Recap / Brooklyn Nine Nine S 4 E 11 E 12 The Fugitive

"The Fugitive, Parts 1 & 2" are the eleventh and twelfth episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine's fourth season. They were broadcast back-to-back on the same night.

Part 1: A NYPD paddy wagon dramatically rolls over and nine fugitives go on the run. The Nine-Nine is on the case and Jake and Amy turn the manhunt into a bet where the loser has to move into the winner's apartment. Neither is willing to lose, Jake unwilling to give up his own space and Amy unwilling to move into the squalor that is Jake's apartment, and both go to extreme lengths to try and maintain an advantage over the other.

Back at the precinct, Holt, Rosa, and Gina are trying to find some usable information in the witness statements of former NFL star Marshawn Lynch, a woman who doesn't speak English, and a man who believes that subterranean lizard people control the world through pheromones.

Part 2: Eight of the nine fugitives have been captured and only one remains. George Gessilnick is a murderer with an incredibly long rap sheet and also happens to be the foster brother of the one and only Doug Judy! Jake enlists the help of his on-and-off nemesis and, with a reluctant Captain Holt in tow, they head out to try and capture George before he can raise enough funds to leave New York forever.

Meanwhile, Terry and Rosa are tracking down their own lead to try and figure out how George was able to get treated at a hospital and leave without anyone ever noticing. While doing so however, Terry gets sidetracked by the realization that he's getting older and his body isn't as strong as it once was. Rosa finds herself having to try and cheer the sergeant up.

Also, Charles accidentally finds out that the entire precinct has been excluding him from various office text chains because he is constantly sending out large volumes of text messages to everyone else's displeasure. Taking pity on him, Amy and Gina decide to teach Charles proper text messaging etiquette. Unfortunately, this causes the episode to end in a major Cliffhanger.

These two episodes provide examples of:

• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Part 1 culminates in a hunt through sewer pipes that are wide enough for someone as large as Terry to comfortably walk around in with only a trickle of what Charles hopes is water at the bottom. That's because they're not sewers, they're storm drains. You can see the sewer pipes are separate from the canals on one side of the passage.
• Act of True Love: A downplayed example; Jake eventually surrenders the bet to Amy because he has a sudden epiphany that he'd rather see her happy than keep his own apartment.
• Adam Westing: Marshawn Lynch pokes fun at his reputation for being unwilling to say anything in interviews by spending most of his appearance incoherently rambling about his love of quesadillas and his ideas for improving the dish.
• The Alleged Car: A downplayed example. While Captain Holt views his beloved convertible Gertie as the Cool Car, both Jake and Doug are of the opinion that she's really not that great. While she's not exactly falling apart or anything, the available evidence points more to this trope; the mechanic chopping her up refers to the process as "scrap 'n' crap", and Doug is able to acquire an exact replica for about $600, not exactly a princely sum. There's a Genius Bonus here; Gertie is in fact a Chevrolet Corvair, a make of car which notoriously was a central focus of Ralph Nader's Unsafe At Any Speed, which exposed defective and unsafe manufacturing and design processes in the American automobile industry.
• Alliterative Name: George, through both George Gessilnick and George Judy.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Doug Judy hates his foster brother because George stole from his mother, burned their house down, and stole Doug's vinyl copy of Phil Collins's No Jacket Required.
  Doug: It's my favourite album, haven't heard it in twenty years.
  Jake: I mean... can't you just stream it?
  Doug: I can't do that to Phil. "Sussudio" demands vinyl.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Homeland Security bus that Jake and Terry use is useful for security and holding prisoners, but in terms of turning it around when driving in a small street, it's difficult.
• The Bet: Jake and Amy decide to move in together, and agree that whoever catches the most fugitives during a manhunt will get to keep their apartment. In the end, they're tied, and corner the final fugitive at the exact same time. Jake decides that he'd rather see Amy happy than win, and throws the game at the last minute.
• Big Damn Heroes: Just as one of the convicts is holding Terry hostage, Amy and Charles come in and capture him.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: While trying to decipher a witness' drawing of what turns out to be a manhole cover, Scully and Hitchcock first guess that it's a pizza, then a cookie, and then they both say "cookie pizza!"
• Brick Joke: Scully and Hitchcock later come in with a cookie pizza.
• Broken Pedestal: Played for laughs. Rosa admires Marshawn Lynch for his taciturn public nature, and is disillusioned to discover that in private he's incredibly chatty.
  Captain Holt: What's [the non-English speaking witness] trying to tell us?
  Rosa: I dunno. Probably "never meet your heroes, because they're gonna turn out to be friendly".
  Captain Holt: You need to get over this Marshawn Lynch situation real quick.
• Callback: To The Pontiac Bandit where Jake and Doug talk about An American Tail: Fievel Goes West
  Doug: Goodbye, Fievel.
  Jake: Goodbye, Papa.
• Cliffhanger:
  • Part 1 ends with Jake being surprised by the family of the last fugitive, we cut to him in a car park, and then Doug Judy arrives.
  • Gina gets hit by a bus and "To be continued..." slowly fades onto the screen.
• Crazy-Prepared: Holt keeps a laminated world map in his back pocket just in case he needs to prove a point regarding world geography.
  Holt: [Pointing at his map] Laos!
  Hot Dog Vendor: Fine!
• Dark and Troubled Past: Only Rosa could consider formerly being a cheery gymnast as being a dark secret that shouldn't be shared with anyone.
• Enemy Mine: Jake teaming up with Doug Judy to take down Doug's half-brother George.
• "Eureka!" Moment:
  • Played for laughs when trying to find the final fugitive:
    Jake: Think; if I was an escaped perp, where would I hide? [suddenly gasps as if having a revelation]
    Terry: Where?
    Jake: Oh, I have no idea. I just thought if I gasped, I could force an epiphany. [Dramatically] And I did! [Terry turns to him expectantly] No, that didn't work either. [Terry begins to look impatient] Or did it?! Still no. Unless—
    Terry: Stop it, Jake!
  • Played straight when Rosa jokes about Terry needing a wheelchair then Terry realizes George Gessilnick escaped the hospital using a disguise via wheelchair.
  • Played straight when Captain Holt connects the crazy witness's rambling about the underground lizard people and the non-English speaking witness's seemingly bizarre circle drawings together and realises that they're trying to explain that the final fugitive fled through a manhole cover.
• Foreshadowing: Gina tells Charles she'd rather get hit by a bus instead of getting one more text from him. Guess what happens at the end of the episode, when Charles texts her?
• Friendly Enemy: Jake appears to have just given up and accepted that he and Doug are friends in this episode.
• Gilligan Cut: An interesting variation. Jake and Doug walk out of the precinct wearing NYPD windbreakers. Holt says Doug can't wear the windbreaker because he's not a cop. Jake says not to worry because Doug doesn't have a badge or gun. Camera zooms out to show he has both.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: Doug teams up with Jake to help capture George. Near the end, it appears that Doug had betrayed Jake yet again and sided with George, but then it turns out he was only pretending so he could take George down. Finally, Jake thinks that Doug will now go straight, but then Doug says that he'd just as likely go back to a life of crime.
• Hidden Wire: At his clandestine meeting with Doug Judy, Jake shows up wearing only a singlet and his undershorts. Doug is confused and asks why, and Jake informs him that he was told by Doug's contact Scott to show up like that to prove he wasn't wearing a wire. Doug clarifies that Scott is actually just "a perv".
• Infrared X-Ray Camera: Amy and Charles use them while catching fugitives. Charles annoys Amy by pointing out that he can tell she's ovulating by her heat signature.
• Language Barrier: There's a witness at Precinct 99 who doesn't speak English. Eventually she just repeats [kanalizatsia] ("Kанализација", connected to "canalisation") and tries to draw a picture. (She also failed to communicate what language she spoke and what country she was from, and made no attempt to contact anyone who could translate for her).
• Last Words: Apparently, Jake wants his last words to be "Ay carumba!"
• Le Parkour: Rosa shows Terry how a suspect could have climbed a wall using parkour when Terry finds himself unable to climb it.
• Made of Indestructium: Parodied with Jake's old grungy towel. Amy tries to burn it but it won't catch fire because it never fully dries.
• Non-Specifically Foreign: Holt and the other detectives spend half of the first episode attempting to take a statement from a woman speaking a strange language. The closest they can get is "sounds Slavic". It's Bulgarian.
• Noodle Incident: The exact circumstances behind Captain Holt being required to point out the geographical location of Laos to a random street vendor.
• Pet the Dog: For once, instead of betraying Peralta, Judy actually keeps his word and helps them bring down George. Of course, it wasn't entirely out of the goodness of his heart, since in doing so he wrangled himself full immunity for all his previous crimes, but still.
• Pistol Whip:
  • How Doug takes down George.
  • How Amy takes down the fugitive holding Terry hostage.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Terry, feeling old, claims that he used to be Batman, but that he now feels like "his dumb, getting-shot-at-the-opera dad". The opera only plays into the Wayne murders in Batman Begins, every other incarnation has them walking home from the movie theater.
• Real Men Hate Affection: Parodied. After Jake and Doug's emotional goodbye, they pull away from each other and start acting cool.
• Replacement Goldfish: Because Gertie's been chopped and her parts sold, Doug Judy finds Holt an identical replacement. Judy dubs the new car "Sexarella" and Holt finds himself liking the name.
• Rule of Three: Jake and Doug's theme song.
• Satchel Switcheroo: Doug replaced George's gun with the unloaded one he was carrying.
• Shout-Out: To The Fugitive, Harry Potter, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
• Skewed Priorities:
  • Marshawn Lynch missed the police van crash entirely because he was too concerned not having received pico de gallo with his quesadilla.
  • At one point, upon discovering that Jake has finally started reading the Harry Potter books because Amy loves them so much, Amy and Jake immediately forget both the fugitive situation and their bet/feud over same to start mutually squeeing over The Order of the Phoenix.
• Status Quo Is God: Upon gaining immunity for all his crimes and settling his feud with Peralta, Doug Judy admits that he's probably going to go right back to jacking cars again.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: Both Jake and Amy chide Terry for not expecting Jake to start rambling about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles upon finding himself in a sewer.
  Amy: C'mon Terry, we were in a sewer! He's gon'sta think about the Turtles.
  Jake: Yeah, I'm gon'sta Terry! Quit being such a Malfoy.
• Suicide by Cop: When pressed, the fugitive who held Terry hostage admits that he was probably going to kill Terry then let Jake kill him.
• Tongue Twister: Jake and Terry manage to gloat by way of this:
  [Regarding the mobile situation command vehicle they've borrowed from Homeland Security]
  Terry: She's also got a holding cell. Which is big enough for three perps. Jake, counting this guy, how many perps have we caught and placed in the three-perp perp cell?
  Jake: Well, Sarge, we've placed three perps in the three-perp perp cell.
  Terry: So the three-perp perp cell is full?
  Jake: Full of three perps is the three-perp perp cell—
  Amy: Okay stop saying 'perps' and 'cell' and 'three'.
• Too Much Information: Charles is rather too keen to inform everyone that his Infrared X-Ray Camera has revealed that Amy is ovulating.
• Translation by Volume: Both approaches appear when detectives try to understand a witness who doesn't speak English. However, they try to find out where she's from so that they can get an interpreter.
  • Captain Holt tries speaking slowly and ultra-clearly with miming.
    Captain Holt: [speaks slowly] Where — were — you — booorn?
    Detective Diaz: What are you miming there, sir?
    Captain Holt: A child tying his tie. Uh-huh. I'm trying to do a simple half-Windsor so she knows I'm a baby. Look at this. See how basic this knot is?
  • Scully and Hitchcock, as useful as ever, try screaming at the witness.
    Captain Holt: It really sounds Slavic. Does anyone here know any Slavic languages?
    Hitchcock: Oh, I'm great at languages. Watch this. [starts yelling] HELLO! I AM HITCHCOCK!
    Scully: [yelling] THANK YOU FOR THE COOKIE-PIZZA IDEA!
• Unfortunate Implications: In-universe; Jake is rather disconcerted to realise that the moral of Terry's bitter tale of having to downsize his painting studio to a storage closet after moving in with his wife and subsequently having children essentially boils down to "don't get married or have kids".
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight. In typical New York seen-it-all fashion, no one on the street really seems to react to a prison van spiralling out of control and crashing in front of them, resulting in the release of all convicts contained within. Marshawn Lynch's response is to... complain that the takeout place forgot the pico de gallo he ordered with his quesadilla. Subverted with the non-English speaking woman, however, who shows rather more appropriate alarm at the sight of a prison van crashing in front of her and all the convicts escaping.
• Watch the Paint Job: Holt's beloved Gertie ends up being stolen and stripped for parts.
• Wham Shot: Gina getting hit by a bus at the very end of the episode.
• You Wouldn't Shoot Me: Jake to Doug Judy when him and Holt are held at gun point by the Judys.

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