Brooklyn Nine Nine 6.5 Recap: The Tables Are Turned For Doug Judy

There has been a string of car thefts in the city and the M.O. matches that of Jake’s frenemy, Doug Judy. Dubious of the criminal going straight, Sergeant Jeffords wants a few words with the Cadillac Bandit. When he tries to make contact, he finds out that his prime suspect has passed away.

[*Spoilers For 6.5 Ahead!]

Terry and Jake attend the funeral where the latter takes on the persona of Mangy Carl, Judy’s assistant. When family welcome the pair, they ask Peralta to sing in honor of the recently deceased. In the middle of performing an improvised song who does Jake see hovering in the back but Doug Judy, alive and well. The two cops quickly go to confront him and learn he faked his own death because a notorious arms dealer, Stefano Lucas, put a hit on his head. Lucas thinks he stole his car but it must have been a copycat. Jake is inclined to believe Judy while Terry still feels he’s the perpetrator. Despite his reservations, the sergeant allows Judy to help with the case.

While Doug is on a DJing gig, the copycat is apprehended. She turns out to be his younger sister, Trudy Judy. She only boosted cars to pay off her nursing school loans. Not wanting his sister to go to prison, Doug agrees to bring in a bigger fish, Lucas, by using the stolen car as bait. During the hand off, the car explodes but fortunately the cops are still able to seize the arms dealer. Amidst the chaos, Trudy slips away and evades the police. Later, she calls her brother and reveals the car explosion was a diversion so she could escape. She’s been a hardened criminal for some time beginning with fraud and identity theft graduating to stealing cars after finding some of Doug’s old notes. Now there’s one more lawbreaking mastermind Judy out there.

The rest of the Nine-Nine are ready to unwind at their usual watering hole when they see a bunch of FDNY hanging out. The bar isn’t big enough for both groups so they have a drinking contest to rack up the highest tab for exclusive rights to Shaw’s. Holt always felt the place was beneath him and leaves. Outnumbered, the crew put up a valiant effort but fall behind in the standings. In their darkest hour, the Captain returns to save the day and drink them to victory. He was hurt when he received a drunken voicemail saying he didn’t care about his officers.

This episode showed the evolution of Doug Judy, even though he’s not a main character. When we were first introduced to him, he’s merely an antagonist. Each season he returns, his relationship to Jake grows and last season we saw a tipping point where they actually became friends rather than foes and Judy left his life of crime. This story with his sister was a nice parallel to Doug and Jake’s first meeting and now, Judy finally knows how it feels to be played.

When you have a guest star like Craig Robinson, you don’t want too many subplots because it would take away from him. The drinking contest was a fun way to involve everyone else in a single storyline. There might be no bigger rivalry than cops and firefighters. It’s always amusing to see people wasted especially the different stages of drunk Amy. Finally, not to take anything away from Rob Riggle, I’m always partial to having Patton Oswalt as the main firefighter thorn in the Nine-Nine’s side.

My Favorite 3 Lines:

Rosa: They probably started it. Most arsonists turn out to be firefighters.

Rob: That’s not true. Though it is very common and definitely what happened in this case.

—

Holt: Change is a good thing.

Rosa: Just yesterday you were ranting about the Philharmonic adding a second piccolo.

Holt: It’s too many. It’ll muddle the sound.

—

Jake: The only way to catch a copy cat is to team up with the original criminal.

Doug: I’m back on the force. Give me a gun.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine airs Thursdays at 9:00 pm on NBC.