Opinion: Brooklyn 99, the guinea pig for making cops funny after George Floyd, didn’t fail, but it didn’t succeed either

Nov. 15, 2022

By Keely Bastow

The final season of “Brooklyn 99” represents more than a show running its course – this ending represents how hard it is for a cop show to balance comedy and acknowledging uncomfortable realities within the police system, especially during a national reckoning about policing.

For years “Brooklyn 99” has been my comfort show. The banter between characters intermixed with the development of broad and diverse backstories makes it an easy show to binge. But the last season had a much different tone.

While the show has mentioned police brutality, lack of diversity, and other criticisms of the police during its run, it never put those issues front and center. It’s tough to maintain a comedic angle when wrestling with the fact that police officers kill 1,000 people a year in the United States.

Cop shows are some of the most successful on network TV, half of the highest rated shows in 2019-2020 were about cops. But after the killing of George Floyd and the racial reckoning that followed, television networks began rethinking the appropriateness of shows about cops.

The popular show “Cops” was cancelled in June 2020 after protests over police brutality. The parent network, Paramount, said the show would be pulled from circulation permanently. “Cops” was recently reintroduced on the streaming service Fox Nation in October.

“Brooklyn 99” did not go off the air but did announce that the next season would be its last. Though the writers and cast addressed the difficulties of portraying cops in the current climate, they said an eight season run was had been originally planned.

The final season, which aired in August, attempted to address the flaws of the police system, specifically in New York where the drop in public trust of the police was significant and the New York Attorney General even sued the NYPD over mishandling Black Lives Matter protests.

“Brooklyn 99” relied on comedic over exaggeration for the previous seven seasons. Continuing that brand of comedy meant making what people already saw as wildly inappropriate behavior by police officers and police union representatives even worse for the sake of a joke.

This was the case with Frank O’Sullivan, head of the Patrolman’s Union on the show. His antics and cruelty on behalf of the police union was difficult to divorce from reality and many of the jokes ended up being uncomfortable because the punchline was really just that this is how it works.

O’Sullivan’s purpose is to stop progress and accountability in the NYPD. It’s a representation that is important when telling a story about the police, but it begs the question – is this accurate representation funny or sad?

Most of the jokes O’Sullivan made were written to mock the police system, the absurdity of which made me chuckle at points but also made me groan in disappointment. His character should become a necessity to any portrayal of a police department, but really hurts the comedic aspect of the show.

The final season was written to show a more realistic and critical version of an NYPD precinct. But that was made difficult by the fact that for seven seasons the characters were seen as unbiased heroes of the community. The first episode of the eighth season had Jake Peralta, the white male detective and star of the show, confronting the fact that he thought he was “one of the good ones” but he may actually be a part of the problem.

For loyal viewers to the program, the change in this narrative is difficult to adjust to, for seven years Peralta was the golden child and best detective in the precinct. The season follows his reflection on the state of policing in New York, which was thorough and obviously well researched. However, it made the jokes a little bit more grim.

Balancing personal plotlines with ones about the state of policing and possible reforms is something that future cop shows will continue to grapple with – sometimes the transition between a funny scene and a scene dealing with very real and traumatic themes was uncomfortable because they require very different levels of attentiveness.

For example, in one scene Rosa Diaz, a former cop, and Jake Peralta are debating whether working the system from the inside is honorable or not. In the next scene, there’s a joke about how often Scully, another detective, needs to use the bathroom. The joke was funny, but laughing right after a hard-hitting scene like that was awkward.

The show attempted to make viewers laugh and reflect on dangerous practices of the NYPD. Walking that line is something that any cop sitcom will have to continue to do. “Brooklyn 99” didn’t fail at it, but its eighth season certainly highlighted the difficulty of making cops funny after 2020.