Brooklyn 9-9: how much of its pleasures depend on cop stuff?

[brainwane]

A few weeks ago I read this thread by twwings about Brooklyn Nine-Nine and about what it would take to take the existing show and change what ideologies it carries and feeds regarding the criminal justice/law enforcement system. "it is copaganda, has been copaganda from the start, and it looks like the new season is going to be copaganda as well," writes twwings.

Over the past several years -- usually on airplanes -- I had seen maybe 6 episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine. But I've been thinking about related stuff for a while -- see this thread from early 2019 as folks discussed a potential wiscon program item originally called "disaggregating & reconstituting the pleasure of military/spy/police stories", and this musing:

in trying to figure out how one constructs a story that hits a bunch of the same buttons that spy/military/police fiction hits, yet avoids the ideological squick that the genre inherently pokes, I am a bit like someone trying to hack together a gluten-free or vegan equivalent of a favorite wheaty/dairy/meaty food

(Did that WisCon session actually happen? I forget...)

Just around the time that I saw that Twitter thread, I entered a particularly stressful few weeks and sought out comedic entertainment. So, right now I am watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine in its entirety -- I'm currently partway through season 4 -- and so that twwings thread was fresh in my mind when I started.

Which of this show's pleasures depend on it being a cop show?

I think there are a few categories here, getting progressively more specific.

People in relationships with each other and humor arising from situations they are in - this is the basic situation comedy format. This particular version of the sitcom has snappy writing, a balance between drop-in accessibility for new viewers of individual episodes and engagement/depth for longtime viewers, a shakycam/mockumentary-influenced filming style at least for some scenes, etc. None of this is dependent on the police setting, although I assume there is some genre connection where shakycam subconsciously influences how the viewer settles into a crime- or police-related narrative.

Workplace: There are many workplace sitcoms, and many Brooklyn Nine-Nine stories could take place in any workplace sitcom, e.g., "an energy-saving drive means [person] needs to give up their space heater," "boss sends staff to team-building activity they aren't enthused about," "the janitors don't like this team," "the higher-ups are corrupt," "management incentives backfire," etc. The corruption-type stories are a little more specific because the stakes can be lower in some workplaces, but you can still tell that story outside a cop/military/spy setting.

High stakes/arduous work/suspense: Some Nine-Nine plots or moments depend on this stuff -- stakeouts, for instance -- but, as I've seen other folks point out, you can tell these stories in settings like the ever-present medical procedural, or in firefighting, wilderness search and rescue, and maybe some other kinds of public service agencies. The high stakes help with stories about camaraderie, loyalty, leadership, tradecraft, competence, etc.

People improving the world in some way: Nearly exclusively, the way characters in Brooklyn Nine-Nine improve the world is by arresting criminals; we see/hear a little about community outreach but it's treated as laughable and pretty much an afterthought. There are shows about teachers, lawyers, social workers, supernatural entities, etc. that are more directly about community service.

This brings me to a point laurashapiro made in the WisCon session idea thread:

I feel like the cop show is essentially scratching multiple itches for fans: character depth, buddy dynamics (which could occur in any line of work), action (which is almost always violence, hence problematic), and a desire to see evildoers brought to justice (always problematic within a law enforcement milieu). So while the other professions you mention might address some of these needs, the only show I've ever seen that does all of them successfully without feeling icky on a social justice level is Leverage.

So let's come to the hardest-to-substitute pleasures in Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which have to do with violence and justice. And not just ad hoc defensive violence, but deliberate and prepared use of violence or threats of violence, or preparations for being attacked by malicious people, and organized violence as a means towards justice.

I think that maybe 15% of Brooklyn Nine-Nine plots and whatnot have a hard dependency on the violence and violence-adjacent stuff. There are very few substitutes for this particular story component outside cop/spy/military stories, I think -- we have gang/organized crime/vigilante stories such as Leverage, and some private investigator-type mystery/noir stories.

And then there's the desire to see evildoers brought to justice, which may undergird a bunch of Nine-Nine in nonobvious ways; I will keep looking for that (and violence and threats of/preparations for violence) as I keep watching, and I'll keep looking to get a greater understanding of which of this show's pleasures are not fungible, and what that means regarding what the show is uniquely doing. I also want to understand what the show's trying to do regarding concepts of strength and power, and if you know of interesting writing on that topic, please share a link!

Comments

[indywind]

This is not a well-developed thesis I’m prepared to defend, just a preliminary thought that came up in response to your post that I probably need to pick at a bit more. But, I feel like there’s an element particular to public-institutional sitcoms like Parks And Rec, and Brooklyn NineNine & other copcoms, some comedies about US public high schools, and maybe an occasional drama with comedic elements, where one thing that’s being made fun of is the dysfunctional system and how badly it fails to live up to its ideal. That mockery stops well short of being a serious critique or deconstruction, it usually trivializes or excuses problematic stuff — but it does make the idea that these institutions, their policies, and the people in them —even the most sympathetic ones— are not benevolent, just, wise, or heroic, rather petty, selfinterested, often incompetent, careless, or malicious. Softened by the humor framing and by backing off from outright criticism, the idea can become background accepted even by audiences who would resist more overt criticism, and be reality-affirming for audiences who are well aware of how problematic these institutions are IRL while still being a source of entertainment rather than rage or despair. I think that’s an element I look for in media of this broad type - that it acknowledges real social and structural problems and doesn’t gloss them over completely or magically resolve them, but does handle them more lightly or optimistically than real life.

I think it’d be possible to do that in a setting that is institutional but much less reliant on underlying systemic violence and threat (or the governmental authority, which is underwritten by threat of violence), but I think it’d be much harder to strike the balance. Where the institution isn’t a problematic by its nature, or is good, one doesn’t want to watch it undermined by cruelty, corruption, and incompetence (even though those are a part of it IRL). It’s hard to find any humor or optimism in cruel or incompetent doctors, teachers/trainers, firefighters or EMTs or other rescue personnel, or in the recognition of corruption in those fields.

I have another thought about sitcoms and social power dynamics and “punching up” but it’s even less formed, so I’ll leave it there for now.

[sophygurl]

Dennis Leary's show Rescue Me incorporated a lot of dark humor and showed a lot of the corruption and cruelty and incompetence that could exist in the fire department. Leary starred but also created, wrote for, and produced the show and he's very sympathetic to fire fighters while also not flinching away from the problems they often bring to the job (addiction, lack of attention to family/other relationships, being in it for the adrenaline rush instead of to help people, etc.). It made for an interesting combination that, as you said, isn't something that's explored very often. We like to see firefighters and EMTs and such as heroic - but they're just as human as the rest of us, so seeing that humanity in all of it's darkness explored could be very uncomfortable, if still enjoyable, to watch at times.