than a lot of the shows it most clearly resembles, too – better than Parks and Recreation, better than The Good Place – and better than a lot of shows it doesn’t resemble too.
It’s also a lie. In Brooklyn Nine-Nine, the police are sweet and silly and basically harmless; the actual New York Police Department is plainly anything but.
Cop shows are essentially image control for police departments. They always have been: Dragnet, one of the earliest examples of what we understand now as the modern police procedural, was strictly fact checked by the LAPD’s Public Information Division, and many of its contemporaries were written by former policemen. Decades later, with crime dramas spinning off into one franchise after the next, that perspective has calcified and become ubiquitous: the police are always the protagonists. The supposed need for police and policing is always being reinforced, even if individual officers are singled out or structures are criticised – cop shows don’t have, and can’t have, a frame of reference beyond the police. There will never be a meaningful critique of the police within the confines of a cop show, because cop shows fundamentally believe in the need for the police.
Those inclined to defend Brooklyn Nine-Nine would point to those episodes where it engaged more directly with a complicated reality. But that too serves to exculpate the police, whether intentionally or not. Sometimes, Brooklyn Nine-Nine critiques the past, but in doing so it comments on the present, and the implication of progress whitewashes the very real problems that still endure. In contrast, when Brooklyn Nine-Nine has made efforts to address contemporary failings on part of the police, it’s always been in terms of individuals rather than structures, positing that it’s just a case of ‘one bad apple’ rather than anything wider. Its widely-celebrated fourth season episode Moo-Moo is deft and sensitive, but it’s so focused on the actions of one individual it misses the point of the systemic criticism levelled at the police; if anything, Moo-Moo is more of an argument as to why ‘good’ cops might choose to stay silent, portraying them as sympathetic rather than complicit.
In eliding those systemic issues, Brooklyn Nine-Nine sanitises the police. The idea that there are individual good and bad police officers is an unhelpful one, belying the reality that the problem isn’t the individuals at all, but the wider structures and unjust laws they uphold. (Although it’s also worth just digressing briefly to point out that they aren’t even good cops in Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Jake makes arrests on intuition rather than evidence; Rosa is quick to use excessive force; so on, so forth.) Arguably, it’s not a million miles away from sharing staged pictures of police officers kneeling at protests: at best it’s a distraction from the real issues, and at worst it actively encourages complacency and ignorance.
Terry Crews has said that Season 8 of Brooklyn Nine-Nine will touch on recent protests, the cast and crew having had “eye-opening conversations about how to handle this new season”. The idea of an lazily caricatured activist finding a heartwarming compromise with the ‘good cops’ at the 99th Precinct is repugnant, but there’s something about it that seems almost unavoidable – Brooklyn Nine-Nine won’t be able to ignore the protests entirely, nor will they be able to meaningfully critique the police while still holding to their original premise.
Perhaps the show could be salvaged through total reinvention – if, when season 8 started, the characters were all teachers, or journalists, or postal workers, refuting the cop show premise entirely and tacitly admitting to its flaws. Arguably it’d be the strongest textual statement they could make about police brutality, far more meaningful that any ‘very special episode’ could hope to be: such a reinvention would be a genuine acknowledgement that, yes, the narrative Brooklyn Nine-Nine advanced as a goofy show about lovable police was and is a harmful one that need be abandoned.
Short of that? It’s time for the show to end. At this point, it’d be no great loss: it’s nearing its conclusion anyway – the ninth episode of the ninth season no doubt an attractive stopping point – and these are all talented enough performers that they’ll easily find work elsewhere. (Stephanie Beatriz can be the new Batwoman, for one thing.) As it is, though, Brooklyn Nine-Nine is tantamount to propaganda – a slick, well-made comedy that tacitly argues that the solution to police brutality is simply a nicer and more diverse police force. It whitewashes real issues and obscures real solutions, to the point of being actively harmful – so it’s time, surely, to cancel Brooklyn Nine-Nine again.
For more, A World Without Police, by the organisation of the same name, is a useful starting point. Meanwhile, Alex S. Vitale’s The End of Policing is currently available as a free eBook, and Angela Davis’ Are Prisons Obsolete? can be found here.
You may also want to donate to Black Lives Matter UK or to the Black Visions Collective in America.
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Alex Moreland | Writer 
This is the very common type of reasoning that will soon prevent any form of humor in the future.
So you say that:
1) Brooklyn Nine-Nine is a great comedy series.
2) But it shows a neutral or even positive image of the police.
3) So it is biased and deserves to be canceled.
Do you know what is most like the comedy series of your dreams? A documentary. Or even better: an Excel spreadsheet. Have a good time.
I am not sorry for the lazy google trad. As a language used in the past by a large number of slavers and Native American killers, English deserves to be poorly written and even abandoned. I strongly encourage you to write your articles in Morse code, a much more egalitarian and representative language. Although the absence of triangular signs is a problem.
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Hello! Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment on the article, first of all – it’s always much appreciated.
That’s an overly simplistic reading of the piece, I think. For one thing, it’s not really about the comedic value of the series – which, for the record, I think is significant! Brooklyn 99 at its best is really funny – on the basis of the jokes, and the chemistry of its cast, it’s probably one of my favourite sitcoms full stop.
But while it is very funny, it’s also… see, I wouldn’t say “biased” exactly. It’s just unhelpful at the moment, because it’s untrue – a comedy about how cuddly the police are isn’t, in my view, entirely tenable when the police are so, well, not-cuddly. I’d be similarly uncomfortable with a comedy about ICE agents goofing around while they arrest and deport people, for a similar-ish comparison.
I’m not even remotely convinced that cancelling Brooklyn 99, in recognition of the increasingly difficult position the show is in, would lead to some sort of slippery slope where the only comedy left is Excel spreadsheets. Brooklyn 99’s circumstances are somewhat unique.
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Alexmoreland this is why people like you shouldn’t exist. How about you try and help black lives matter doing something meaningful than stopping a show WHICH IS FAKE.
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You will perhaps be surprised to learn that I am actually not a commissioner at NBC, but in fact someone who runs a blog with a relatively small readership; I am not able to stop this show or any other.
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So by your definition of ‘propaganda’, even shows like The Wire and The Shield are also propaganda shows. I mean why are you blaming a silly comedy cop show for things that are happening. It’s really not fair. why didn’t you direct this criticism when it started way back in 2013. The circumstances surrounding the police were not better even back then. . Remember Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman. You do realise the police system has been this way since time immemorial
Seth Meyers and John Oliver both have said that the system is rooted in white supremacy from the jump. You are all just realizing it in 2020 and instead of pushing for reform you are blaming progressive shows like B99 for portraying cops the way they ought to be. This is just disgusting. It’s just a fucking show.
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I am not entirely sure I understand the point you’re making here, you know.
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With all due respect, if you don’t understand what i am trying to covey then you don’t understand what you are saying by writing this review. Look Season 8 of the show is coming you can’t convince people to join in your effort to get it cancelled. You can say you don’t like the show or that it is propaganda but just because you think it glorifies a certain profession or holds them in high regard doesn’t mean the show should not continue.
You should check this out
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Well, as I’ve said before, I’m not employed by NBC, I have a blog where I write about television – I have no power or influence over whether or not Brooklyn 99 continues. I’m not even really campaigning for it to be cancelled, to be clear, it’s just a snappy title for a piece about some of the flaws with the show. (And it is flawed, to be clear, and it’s certainly not a vision of what a progressive police force should be – they routinely abuse their powers! There’s an episode where Jake calls ICE on someone because he finds him annoying!)
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(By the way, I support defunding the police and the black live matter movement)
1) Brooklyn Nine Nine is more centered about the comedy aspect and less about the policing.
2) Season 8 will tackle down most of today’s issues, but it has “mentioned” these issues before besides season four’s “Moo Moo”. Although it mentions policing and societal issues, the show is not trying to fix these issues, rather, they are just trying to point them out.
3) Even though this is a police comedy show, it is more focused on the bullpen of the detectives’ lives and their work is just for the plot (for obvious reasons).
4) Like I said above, this show is about workplace detectives, not about the day to day police officers that roam around and stop innocent people. The best solution for the writers, is to make the ensemble’s new jobs as private investigators.
5) The show’s creator, Dan Goor, has even stated before he is representing the “good cops”. The reason for this is to show what an “ideal cop” should be. They are wanting to set a good example, but they should spot more light on the bad cops as well.
6) Just to make a correction, Jake actually calls the police on Gintars Irbe for selling counterfeit clothing from GAP. Charles made a last minute decision to let Gintars be around his adopted son, Nikolaj. Charles never told Jake about his decision, because earlier in the episode, Charles wanted Gintars gone before Gintars would “take back” his biological son during his visit. Jake made this mistake without Charles’ consent. Also, Gintars’ legal status was never confirmed.
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Hello Joey!
1) That’s rather the problem.
2) I know; I’ve seen every episode of the show, even if I didn’t write about all of them.
3) I’m not sure that entirely matters.
4) I don’t think that’d be a sufficient change.
5) I think the fact Dan Goor says that is quite telling; as early as the first season there’s an episode where Jake detains a suspect for too long on a hunch and no other basis. That’s not good policing, let alone ideal – besides, the point is that “policing” is conceptually and structurally broken, which precludes any individual “good cops”.
6) I am not in a position to check the episode right now, so I’ll take your word for it, though my sense is that “Jake calls the authorities to have a man deported” is still an essentially correct description of the storyline.
As ever, thank you for commenting!
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Wow, my impact.
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It’s a comedy you dumb fucks
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