Two Turkeys' is the seventh episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine's fifth season.
Jake and Amy decide to bring their parents together for Thanksgiving to enjoy their first holiday as a family. Unfortunately, the happily married Santiagos and the spectacularly dysfunctional Peraltas immediately begin passive-aggressively sniping at one another. Jake and Amy try and loosen things up with plenty of alcohol, which works for a short while before the situation swings into open hostility as the hypercompetitive Roger Peralta and Victor Santiago begin posturing in front of one another.
Back at the Nine-Nine, Holt and Kevin come back from a road trip to get a special pie to bring to Kevin's parents' home for Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, the pie goes missing and Holt begins lashing out at his subordinates to try and find the culprit. Having settled on Terry, Rosa, and Charles as his primary suspects, he begins ruthlessly interrogating the three, leading to tears being shed and secrets being spilled.
This episode provides examples of:
- Competition Freak: Both Victor and Roger are highly competitive, and Jake and Amy try to avoid any situation that would encourage competition between the two. It doesn't last long, but then they get alcohol in an effort to loosen them up. It works at first, but it then makes them even more competitive, leading up to a turkey carving competition that results in Roger losing his thumb.
- Embarrassing Cover Up: Inverted. Rosa, Terry and Charles are all caught in lies when giving alibis, but it turns out that they were only lying to cover up embarrassing secrets. Played with, in that the secrets are things that only they would find embarrassing (like Rosa making group t-shirts for her family).Rosa, averting her gaze in shame: the t-shirts were my idea.
- Fingore: Roger drunkenly slices off his own thumb while carving the turkey. Much blood is sprayed around the Peralta home.
- Fun T-Shirt: Rosa confesses that she's not spending Thanksgiving alone as she claimed, but celebrating with her family, complete with matching T-shirts. She flashes hers, which reads "Diaz Family Thanksgiving 2017" over a cartoon turkey.
- Godzilla Threshold: Holt is so incensed at having his pie stolen that he turns to none other than Scully and Hitchcock for help!
- Incredibly Lame Fun: Kevin and Holt both consider their annual hours-long drive to pick up a pie, spent in complete silence, to be quite a romantic activity. And at the end when Raymond suggests that they just continue taking the trip but omit the pie-buying, Kevin reacts to the notion of "a trip with no purpose" as though it was something scandalously erotic.
- Insane Troll Logic: Jake thinks you never need to wash hand towels because they're only used by freshly-cleaned hands.
- Instantly Proven Wrong: Holt claims he can interrogate Rosa, Terry and Charles all day, if necessary. Officer Mark immediately enters to tell him that they need the interrogation room for a real case.
- Man Hug: Jake hopes that his and Amy's fathers give themselves a rare "weird-but-good dad hug". He finally gets his wish, although it takes his father cutting off his thumb and going to the hospital.
- Meet the In-Laws: The Peraltas and Santiagos meet for the first time in this episode. Neither set of parents take a liking to the other and the awkward situation is only briefly eased thanks to alcohol before the parents start taking shots at one another over who loves Jake and Amy more. The day comes to a horrifying climax (see Fingore) before they all come to terms and make up at the last minute.
- The Nicknamer: After poking holes on all their alibies, Holt gives Rosa, Terry and Charles the nicknames "Dipstick", "Mr. Fib" and "Milkman", respectively.
- Out-of-Character Alert: After Kevin confesses to throwing away the pie, Holt recalls that he called the pie "better than a plain scone." Holt knows that was a lie, for "there's nothing better than a plain scone!"
- Parental Sexuality Squick: It looks like Jake and Amy might end up getting dragged into their parents' fight. . . up until they start bragging about their sex lives which grosses them out enough to shock them out of it.
- Passive-Aggressive Kombat: Camila engages in this, resulting in she and Karen sniping back and forth about each other's skills as homemakers and artists.
- Secret Other Family: Delirious from lack of blood, Roger tells Jake that he has three half-sisters from different mothers and later says that there are more half-siblings out there.Jake: And apparently my family's a lot bigger than I thought. How many half-sisters did you say I have, Dad?
Roger: I only told you about the sisters? - Series Continuity Error: In an earlier episode, Holt mentions that he doesn't have a relationship with Kevin's parents because they were massive homophobes who thought he "made" Kevin gay with his "magical genitalia." However, in this episode, he mentions that he and Kevin will be visiting Kevin's parents with no mention of them having reconciled in the interim.
- Serious Business: Holt is so hellbent on finding out who stole the special pie that he declares his office a crime scene, tapes it off, and brings in the CSU to take photos, dust for prints, and look for DNA evidence. Scully and Hitchcock are equally committed, and show a level of both commitment and skill in police work rarely seen before. When they discover the pie in the trash, Scully reacts as if they'd found a dead body.
- Sherlock Scan: Scully and Hitchcock demonstrate that they have skills of deduction worthy of Sherlock Holmes when food is involved.Scully: What do you have in the pastry box, Sir? Brownies?
Hitchcock: No...you hold brownies from the side. He's holding it from the bottom.
Scully: True. Maybe it's a cheesecake!
Hitchcock: There's no condensation on the box. It's room temperature.
Scully: Look at the fingerspread. Tensing in the shoulders. He's supporting something dense!
Together: It's a pie!
Holt: It is a pie.
Terry: Damn! That was impressive! - Spotting the Thread: Holt notices that Terry, Rosa, and Charles were overcompensating in their lies to try and distract from what was really going on, leading him to the revelation that Kevin was lying about liking the pie they'd bought because he had said that the pastry was "better than a plain scone".
- Thanksgiving Episode
- Wedgie: Charles wears a turkey costume in the Cold Open to try and get the precinct in a Thanksgiving mood. Unfortunately, he fails to notice that his tail feathers are caught in the elevator door and is hoisted up as the carriage travels to its next stop.
