"Brooklyn Nine-Nine" Had So Many Unforgettable Episodes, Both Good And Bad, So I Ranked The Top 10 Of Each

"You're under arrest for ruining something perfect" — Rosa Diaz and also me to the show runners after the series finale.

Time truly isn't real because somehow it's been almost an entire year since we said goodbye to Jake, Amy, Holt, and the whole B99 crew.

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And so, dear friends, it is time to look back on the highs and lows of Brooklyn Nine-Nine's incredible 9-year-run of television excellence.

Here are 10 best episodes:

20. "Boyle's Hunch" (Season 3, Episode 3)

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This episode comes right after Holt's transfer, Dozerman's intro and exit, and the Vulture taking over the precinct — and it's a massive and MUCH needed breath of fresh air. Boyle falls in love with Genevieve moments before she's sent to prison for art theft she's been framed for and Joe Lo Truglio is his maximum Boyle-y self for 25 minutes as he tries to prove her innocence (while offering to cover her body in pâté and eat it off with a cornichon). This episode also marks one of the Nine-Nine's first forays into talking about issues with policing as Holt grapples with citizen graffiti on his pro-police posters.

19. "The Crime Scene" (Season 6, Episode 6)

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A major key to good TV comedy is figuring out which pairs of actors/characters you can break off into their own adventures and still have the show roll on. Jake and Rosa are 100% one of those pairs. This episode is hilarious and it takes place almost entirely in one room with largely just these two characters. It's not hugely significant to the show, I'll give you that. But, it's a hell of a lot of fun.

18. "The Good Ones" (Season 8, Episode 1)

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B99 wins the award for "least problematic problematic fave" for being a cop show that tries to touch on the social issues implicated by its existence. And you could give the nod to a number of episodes here — including the ones dedicated to Rosa's bisexuality, Terry's experience as a Black man, Amy's as a woman, and others that deal with citizenship status and trauma. But, "The Good Ones" gets the nod for having a highly specific and technical scene in which a police captain walks Jake and Rosa step by step through why filing a complaint against violent police doesn't fix police violence. It's accurate, it's poignant, and it's succinct.

17. "Cop Con" (Season 4, Episode 17)

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"We're like detectives!" "We ARE detectives!" In this B99-does-The-Hangover style episode, we get a fast-paced look at what it looks like to unleash these characters in a new setting with a lot of alcohol. Fun, colorful, with a mystery to solve, and it still ends on a sentimental note with Holt wishing he had gotten to party, too, even though the gang was trying to keep the partying from him the whole night. Also Diaz making tequila steam is inspirational.

16. "99" (Season 5, Episode 9)

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It's called 99 for a reason; this episode gives us some of the best moments of full team unity in the series. Holt tries sacrificing his career to help Jake. Rosa opens up to Boyle about her bisexuality. Boyle's family gets involved. Jake gets his Die Hard moment. It's stuffed with moments that are fun to watch, but have another layer of meaning if you've been watching from the beginning.

15. "Skyfire Cycle" (Season 4, Episode 8)

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BOOOOONNNEEE????? You just can't have a moment that iconic in an episode and then not have it appear in a top 10 list. I don't make the rules (I mean...I do. But, you get it).

14. "HalloVeen" (Season 5, Episode 4)

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Die-hard B99 fans will know it's hard to pick just one Halloween Heist episode, but how can you not go with the one that turns out to be an elaborate proposal? Like, Brooklyn Nine-Nine's version of Ocean's 11, Jake uses his time in prison to plan the perfect over the top heist, just to ask Amy to marry him. It's another instance where the creativity in the planning of the episode shines and this moment is just so cute!

13. "The Big House" (Season 5, Episodes 1-2)

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Cheating a bit with the two-for-one here, but it's hard to think of a more memorable vibe than these two episodes to kick off Season 5. With Jake and Rosa framed for a crime and stuck in prison, we get a whole new world to play with where new dangers and shenanigans arise. And the writers make the most of it. Jake's isolation-fueled freakout and Lion King recreation? And then his meth-fueled freakout where he yells his internal monologue out loud? Come on, that's comedy gold.

12. "9 Days" (Season 3, Episode 12)

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With Holt and Jake trapped inside trying to solve a cold case while recovering from the mumps, this episode has a ton of cold medicine-driven banter and, as a result, maybe more laugh-out-loud lines per minute than any other episode. From Holt yelling "case!" after writing it 100 times on a window like he's figured it out to Jake freaking out over a criminal eating snakes on camera (it's spaghetti) to fighting over frozen peas to cool down swollen testicles — it's a TV comedy nailing comedy head-on!

11. And finally, "The Box" (Season 5, Episode 14)

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This is B99 at its creative best — elevated acting from a killer guest star (literally) thanks to Sterling K. Brown, legitimate twists and turns while Holt and Jake try to solve a crime, and plenty of gags thrown in for fun. We get a number of Brooklyn Nine-Nine mainstays over the course of the episode: Bugs Bunny jokes, Holt's overly formal relationship with Kevin, Jake's insistence on breaking the rules, a callback to the "guitar torture" technique for criminal questioning, there's a little bit of it all. This episode is rare in that it features exclusively Jake and Holt and no other characters, but those two are also the heart of the entire show and they shine in this.

And here are the not-so-top 10 epsiodes:

10. "Nutriboom" (Season 5, Episode 16)

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I can't get behind the Nutriboom storyline. We spend an odd amount of time on it (it's mentioned in three+ episodes, given Bill's recurring involvement in the heists) and it never really adds anything significant to the characters or, frankly, the humor of the show. The idea of Jake being haunted by an evil corporation who assigns a person to stalk and intimidate them could be played for laughs or for drama, but it ultimately is played for neither and Nutriboom's presence just dies out.

9. "AC/DC" (Season 2, Episode 20)

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This episode gets docked points for having such odd stakes. Jake slips and falls during a chase and then it suddenly turns into a life threatening injury. At one point, Terry tells Jake to drop a case and, five seconds later, Jake looks out a window to see something related to the case, and it's played as the most pivotal moment of the episode. A window look five seconds after being told to chill out. Not exactly the most heart-racing issue there, guys.

8. "Chasing Amy" (Season 4, Episode 18)

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Amy is getting ready to take the sergeant's exam and is absolutely freaking out, which is totally believable. Amy then aces the exam and gets worried she'll intimidate Jake so she runs away, which is way less believable. I always felt this episode was out of character for Amy, who, despite desperately needing Holt's approval and being a major overachiever, had not shown the kind of fear of stepping on Jake's toes that she shows here. It's a bit of a bummer, given the root of the fear being that she'll intimidate Jake with her success.

7. "New Captain" (Season 3, Episode 1)

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I love Bill Hader, but his characterizations never quite fit the flow of B99's style of comedy. He's not given much to work with, as captain Seth Dozerman is about as flat a character as they come. During rewatches of the series, I find myself skipping the first episode or two of Season 3, trying to avoid his brief tenure as captain of the Nine-Nine.

6. "VallowEaster" (Season 7, Episode 11)

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This episode was the clear sign that the heist format had run out of steam. The premise of needing to move the heist repeatedly and having it restart several times broke up the flow of the conniving plotting that makes the heist fun. Not to mention, Rosa's big win at the end is a little undersold, given that she basically just grabs the gems and runs. It felt like the heist had given all it could to B99 at this point.

5. "Uspis" (Season 2, Episode 8)

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Sensing a theme? Here's yet another episode with a guest star who underperforms without having enough time to get into rhythm with the rest of the cast (sorry, Ed Helms). It's a pretty common sitcom trope to have a character come in and play a foil, but it's hard to get behind an episode featuring a new character whose entire personality boils down to "he's annoying."

4. "Hostage Situation" (Season 3, Episode 11)

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ALL HAIL KATHRYN HAHN...but not in this episode. Another example of a guest star being given a flat character and too little time to work with, Eleanor serves as a foil to Boyle and Genevieve's reproductive plans in an episode that is 99% sperm jokes (there's a limit, folks). It's an underuse of a truly talented comedic actress and she deserves better.

3. "Old School" (Season 1, Episode 8)

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Jimmy Brogan was an interesting choice for B99 — he was so staunchly unlikeable (which is the point, I understand), but I also felt that the writers pulled their punches a bit with him. He tells stories from his golden days that are outright racist, homophobic, etc. and he only gets firm eye rolls from Amy and Holt, but not too much else until Jake punches him. And even then, we never get real reconciliation between Jake and any of his co-workers who were hurt by his tacit endorsement of Brogan up to that point. It feels like a missed opportunity.

2. "DFW" (Season 5, Episode 17)

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The introduction of Jake's half-sister, Kate, was a misfire from the start. Immediately unlikeable and largely void of any depth as a character, it felt hard not to just want her to go back to Texas and stay out of the main storyline. There's an attempt in her episode to explain her personality as a consequence of a rough childhood, but we never really dive into it in any meaningful way and Kate does not reappear for the rest of the series.

1. And finally, "M.E. Time" (Season 1, Episode 4)

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Call it a victim of out-of-date comedy tropes, but this episode lays it on thick with the fat jokes and never lets up. They're one of the only attempts at levity in an episode that is otherwise about the fact that Jake is a bad partner and a bad listener and, boy, it does not stand the test of time. I would guess this is one that some of the cast and crew would want back.

Do you agree? Disagree? Are now full of conflicted feelings you didn't know you had about these episodes? Let me know in the comments!

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