Brooklyn Nine-Nine: 10 Best Episodes Ranked
5. Game Night
This is another example of 99 tackling a large public issue and once again, they do it by striking the perfect tonal balance between humour and reality.
This episode focuses of Rosa's sexuality and her coming out to her parents, which gives us a new and more vulnerable side to the show's resident badass. It shows Rosa struggle with her family’s reaction, which, despite Jake's best efforts to lighten the mood, is considerably less than ideal. It’s made worse by the fact that since getting out of prison at the start of the season, Rosa’s relationship with her family had drastically improved prompting a weekly game night.
It is at one of these game nights, after an extremely awkward dinner, that Rosa stands her ground against her parents. She lets them know that she is who she is no matter what they think, creating a rare and empowering moment for her character, who is typically mysterious and solitary.
But also, within that they still manage to get in some solid and naturally occurring comedy. A great deal of this happens within the Rosa A-plot but the episode's B-plot is equally funny. It sees Gina return to the precinct for the first time since giving birth, in a shower of showmanship and brutal insults.
This ultimately results in her emotionally destroying the head of cyber-crimes in a way only Gina Linetti can, starting with the classic Gina question, “hey little man, why so tiny?”