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Brooklyn Nine-Nine Deserved a Better Final Boss
The beloved cop comedy tackled police brutality and institutional corruption head-on in its last season, but its buffoonish villain undercuts the show’s impact when it mattered the most.
In September 2012, a television show called Last Resort premiered on ABC. The premise is as simple as it is scary: after a routine mission to extract a team of Navy SEALS from a mission in Pakistan, the crew of the United States ballistic missile submarine USS Colorado (not to be confused with the actual ship that would launch four years later) receive orders to launch a nuclear strike on the country. The commanding officers realize that the order was sent through a secondary communications channel, only meant to be used in the event that Washington was destroyed in a first strike. After confirming that the capital is still standing, the Colorado requests confirmation of the order through the appropriate primary system before potentially killing millions in an unprovoked attack that could permanently unbalance the global order.
After a few minutes pass, the Colorado is attacked by another Navy submarine. Some of the sailors aboard die, in what won’t be the only instance in the series. And as the crew flee for their lives from the…
