Brooklyn Nine-Nine season 6 episode 10 review: Gintars

This review contains spoilers.

6.10 Gintars

After being relegated to the B-plot pretty much the entire season, Boyle takes the spotlight in Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s latest episode Gintars, another episode that deals with the issues of being an adoptive father to his son, Nikolaj. This time, Boyle’s parenting crisis revolves around the title character Gintars (played by Ike Barinholtz, who has really carved out a niche guest starring as Eastern European slimeballs on popular shows) randomly showing up to announce that he’s Nikolaj’s birth father and that he wants to be a part of Nikolaj’s life.

Boyle tends to obsess about all of his interests, and nothing is of more interest to the man than being the best father he can be. Raising Nikolaj is a point of great pride and anxiety for Boyle, so naturally he freaks out thinking about how Gintars could upset their little family unit. After teaming up with pretty much every other regular cast member, Jake is finally by Boyle’s side to help him weather the complicated storm once Gintars proves he won’t take no for an answer. In the early days of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Jake and Boyle plots were routine, but now they feel few and far between, so it was nice seeing Jake back by Boyle’s side, making disapproving faces after Boyle makes an inappropriate Disney reference or talks too much about his and his son’s bathing habits.

After Nikolaj starts warming to his birth father a little too much, and sensing Boyle’s distress, Jake decides to take matters into his own hands. Knowing that Gintars is on a long visa because he “came from a white country,” Jake decides to get him in trouble for counterfeiting. Gintars only had the money to come search for his son after starting his own clothing line called GAPE, a clear rip-off of the Gap. Jake gets Gintars on tape admitting his counterfeit crimes, which will lead to Gintars getting deported. However, before the authorities swoop in on Gintars to escort him out of the country, Boyle realises how happy Nikolaj has been connecting with his birth father, and decides that he’s willing to allow Gintars to be a part of their lives. Shortly after, when the police take Gintars away in handcuffs in front of Boyle and Nikolaj, Boyle is infuriated that Jake didn’t consult with him before asking. 

Boyle actually getting angry with Jake for being an inconsiderate friend is great material, considering that Boyle has always essentially been Jake’s yes man and lackey. Putting a pin in Boyle’s devotion for a second allows them to have an honest conversation about Jake’s shortcomings as a friend. It’s just a shame that the episode doesn’t show more of Jake’s bad qualities so that there’s more of a build-up. In the end, Boyle agrees to forgive Jake even if he’s still upset with the move that Jake pulled, but it may have been better if the show decided to keep Boyle angry and have Jake take real steps to show that he’s worthy of Boyle’s friendship. 

Meanwhile, the B-plot brings back season five’s Dr Yee, whom Holt and Amy obsessively fawn over. Rosa has a case where she needs to find blood evidence despite the fact that the evidence may have been bleached away, and Amy and Holt suggest using Dr Yee’s experimental method of using flies to detect traces of blood. The plot is an excuse to let Amy and Holt act as nerdy and intellectually superior as possible, and there’s even a great side bit involving Terry being freaked out by the microscopic organisms that live in the hair on his face that causes him to shave off his eyebrows and bleach his goatee. In the end, Rosa discovers Dr Yee to be a fraud and solves the case using good old-fashioned bluffing.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine had been on a tear of exceptional episodes, and while this doesn’t necessarily break their streak, it’s just merely good. It’ll be interesting to see if Gintars makes his way back to Brooklyn Nine-Nine in a future episode next-season, as “Papa Boyle” plots are all that the writers seem interested in doing with Boyle, but as the argument between he and Jake proves, there are plenty of other dynamics they could be exploring.

Read Nick’s review of the previous episode, The Golden Child, here.