Sunday Blog #2: Brooklyn Nine-Nine, the light and the breezy
It's difficult to like cops right now, but these ones are good
(image source: pinterest)
I finally entered the party last week. Full admittance, I didn’t know something of this scale was even going on in the neighbourhood, having heard of it only through passing mentions and memes. This was until a friend recommended, with a lot of conviction, that I should give this a shot. And oh boy.
I barely watch TV. I have watched so few shows that I have missed - not as a conscious decision - many, many popular ones. Yes, the one you are thinking about right now, there is a high chance I haven’t watched it. In school and college, I barely got time or internet bandwidth, and by the time I had enough, there was an entire catalogue of my two favourite genres - thrillers and documentaries - staring at me through the computer screen.
I love dark movies and shows with a passion. You know, the type of shows where the creators literally call it Dark. Black Mirror is an all-time favourite. Excessive exposure to Bollywood cheese has led to a subconscious, and possibly irrational, aversion of rom-coms, but if you ask me to choose between Netflix’s worst gritty show and their best chipper show, I will choose the former.
And that is what makes comedy a risky genre for me. I often treat it as an escape, a refuge, and not so much as an art-form that deserves the same attention and appreciation as any other genre. Layered, observational comedy is often lost on me, because I’m looking for the lols and not so much for “Oh, yeah. He’s right, haha.” Give me the silly puns, stupid jokes, and dialogue filled with dry wit and sarcasm, and I will be ready to fill your tax return forms.
I have skimmed over many comedy shows, sampling an episode here and another there, but nothing has quite pulled me to itself like Seinfeld. I first stumbled onto it during the later years of college, through a pirated and pixelated version of Season 1, when pirated and pixelated videos were a thing. For the eight years since, it had been my show of choice whenever I wanted a laugh or needed to de-stress after a long day, or if I had 20 spare minutes to finish my dinner.
Seinfeld’s place on the throne has competition now. I finally clicked the Brooklyn Nine-Nine icon on Netflix sometime last month and am happy to announce that it is the most refreshing thing I have watched in a long time. I’m deep into Season 3 - already - and I can’t remember having watched an episode where I haven’t laughed out loud at least once. Some of the humour can possibly be termed low brow - what with all the title of your sex tape jabs and juvenile double entendres - but there is nothing I find more endearing about the show than its seamless handling of low-hanging comedy. This isn’t to say that the series is only whacky gags and sex jokes; it isn’t. It is a fantastic sundae with equal amounts of intelligent humour and alternative observations to go with the wisecracks. And all of it happens with a breezy lightness.
A big chunk of B99’s appeal for me also lies in the relatability of its characters. In college classrooms and workplaces, I have come across many Jake Peraltas and Charles Boyles. I’m fairly certain most of us have too. So when I watch them blow up a microwave or goof up an easy case, I laugh harder because I have met the kind of people who would, in the same way, saying similar things.
I realise I am only in the initial seasons of the show, the honeymoon period so to speak, and that many good shows lose their cachet by the time they reach 5-6 years of production. But I’m willing to bet on this one, because so far, an episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine feels like drinking a glass of perfect temperature water after an intense workout - comforting. And I’ll be honest, I watch comedy for comfort, not much else.
This Week
Articles
Doreen St. Felix’s New Yorker piece on the problems with celebrity behaviour during a pandemic
Sambit Bal on the Daren Sammy incident. He speaks about the important lesson about colourism as racism that we South Asians must learn. Nowhere near as good as this, but I wrote something about it on these pages too.
FiveThirtyEight's feature on a WNBA legend who has taken a sabbatical from her sport to fight for social justice
Story on The Atlantic about exploring India’s coronavirus situation through…Parle G. Yeap.
New fiction from Murakami
Books
Been re-reading Rahul Bhattacharya’s Pundits From Pakistan. I had read it as a school kid besotted with creative sportswriting, and I read it now as an aspiring sportswriter with the same amount of awe. Among the top three cricket books I have ever read, probably because it very quickly turns from a book about cricket to one about his experiences in Pakistan during an important cricket series.
Finished In Defence of Food by Michael Pollan. I’ll sum up my verdict in one sentence - if you have ever, ever, thought about your diet analytically, or turned a jar of peanut butter around to see how many grams of protein it contains per 100 grams of serving, you should read this. You know what, allow me a second sentence. Anyone who eats anything should read it.
Movies
Watched Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press last night. It is a Netflix documentary based around the receding power of journalism when pitted against the powerful and wealthy. Here’s the elevator pitch - the court trial through which the movie is played out is about Hulk Hogan’s sex tapes.
Until next time.