"The Big House, Part 2" picks up where Part 1 left off.
When the warden asks Jake to investigate Romero's drug smuggling operation, Jake and Caleb find themselves caught between the loyalty Jake has sworn to both of them. Meanwhile, Amy is offered a deal by a local mobster who claims he can prove that Hawkins (guest star Gina Gershon) is guilty, but Holt and the rest of the gang think they have a safer plan.
Tropes:
- Bittersweet Ending: The Nine-Nine arrest Hawkins and Jake and Rosa are exonerated from prison. However, it's soon revealed that Holt had to make a deal with Seamus, meaning he owes him for something now.
- Blatant Lies: Jake claims Training Day is based on his life. Despite the film being released when Jake was about 20. And Jake claiming to be the experienced officer, not the rookie.
- Call-Back: Straight Holt from Season 4 returns, and his love for heavy breasts.
- Deal with the Devil: A local mobster named Seamus Murphy offers Amy intel that can bring down Hawkins in exchange for a favor. While Holt initially believes that they can do it the cop way, after falling in Hawkins' trap, he ends up taking the deal himself.
- Department of Redundancy Department: Captain Holt, who is gay, but undercover as a straight man visiting his spouse in prison, describes her as his "female wife".
- Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: As Jake tries to hide that he's high on meth, there's a close-up of his eyes as he thinks to himself not to let Romero know. A flashback shortly thereafter reveals that he was thinking it out loud.
- Foreshadowing: When Holt brings up the info about finishing pigs and the squad rushes off to deal with it, Scully expresses confusion about what's going on, to which Hitchcock responds, "No one does, they're just pretending they do." What might initially seem like another case of Hitchcock projecting his personality onto the others ends up hinting that Holt actually didn't know the information himself.
- Indulgent Fantasy Segue: Rosa jumps through the glass and attacks Hawkins, just like she said she would. Then it turns out she was just imagining it.
- Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: Holt distracts a guard by pretending he's there to visit his wife. Typically a Straight Gay man, it quickly becomes clear he has no idea how to act heterosexual.Holt: There is nothing more intoxicating than the clear absence of a penis.
- Morton's Fork: Jake's predicament for finding out Romero's drug operation. If he keeps pestering him, he'll get labeled a snitch and Romero will castrate him and kick him to death. If he does nothing, the warden will publicly announce Jake is a snitch and Romero will castrate him and kick him to death. Fortunately, he finds a third option.Caleb: Mmm. Both options sound...
Jake: A little castrate-y? Yeah. That's what I keep bumping up against, too... - Potty Emergency: An unfortunate side-effect of taking Blizz: diarrhea. Romero tells Jake not be worried about the volume (in both senses of the word).
- Sadistic Choice: Amy can either owe a favor to a known crime boss, or let her boyfriend continue to rot in jail for something he didn't do. She gets to Take a Third Option... because Holt secretly took the deal without telling anyone.
- Sanity Slippage: Solitary did not do wonders for Jake's psyche.
- Shout-Out:
- Charles' podcast about Jake is inspired by Serial and similar true crime podcasts.
- While in solitary, Jake acts out a scene from The Lion King (1994).
- Jake tries to pass off a story and line from Training Day as being his own. When called out on it, he claims the film was based on his life.
- Spiteful Spit: Hilariously subverted as Jake attempted to spit at the Warden, only for his mouth to be too dry because of the meth in his system.
- Stimulant Speedtalk: Jake accidentally gets high on Blizz (aka meth), since Romero smuggled it into the prison as soap that Jake used. This makes him go off on tangents about crown molding, lose track of what he's talking about, and accidentally say his thoughts out loud without realizing it.
- Take a Third Option: Two examples, both of them ultimately subverted.
- After talking with Caleb, Jake realizes that he needs to approach the drug smuggling problem as a detective. Then he can tell the warden, the warden will stop the smuggling, and Romero will not label Jake a snitch because he never told him. Unfortunately, after Jake tells the warden, Romero decides to take Jake into his confidence, meaning that he'll assume Jake was the snitch anyway.
- Amy is stuck between letting Jake rot in jail, or making a deal with a mobster for information that could clear him. Holt convinces her that they can solve the case through legitimate police work, and they manage to catch the cop who framed Jake just in time. Then it turns out that they only solved the case because Holt secretly took the deal, and now owes a mobster a favor.
- Taking the Bullet: Caleb steps in front of Romero as he's about to stab Jake and takes the shiv in the gut.
- Metaphorically speaking, Holt spares Santiago from making the deal with Murphy, promising the favor himself.
- Wardens Are Evil: The warden clearly doesn't care if Jake gets killed in the process of snitching, even having his death certificate already filled out just in case.
- You Owe Me: Seamus wants Amy to owe him a favour in exchange for his information. Holt ends up owing him when he secretly takes the deal.
