He Said, She Said

I'm not a fan of huge tonal shifts in shows to shove a message down people throats, and this episode was not that. It looked carefully at a serious topic while also being hilarious at the same time. This is an all around classic episode, keep it up. And congrats on SEASON 7

It really pains me to rate my favorite sitcom a 6, but I had to take this episode's average down. B99 has dealt wonderfully with social issues and other touch subjects before (yes, "Moo Moo" was beautifully executed), but this time they did not hit the mark. It's not just a mistake, however, (I wouldn't have rated it this low), it is a desperate attempt to "get in line" and receive praise for its "progressiveness". Jake and Amy's dialogue seems forced and unnatural and so is the "case" they investigate. I know companies like the one in the episode exist, but everything here seems pushed to the extreme, dumping all subtlety and common sense along the way. I hope this episode was written by a "guest screenwriter" and the show will go back to its natural and pleasing ways of dealing with moral issues, social problems and everything else in a satirical, laugh-out-loud-funny manner. I will rate some previous episodes just to raise the total rating of the show. Seriously, the 99 did not deserve this episode.

While I'm a big fan of steph I was disappointed with the unfunny episode. The unfunniness was obviously boosted by the 'progressive' radical feminist propaganda.

Stop with the activism and start with the humour please, the audience clearly wants that. Plus, most people (including men) are decent and stuff like this antagonises and bores them.

Let's get "boring" for a second like our favourites Amy and Captain Holt and talk about statistics.

This episode is rated with 7.1 and is currently the second lowest episode of the series at the time this review is written (before season 8 aired). But it is very interesting to observe how this is shaped.

The series averages a rate of 8.4 with most episodes being around this value (85 episodes out of 143 are rated between 8 and 9). Usually the ratings of individual episodes get it right. The top episodes are HalloVeen and The box with 9.5 which means that episodes with a rating above 9 are in most cases the best ( depending of course on personal taste). Similarly, the fluctuation around 8 and 9 gives an indication of how good an episode is and if the rating is below 8 usually we are talking about a less engaging episode. And apart from two outliers the lowest thresholds seems to be 7.4.

In most episodes, the majority of the ratings are concentrated around the average value and usually the amount of the rest of the votes and where they are leaning forms the final value. For example in "The Negotiation" most ratings are 8 and then we have a lot of 9s and 10s while there is a decent amount of 7s causing the episode to be rated with 8.3. Even the episode with the lowest review "Return of the King" follows a similar trend with most ratings being 7 although there where a lot of 1s that led to the final 6.4 (I have not yet seen that episode so I am not able to further discuss about that).

However, this is not the case with this episode where most ratings are either 10 or 1. In fact 15.7% of the ratings are 1s. I know this episode can be divisive but seriously, just rate it fairly. Of course there are good ways to deal with gender equality issues (e.g. The Morning Show) and then there can be some less good attempts (e.g. the 2019 Batwoman series). For my personal taste this is neither (e.g. Moo Moo was indeed very good covering different social issues) but as an episode in general it was not nearly as bad as Four Movements (again personal taste). Especially Jake's awkwardness and ignorance in some cases is very interesting and funny, showing perhaps that the issue is more serious and not addressed even by people who have the tendency to be just.

Don't forget that this is a 20 minute episode, it is not easy to cover nearly all the angles in a such complex issue. A lot of reviewers cite Gina's harassments to Terry. First of all let's not forget that the series start with Charles harassing Rosa. Secondly, although I hear your argument, we can't just pretend that the amount of harassment men receive is equal to the amount women have to endure (which in many times is far more dangerous). The sequence where Amy is harassed or fell victim of sexism (even when buying a cup of coffee) was intriguing and actually accurate. It is amazing how even the smallest tasks can be more difficult for women (let alone the more serious ones like promotions etc.). People would argue that we don't need to be force fed these ideas. Judging by the amount of "radical feminist propaganda" comments and the 1s in the ratings, I am not so sure that is the case. Maybe the depiction is so blatant because the issue is so blatant and we just refuse to perceive the extent of it.

And let's not forget that there is also a secondary storyline, which was not bad.

Bottom line if this episode was not to your liking rate it like any other episode that you did not enjoy as much as the others. But there is no way this was as bad as being the second worst episode of a series suggests.

Sexual harassment in the workplace is an important issue, and tackling it a sitcom is not inherently a bad thing. The way this episode does it however, is an outright assault on fans' intellect. To make an episode so ridiculously obvious; to spoon-feed the morals like this is more or less assuming that most Brooklyn 9-9 are simply ignorant when it comes to this issue, and therefore must go though a painful 20 minutes of pure cringe in order to "get it right."

It's also obvious that the way Amy handled the case is the opposite of what police work should be. If you have someone who was proven to be physically assaulted and another who admitted to the assault claiming it was an attempt to prevent a sexual harassment, the next logical step in any scenario would be to investigate the sexual harassment claim, and taking all the necessary measures if it was proven to be true. In "He Said, She Said" however, Amy didn't even bother; she just went ahead encouraging the employee to file a lawsuit, leaving the burden of proof for later.

This heavily flawed episode is -so far- the low point of an otherwise very fun an entertaining sitcom.