Brooklyn Nine-Nine TV Recap – “Old School”

In tonight’s episode of “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” Jake learns the meaning of the old adage “Don’t meet your heroes” as he bends over backwards to impress his idol, writer Jimmy Brogan (Stacy Keach). Jake swears by Brogan’s book The Squad, a nonfictional account of New York City cops in the 1970s. Jake views the “Golden Age” through rose-colored glasses, but Captain Holt warns him that he might not find Brogan to live up to his standards.

Still, Jake wishes he and Santiago had a more gritty, “old school” case instead of their “hair bag” desk work trying to break a credit card fraud ring, since Brogan plans to shadow them as part of his write-up on department changes in the last thirty years. Jake gets the idea to become Brogan’s drinking buddy to prove he can live up to Brogan’s standards, so they start the evening off hard at the local cop bar with two bottles of Scotch. Jake shows up with a wicked hangover the next morning, resulting in an hilarious moment where Captain Holt calls his bluff on choking down a glassful of egg yolks.

While being too hungover to chase a perpetrator, Jake finds that his night of drinking has earned Brogan’s respect–as have the many disrespectful quotes he made about Captain Holt in a drunken haze. Jake forgets that he was on the record, and Santiago reminds him that Brogan publishing those would be devastating for the reputations of Captain Holt and of the department. So Jake goes down to meet Jimmy Brogan at the schvitz (as old school as it gets) to ask him to revoke the quotes, but somehow ends up punching him the face.