Brooklyn Nine-Nine season 2, episode 16, “The Wednesday Incident” gave viewers real insight into Captain Raymond Holt.
Holt’s characterization over the past few episodes may have been leading up to this one, to show the disconnect between then and now. He’s been loosening up, becoming more like ‘one of the guys’ than their boss that they feel stiff around. This episode, however, he’s on a tirade with his bad mood.
Jake takes it upon himself to find the reason for Holt’s week-long grumpiness, but the man insists that his behavior is simply par the course. Not so. His prickly attitude wasn’t because Jake uncorks the sparking cider and sets off the sprinklers. Jake knows Holt was in a bad move before it — so what happened?
After enlisting Gina to help, they trace Holt’s steps of that Wednesday morning. Starting with Kevin at their home. Kevin, working only with Gina, reveals that Holt was in a fine mood when he left the house.
Gina and Jake take a stroll down the block outside his fencing class and find a security camera that could give some insight into that fateful morning. On that footage, Jake finds that Holt was mugged by three thugs. But, he wasn’t really mugged! Captain Holt totally kicked all their butts and he was only ‘lightly stabbed’ in the scuffle. He didn’t want to frighten Kevin, but he is mad at himself for acting like a 20-year-old. Jake was right all along — the Wednesday Incident didn’t start with him, and Holt realizes that he was displacing his anger.
Then he utters these four words that made Jake’s day: “Peralta, you’re a genius.”
Brooklyn Nine-Nine season 2 has largely been about Holt, and how he is characterized among his colleagues and loved ones. “The Wednesday Incident” merely helps that along in a more tangential way. We know his mornings now better than ever before — what his ‘good mood’ breakfast is, that he paints grey rocks in his painting class, he has a regular sparring partner in his fencing class — it all continues to define Holt.
In the precinct, Boyle brings in a bank robber who turns out to be a… very sweet old man? Amy and Rosa insist he’s got the wrong guy, but you know how this goes. The women walk away and the perp leans in close to Boyle, “You wanna know what I’m gonna do with the money I stole? Prostitutes.”
This continues for a while — the man gives Amy a dollar, who reminds her of his non-existent granddaughter — but Boyle gives a rousing speech to Rosa about how he is a damn good cop, and he knows he brought in the right guy. Meanwhile, the man drops dead in the next room.
Only after running the serial number on that dollar does Amy realize Boyle was right — it was one that was stolen in one of the bank heists. Boyle is a good cop!
Some odds and ends from “The Wednesday Incident:”