Before my Netflix account gets suspended I am trying to get as much out of it as I can before that date comes. As I wrote in my last post, Netflix is going to be attempting to phase out account sharing globally, starting in the first half of 2023. Some people have already noticed the effects of this as we are just in the phase where they try to inconvenience people into getting their own account instead of using someone else's. I think the plan is going to backfire big time because i am actually a big fan of Netflix, but I will not get my own account if they eliminate account sharing, especially since it was their idea and actually a marketing tactic of theirs in the first place.
Now, let's carry on to what I think is one of the best sitcoms ever made and one of the few that I have willingly sat through multiple times.
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Cop comedy series have been done before but I think that Brooklyn 99 does it the best. Because of the fact that the show doesn't follow a traditional format, skips back and forth in time, and each episode is only loosely related to the ones that came before, make it a very easy show to simply jump into at any point. You don't need to have watched season 1-4 to understand season 5.
Not long ago I finished the last episodes of the final season of B99 and I was kind of disappointed that they decided to not make it anymore.
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I don't know what the studio conditions are that are taken into account when deciding whether or not to continue making a show. But having nearly 3 million live watchers of a show in 2019 and 2020, a time when streaming had basically already taken over the entire industry, is a pretty damn good number in my mind. It could be a question of cast salaries, or the fact that the cast and crew were kind of burned out. It's not like the storyline was ever going to come to a conclusion, because there really isn't one. The scenarios they run into from episode to episode are rarely something that runs on for more than a single episode, and they simply create new crimes to solve and have guest characters come in for cameos.
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Another thing I really enjoy about this show is that they don't have a laugh track. I also enjoy that it has a delightful mix of comedy, some action, but also emotional aspects of the show. In many ways I feel as though it is kind of like Scrubs but less emotional and of course, about police instead of doctors. Scrubs went down a similar path, but unlike B99 a big part of the reason why they eventually hung it up was because key characters in the show decided to leave the show, and the audience just didn't like the replacements. This has not been the case with Brooklyn 99. The only character that ever left the show was "Gina" (played by Chelsea Peretti) and she left the show to go off an selfishly have a baby. She would later return to the show in glorious fashion.
The reason why I started watching the series again was because a friend was visiting and she is one of those rare people that had heard of Brooklyn 99 but never actually watched it. She immediately loved it. I also enjoyed starting at season 1 episode 1 because it had at that point been a very long time since I had seen the episodes, and a lot of the stuff was actually kind of new to me because i had forgotten.
All the characters have their own individual quirks and the overall comedy depends on their ability to work opposite one another. The main character is undeniably Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg) but the focus shifts from episode to episode and there is even one or two episodes in there where Jake is barely involved.
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I particularly like the episodes where Jake and Rosa are forced to work together because they are polar opposites. Jake is friendly and silly, and Rosa is stern, hot-headed, and rather emotionless. You would already know this if you are familiar with the show though.
The point of all of this is that there are very few shows out there that I am willing to watch multiple times and just off the top of my head these would be Brooklyn 99, Scrubs, Friends, Seinfeld, and maybe Modern Family. This is just the comedy side of things though, if I were to extend this to dramas the list would be a lot longer.
How did you feel about Brooklyn 99? Did you love it as much as I do?