The moment when Jake realizes he Didn't Think This Through.
"House Mouses" is the sixteenth episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine's third season.
Holt tells the squad that he has a case involving a celebrity and tasks Terry to assign the case to an available detective. Jake eagerly begs to be able to take the case but Terry firmly tells him "no" and to focus on a marijuana arrest instead while assigning Boyle to handle the celebrity. Hoping to be able to wrest the case out of Boyle's hands, Jake dumps his marijuana case on Hitchcock and Scully. Unfortunately for all those involved, the marijuana case turns out to be much bigger than anticipated and Jake and Terry have to scramble to save Hitchcock and Scully from their own idiocy.
The celebrity case turns out to involve the theft of a valuable oboe from John William Weichselbraun, 1st chair oboist with the New York Symphony Orchestra. Boyle's task becomes all the more difficult when it turns out that Holt is a big fan of the oboist; the normally stoic captain can't hide his giddiness at meeting someone he admires and Boyle finds it impossible to do any actual investigation.
Meanwhile, Amy tries to get Rosa to participate in a blood drive. Upon learning that Rosa is afraid of needles, Amy decides that she, Rosa, and Gina should band together and confront each of their phobias. For Amy: Claustrophobia. For Rosa: Trypanophobia (fear of needles). For Gina: the fear of businessmen.
This episode provides examples of:
- Absurd Phobia: While Amy and Rosa have very common and understandable phobias, Gina's is a fear of businessmen. It's a little understandable given Gina's artistic pretensions. Then again, Gina is the show's resident Troll.
- Afraid of Needles: Rosa, although it has more to do with having people taking out her blood.
- Artistic License – Cars: Amy tries to get over her claustrophobia by having Rosa and Gina lock her in the trunk of a car. She immediately starts freaking out and begging to be let out but they leave her in there for as long as she requested. The car in question is a ninth-generation Chevrolet Impala which, like every car made after 2001, has an internal trunk latch release inside the aforementioned compartment, so she could have freed herself at anytime.
- Big "NO!": Scully gets to let out the big "NOOOO!!!" that gets cut off by the ad break.
- Brick Joke: When Terry becomes part of Operation: Beans, Scully's character name for him is "Black Fred", which he's not thrilled about. ("Why Black Fred? There's no other Fred!" "Yeah, but they don't know that.") When they finally meet the drug ring, Terry introduces himself as "Fred. Just Fred."
- Broken Pedestal: Holt suffers a case of this on being given proof that Weichselbraun staged the robbery for insurance fraud.Holt: I finally understand the old adage that you should never meet your heroes. This is like when I found out that Robert Frost was from...California.
- Chekhov's Gun: Who knew Scully's chronic sweating would prove useful in police work?
- Chekhov's Skill: Hitchcock's ability to do practically everything without ever getting out of his chair comes in handy.
- Clue, Evidence, and a Smoking Gun: In the Cold Open the Squad are feasting on an anonymous gift basket and they invite Gina in to have some of the exotic French delicacies. Gina points out that baskets are usually for lovers, and who do they know who has a partner on an academic sabbatical in France. Finally Gina finds the missing card that a room full of detectives missed!
- A Day in the Limelight: For Hitchcock and Scully.
- Edible Theme Naming: Hitchcock and Scully get into the spirit of Operation: Beans with the code names they make up: Jake is "Pinto", Terry is "Mung" and Hitchcock is "Chickpea".
- Elegant Classical Musician: Parodied and Inverted. In this story, classical musicians are too broke to worry about anything but survival, so they resort to thefts both major (Weichselbraun's insurance fraud) and minor (the trio Holt hires attempting to steal kitchen supplies from the Nine-Nine's cafeteria). Boyle sums it up: "Classical musicians are savages".
- Face Your Fears: Amy, Rosa and Gina's storyline. Played with, in that neither Amy nor Rosa really seem to be over their fears by the end (judging by Amy's screaming fit when Rosa threatens to shut her in the squad car trunk again and Rosa's psyche-up/Freak Out immediately before giving blood), and while Gina comes through in one piece her fear (businessmen) is pretty ridiculous to begin with.
- Failed a Spot Check: The Cold Open has the squad eating from a gift basket of exquisite French treats left in the precinct. They all ate the food in it thinking it was a gift for the 99, and it takes Gina of all people to make them realize the gift basket full of French delicacies just might be from Kevin, Captain Holt's husband currently in France. There was even a card on the damn thing!
- Insurance Fraud: Turns out that Weichselbraun staged the robbery to try and get the insurance money from his oboe because being a classical musician doesn't pay very well.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Jake gets a heaping dose of this from Terry as they try to clean up Jake's mess.
- Not So Above It All:
- Upon meeting his hero, the normally stoic Holt reacts much the same as a teenage girl in the 1960s would have reacted to meeting one of The Beatles.
- Angry at Jake for causing trouble, Terry spitefully joins Scully in addressing everyone via their bean-themed codenames.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: We never see Hitchcock going up the stairs in his chair, or the Operation: Beans team capturing the drug ring.
- Operation: [Blank]: Hitchcock and Scully name their plan "Operation: Beans", to Jake's dismay. When they have to stick to the plan in order to rescue Hitchcock, Jake names it "Operation: Beans 2: The Refrying".
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Scully and Hitchcock don't put much effort into their undercover personas. Scully is "Tex Dallas, billionaire oil man from Dallas, Texas, with ties to the cowboy mafia", while Hitchcock is "Reno Vegas, mobster from Reno, Las Vegas".
- Sherlock Scan: Spoofed when Jake is able to guess where Hitchcock and Scully went by sitting at their desk. He deduces that they went for hot dogs because there was a hot dog-shaped water stain on the ceiling.
- Shout-Out: When trying to persuade Terry to give him the 'celebrity' case, Jake tries to discredit Amy by claiming the last film she saw was a documentary about spelling bees
. She corrects him: it was actually a documentary about the font Helvetica. - Starving Artist: Classical musicians don't make a lot of money and, in this show's universe, at least, have to resort to theft and fraud to try and survive.
- Troll: Gina offers Amy a diaper in the event any emergencies occur while Amy is in the patrol car trunk. It was meant for a baby.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: By handing off his marijuana case to Hitchcock and Scully, Jake sets off a series of events that culminates in him, Terry, Hitchcock, and Scully being held hostage by a drug gang.
