Mere seconds before Charles faints from happiness
HalloVeen is the fourth episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine's fifth season.
The Nine-Nine is prepping for the fifth annual Halloween Heist. This year, the competition has been opened up so every member is competing individually for a Championship Cummerbund that is hanging from the squad room's ceiling. Whomever is in possession at midnight gets to be declared the year's "Amazing Human/Genius".
Hilarity Ensues as everyone tries to stab each other in the back but things come crashing down when Jake reveals that he has his own scheme that trumps everyone else's.
This episode provides examples of:
- Astonishingly Appropriate Interruption: This gem when Jake realises that Amy is responsible for Cheddar being replaced:Jake: She sneezed! Dog allergies... which means that Amy took—Holt: CHEDDAR!
- Batman Gambit: Jake's endgame hinges on his knowledge that Amy is observant enough to notice that the dust patterns on top of old file boxes don't match.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: At one point, the lines get very blurred between Jake and Amy's competitiveness and their attraction to each other:Jake: Look, there are only three Tramps. The only way we'll win is if we team up.
Amy: Good point. I guess my response is: ROT IN HELL, CRAP-FACE! [Jake gasps in shock; affectionately] Also, I love you and I treasure you and [Suddenly aggressive] ya bore me!
Jake: God, you're being so mean! [Turned on] Do it more.
Amy: [Seductively] I hope you die.
[Jake gasps and practically swoons]
Amy: [Sweetly] Bye! - Black Comedy Burst: Upon the reveal that Jake, Amy and Holt all independently got Terry to eat GPS trackers, they briefly wonder if they should warn him about the potential radiation. They all brush it off, Holt even saying "He's lived long enough."
- Call-Back:
- The award no longer uses the term "detective" because Gina found it to be offensive last year.
- Amy also takes a moment from insulting Jake to assure him that she still loves him, just as Jake did with her in the Halloween contest the previous year.
- Two years ago, Jake tried to propose to Amy as part of the heist, but an irritated Amy very quickly put an end to that. This time, when he gets down on one knee, Amy warns him that if this is part of the heist, she won't hesitate to dump his ass... but no. It's real.
- Doppelgänger:
- Bill the Ringer makes a return this year and actually gets to do what he was originally hired for: pretend to be Charles.
- Amy temporarily replaces Cheddar with, to Holt's horror, a "common bitch".
- Failed a Spot Check: In the Cold Open, Jake and Amy, two talented and normally observant detectives, utterly failed to notice Holt sitting in their bedroom, watching them, less than five feet away. Jake also somehow managed to sleep through Holt taking his breakfast, eating it, and putting the plate back.
- Faint in Shock: Charles is so overcome with joy on learning about Jake and Amy getting engaged that he swoons.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: When Amy pulls the Championship Cummerbund out of the evidence box at the end, pausing the episode reveals what the true inscription is.
- Gambit Pileup: Everyone is trying to outsmart everyone else. In order:
- Jake and Boyle team up with Bill to initially steal the belt, only for Charles and Bill to betray Jake and reveal Charles is really working with Terry and Rosa. Jake then has to adjust his entire plan to account for the betrayal.
- Terry hides the belt under a very heavy server...only for Holt to have a contraption that lifts the server and Cheddar to bring him the belt...only for Amy to have a plan in place to intercept and replace Cheddar and the belt, hiding the belt in her safe and releasing Cheddar later.
- Jake re-teams up with Bill and several women for a Handmaids Tale gag to seemingly swipe the key to Amy's safe, but really have Bill swipe the safe, replace it, and leave. He then misdirects everyone else to leave to chase Bill, but Amy doesn't fall for it and finds the belt...as he planned.
- Also Holt, Amy, and Jake all put trackers in Terry's yogurt and Amy idly worries if the combined radiation might be a problem.
- It's implied in end scene that everyone else did as well, totaling 6 trackers (Boyle and Rosa presumably fed Terry their own separate trackers, while Hitchcock and Scully together account for the last one)
- Got Me Doing It: Both Rosa and Terry voice their disapproval over Boyle calling the three of them "The Tramps". Later when the cummerbund in Amy's safe goes missing, Rosa suspects Boyle (who they haven't heard from in a while) may have betrayed the Tramps then immediately comments in disbelief that she actually just called themselves "The Tramps".
- Hypocritical Humor: Holt snidely dismisses Terry as "a bald old man". Holt, let us not forget, is neither in the first fit of youth nor has a full head of hair himself.
- Insistent Terminology: Holt insists that the championship belt is actually a cummerbund since it can't fit in anyone's belt loops.
- Loophole Abuse: Played for laughs; Captain Holt tries to use the fact that Jake altered the Championship Cummerbund to insist that the heist had no winner.
- Meet Cute: We see in a flashback that Jake and Amy had such a moment... for all of two seconds, before Boyle came along and torpedoed it.
- Metaphorgotten: Played with; Terry tries to take credit for inspiring Jake to propose with a conversation they had several weeks back, in which he used a metaphor for his relationship with Amy. It might even have actually worked, since the metaphor was quite simple... except it was also a metaphor involving yogurt, and Terry didn't actually make it clear that it was a metaphor:Terry: So what I'm saying is, vanilla yogurt is good, but pair it with a blueberry yogurt and both of them taste even better. Get it?
Jake: [Utterly nonplussed]... Yes? - Moment Killer:
- Amy says that Charles' butting in on her and Jake's initial meeting eight years prior actually set their relationship progress back by about four yearsnote .
- Holt repeatedly interrupts the precinct's celebration of Jake and Amy's engagement to claim that no one technically won this year's heist.
- Subverted with the big moment of the episode, however, when Charles bursts into the evidence room crowing about how he's broken free of his handcuffs and is ready to reenter the contest... only to discover Jake and Amy post-proposal, and immediately forgets all about the contest. Although he is so overcome with joy that he faints, however.
- Mood Whiplash: Most of the episode is filled with the usual wacky Halloween shenanigans. Then Jake gets down on one knee to propose to Amy and the show swerves to a genuine heartfelt moment.
- Not So Above It All: Terry vindictively joins in on this year's heist, finally tired of previous years' winners rubbing it in everyone else's faces.
- Oh, Crap!: Holt, Amy and Jake have a moment of this when they realise that each of them has separately fed Terry a different GPS tracker. Then, they shrug it off and run after the Championship Cummerbund.
- Overly-Nervous Flop Sweat: Scully and Hitchcock notice that Holt is sweating and think he's hiding something. They at correct, but not in the way they think: Holt is actually sweating from pedaling the device that lifts the server under which the belt is hidden so that his dog Cheddar can fetch it.
- The Password Is Always "Swordfish": After getting handcuffed by Jake, Charles gets an alert on his walkie-talkie from his teammates to check on him. Jake tries to take it so as not to alert the others, but Charles says that it can only be accepted with a secret code. Jake correctly guesses that it's "I am a Tramp".
- Perilous Marriage Proposal: Gets a Call-Back when Amy assumes Jake's proposal during the Heist is again perilous, but this time Jake assures her it's very real (and nobody wins the heist).
- Ponzi: Boyle's Doppelgänger Bill shows up again, this time having packed in barely-veiled male prostitution for what is transparently a pyramid scheme involving vitamin supplements. Both Jake and Boyle clearly see it for what it is, but end up having to buy in to secure Bill's cooperation.
- Precious Puppies: Cheddar, Holt's corgi, makes a return in assisting his owner in the heist. At one point, he's replaced by a "common bitch".
- The Resenter: Terry and especially Rosa have gotten sick of losing the annual heists and, perhaps even more so, of seeing the winners (especially Peralta) gloat over it.
- Rewatch Bonus: With The Reveal that Jake used the heist to frame his Wacky Marriage Proposal to Amy, many of his comments about the heist throughout the episode gain new meaning. For example, his claim that planning the heist was the only thing that kept him sane in prison seems less like throwaway gag knowing he was actually talking about planning his proposal to Amy.
- Rhetorical Question Blunder: When Jake's beginning to gloat over his apparent victory:Jake: I guess I'm not quite as predictable as [Amy] thought. And I bet none of you can predict what I'm going to do next.
Rosa: Use your key to open the safe and act like a dick about it?
Jake: [Touchy] Yes, obviously that's what I'm gonna do, Rosa. Just have to be so spot-on all the time... - Serial Escalation: Played for laughs in the opening scene, involving Jake getting up at 3am to start heist-planning:Jake: Halloween. Mua-hahahaaaaaa. It's heist time!
[He rolls over in bed — only to discover that Amy is already awake and watching him]
Jake: Dyaaah!
Amy: Thought you'd get a head start on heist prep? Good luck. [She throws off the covers on her side; revealing that she's fully clothed] I'm already dressed.
Jake: Well... [Jake throws off the covers on his side, revealing he's also fully dressed] I am also dressed. And, I made breakfast.
[Jake pulls down the covers further to reveal... an empty, grease-stained plate.]
Jake: Wait, where are my eggs?
Holt: [Off-screen] In my belly.
[Captain Holt turns on a light to reveal himself sitting in a chair in the corner of the room, in full uniform, watching them]
Jake and Amy: [In unison] Dyaaaahh!!!
Holt: Now get a move on! It's heist time.
Jake: [Overjoyed] I love Halloween! - Shipper on Deck: The entire squad is of course thrilled that Jake and Amy are getting married (even if Captain Holt is a bit more concerned with clarifying the situation regarding no one winning the heist), but some stand-out moments include:
- Charles, fittingly, is the first person to discover that Jake and Amy are engaged. He is so overwhelmed with joy that he faints.
- Charles has apparently been a shipper since literally the moment Jake and Amy met almost a decade earlier. Unfortunately, him butting in really set back the relationship several years.
- Terry appears to have been trying to nudge Jake into proposing a few weeks previously. Unfortunately, he chose to use a metaphor regarding mixing vanilla and blueberry yoghurt, and Jake had no clue what he was talking about.
- Gina sends them a congratulatory text message.
- Charles, fittingly, is the first person to discover that Jake and Amy are engaged. He is so overwhelmed with joy that he faints.
- Shout-Out:
- Jake and Bill end up having this exchange when Jake's trying to convince Bill to free him from handcuffs:Jake: Come on, please man! I've never treated you like a prostitute!
Bill: [Cold hurt] You just did.
Jake: Touche. - Part of the NutriBoom paperwork Bill produces for Jake to sign involves a clause that states that the signer has seen the (apparently missing) wife of the founder alive and well. This is a reference to conspiracy theories surrounding the apparent disappearance of Shelly Miscavige
, and foreshadows NutriBoom's resemblance to a Church of Happyology in future episodes.
- Jake and Bill end up having this exchange when Jake's trying to convince Bill to free him from handcuffs:
- Sore Loser: Holt keeps insisting that no one can be declared a winner since Jake altered the cummerbund with his engraving. The entire precinct eventually gets fed up and tells him to shut up.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: Jake totally got the idea to hang the Championship Cummerbund from the roof in full view of the squad from the Ancient Greek legend of Tantalus and his fruit. Not from the Nickelodeon kid's TV show Guts.
- Take That!: A mild one to The Handmaid's Tale (or at least all the
What Do You Mean, It's Not Political? chin-scratching it attracts). When the "Handmaids" appear, Rosa irritably claims that Amy's responsible for them because "she won't shut up about how relevant it is in today's political climate". Terry also claims to find the show too bleak. - Tempting Fate:
- Amy declares that Jake can no longer surprise her right before his motive for the heist comes to light. And this is just one of the many times that she claims that she's always one step ahead of him throughout the episode.
- The Tramps hide the belt underneath one of the precinct's servers which, Rosa declares, is so heavy that only Terry can lift it. Cue Holt rigging an elaborate series of pulleys and raising it using foot pedals from the comfort of his own desk.
- Wacky Marriage Proposal: Jake uses the heist as an opportunity to propose to Amy.
- Wham Episode: For most of the run, it seems like it's just another instalment of the annual bouts of craziness that are the show's Halloween episodes. And then Jake proposes to Amy...
- Wham Line: After Amy finds the belt and declares herself the winner:Jake: Although... you might want to read the inscription on that there belt.Amy: (worried) Why? Oh no... (picks up belt) What does it say? "Amy Santiago, will you marry... me"... (turns to look at Jake)Jake: (is now on one knee, holding an engagement ring) Surprise.
- Xanatos Speed Chess: After his initial betrayal by Charles, Jake has to hastily re-manipulate the situation so that he can execute the final twist to his plan.
