Recap / Brooklyn Nine Nine S 1 E 06 Halloween

Just your average Halloween at the Nine-Nine.

Peralta: Well, sounds like costume duty is going great.
Boyle: So great. We're having the best time, right, Amy?
Santiago: I wish I was dead.

When the Halloween Episode is usually devoted to wreaking supernatural-related havoc in the neighborhood, Brooklyn 99 realistically shows the toll it takes on your friendly neighborhood cops — Halloween is unsurprisingly one of the busiest nights in the precinct. Santiago in particular hates it, and resents the fact that she and Boyle have to wear costumes and go undercover. Jeffords attempts to crack some details of Diaz's Mysterious Past. And Peralta makes a bet with Holt — if Peralta can steal Holt's Medal of Valor (kept in a safe in his office) before midnight, Holt has to do all of Peralta's paperwork. If he can't, Peralta works the next five weekends.

This episode premiered on October 22, 2013.

Tropes present in this episode:

• Bait-and-Switch: Terry finds out Rosa wasn't kicked out of Catholic School. She willingly transferred to attend a ballet school...which she was kicked out of for attacking other ballerinas.
• Battle of Wits: Between Holt and Peralta.
• Batman Gambit: Peralta. First, get Holt to make a bet by offering something too sweet to pass up, with Holt's losing condition being that he has to do Peralta's paperwork. Second, give the team an inspiring speech to help him. Third, when that fails, bribe them by saying he'll do their paperwork. Fourth, distract Holt with a bunch of failed attempts while his team does the real work. Fifth, lure Holt away by pretending to be arrested for attempting to scale the building. Sixth, win the bet, and thus make Holt do all of his paperwork... including those of his team, since he had promised to theirs as well. It works like a charm.
• The Bet: See above.
• Crappy Holidays: Santiago hates Halloween because of all the drunken messiness the holiday entails.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Zig-zagged; Rosa claims to have been kicked out of Catholic school, and Terry assumes it was for something violent or criminal (an assumption Rosa encourages). The reality is that she was a model student who willing transferred to a ballet school... where she was kicked out for beating up the other ballerinas.
• Failed Attempt at Drama: Peralta offers to shake Holt's hand as he claims victory, only to forget that he's wearing handcuffs and chained to the table, which he slams into painfully as he tries to get up.
• Failed a Spot Check: Boyle somehow misses that Hitchcock is in Amy's costume until he speaks up, despite Hitchcock having a totally different build than Amy.
• Forced Meme: Boyle attempts to make "'stume" (short for costume) catch on. Everyone else helpfully reassures him it won't.
• Graceful Loser: Holt appears more impressed at Peralta's cunning method of winning the bet than anything else. This can go under Fridge Brilliance, as trying to get the squad (and especially Jake) to work as a team was his objective since the pilot.
  • Subverted as of the future Halloween Heist episodes, where Holt admits he was seething at the loss and immediately began planning a payback scheme.
• The Grinch: Santiago's basically whatever the Halloween equivalent of this trope is. She does loosen up a bit when her distaste for the holiday hurts Boyle's feelings.
  Amy: Halloween is Christmas for jerks!
• Halloween Episode: The episode takes place on the holiday and shows how it's one of the busiest days of the year for the police as a result of all the mischief and drinking.
• Kansas City Shuffle: How Peralta wins the bet — he distracts Holt with a bunch of lame "attempts" that make Holt underestimate him, when in reality the other members of the 99 were working on getting the medal of valor while Holt was distracted.
• Heist Episode: The first of many — Peralta tries to steal Holt's Medal of Valor, and enlists the squad to help him do so in a complicated heist.
• Hidden Depths: A subplot is of Terry trying to find out Rosa's. He finds out that she was a model student in Catholic school before quitting...to attend ballet school. A subverted example has Jake mention that Rosa is a talented lockpicker... something that surprises neither him nor Holt.
• Hurricane of Puns: Peralta uses these as a form of taunt to the bank-robber dressed in a banana suit who's gotten himself trapped in a revolving door.
  Peralta: Trying to split, huh? Don't worry — I'm sure you'll get out on appeal! I'm so glad you're stuck. I've got a million of these.
• Rousing Speech: Parodied with the terribly-accented faux epic speech Peralta attempts to give before his colleagues begin to walk out on him. He then offers to do their paperwork.
• Running Gag:
  • People not being able to guess that Boyle's costume is chef Mario Batali.
  • This is also the episode that introduces the series-long "title of Amy's sex tape" gag.
• Sarcastic Confession: Throughout the night, Peralta alternates between misleading Holt and being perfectly honest about what he's doing - knowing full well that Holt will assume he's floundering and won't believe him. This includes telling him outright that his janitor disguise was never meant to work and was just a distraction, and telling him that the pigeons weren't really meant to do anything.
• Shout-Out:
  • Jake's attempt at a Rousing Speech is done in a Scottish accent.
  • Rosa dresses up as the Bride of Frankenstein.
• Trauma Conga Line: First, Amy is upset about having to go undercover for a Halloween assignment. Then she has to wear a goofy skeleton costume that apparently has unwashed vomit somewhere on it. Then she and Boyle get egged by Halloween revelers because she revealed they were cops. Then she has to crawl awkwardly across a dance floor between people to retrieve a bag of drugs. Then after finding the drugs, she gets a drink spilled all over her. This all leads up to Amy ditching Boyle by using Scully as her replacement, but that causes Boyle to deliver a "The Reason You Suck" Speech that ends with him essentially giving up on Halloween. She gets the whole squad to dress in costume to make it up to Boyle, ensuring him that Halloween was slightly less unbearable with him.
• Underestimating Badassery: Although the audience has had evidence of this in the prior episodes, this is the first episode where Holt discovers that Jake's not just the slacker goofball that he appears to be at first glance.
• Unsportsmanlike Gloating: Peralta rubs his win into Holt's face a little.
  Holt: A poor winner. I never would have guessed.
  Jake: Yeah, you would have.
• Wham Line: When Holt calls Peralta out on his attempts to steal the medal being too easily caught.
  Jake: But you didn't catch Rosa.

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