How Brooklyn Nine-Nine Reinvented Andre Braugher For A New Generation

It is a cruel, unfair twist of fate that we lost the amazing and talented Andre Braugher this week at the age of 61. Though Braugher appeared in notable film roles over the course of a handful of decades, like his debut role of Corporal Thomas Searles in Edward Zwick's "Glory," Brent Norton in Frank Darabont's adaptation of "The Mist," and real-life journalist and editor Dean Baquet in the recent "She Said," he was best known on the small screen for primarily playing men of authority, like his Emmy-winning turn as Detective Frank Pembleton of the Baltimore PD on "Homicide: Life on the Street." For many viewers (especially those who may have been too young to watch "Homicide" in the mid-1990s, and may have recognized him more from "Glory," a staple of high-school history classrooms), Braugher is best known for playing another commanding cop, Captain Raymond Holt of the NYPD in the brilliantly silly eight-season sitcom "Brooklyn Nine-Nine." Both when it aired initially, and through binge-rewatches, it's clear that Braugher successfully balanced the serious and the loopy in his performance as Holt, thus enabling the series as a whole to grow and improve over time.

So much of the initial hook of "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" was seemingly in throwing together two incredibly different screen presences in the hopes that their oil-and-water differences would bear comic fruit. As much as the cop comedy allowed Braugher to unveil rarely seen comic depth, it was equally intended as a star vehicle for recent "SNL" cast member Andy Samberg of the Lonely Island. As Detective Jake Peralta, Samberg was balancing serious and loopy himself; on one hand, Jake was meant to be a very gifted detective, but on the other, he was a pop-culture-obsessed manchild who was invested in solving cases in part to win meaningless bets. So in the setup of the series, Peralta quickly runs into trouble when he meets his precinct's new captain, Braugher's Holt. Holt has risen up the ranks of the NYPD over decades of racism and homophobia; he's the first out gay Black captain in the NYPD and cherishes that role dearly, which explains his initially unwavering adherence to the rules, such as wearing a tie to the precinct. Peralta's immaturity starts when he compares his new captain to a robot, and escalates when he wears a tie but only so he can wear neon-hued underwear, but eventually relents. In the same way, Holt also relents; over the course of the show's eight seasons, he and Peralta become much closer, with the younger man delighting in Holt's rare revelations about his personal life as much as in the older cop's equally rare willingness to act like an old-fashioned, Dirty Harry-esque cop taking down so-called "punks."

"Brooklyn Nine-Nine" was created by Dan Goor and Michael Schur, both of whom had worked on "Parks and Recreation." Though some of the creative DNA of the cop show felt similar enough to "Parks and Rec," the casting of Braugher was both catnip to longtime TV fans and a sign that the show would have at least a bit more built-in gravitas. Braugher's very presence communicated the idea that he would be a more authoritative leader figure than a Ron Swanson or even a Michael Scott, that the goofiness would typically begin with the lower-ranked cops as opposed to their boss. But as "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" grew beyond a version of a slob vs. snob battle, and Holt and Peralta began to share common ground, the show improved while also pushing Braugher to be goofier than anyone would have expected. 

Sometimes, it was as simple as Holt using his identity as a gay man to win an argument, as in the scene where he and Lt. Terry Jeffords (Terry Crews) argue over who should ride a motorcycle. Another common source of humor was in how Holt revealed his passion for his dog, Cheddar, and was equally dismissive of a lot of other dogs. In another scene, part of one of the show's annual Halloween heists, Holt realizes to his dismay that someone has replaced his real dog with "a common b**ch".

Those Halloween heists — in which Peralta, Holt, and eventually the entire main cast gets involved in cheerfully, intentionally ridiculous heists to prove who's the better "detective/genius" — wound up being one of many ways in which Braugher's ability to be as ridiculous as the rest of the ensemble. With hindsight, "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" is as much about how Peralta grows up through his romance with fellow detective Amy Santiago (Melissa Fumero) as it is about how Holt becomes more human through his interactions with his detectives. Braugher demonstrated that growth with ease and affection; even by the end of the show's second season, his "robot captain" had become more human to the point of disturbing Peralta and Santiago when he was transferred by a rival out of the Nine-Nine.

Braugher got to play many different notes as Capt. Holt: devoted husband to Kevin (Marc Evan Jackson), a similarly socially inept but highly intelligent university professor; tough-as-nails cop and interrogator, a wonderful callback to the actor's work as Det. Pembleton that was most directly referenced in a season-five episode taking place entirely in an interrogation room as Holt and Peralta try to break a challenging suspect; and most crucially, a father figure and mentor to Peralta and Santiago, respectively. Braugher's capacity for deadpan humor was most often heightened when Holt got to indulge in his knowledge that Peralta saw him as a surrogate father. The peak comic example came in an early cold open, where Peralta inadvertently calls Holt "Dad" and gets a "Field of Dreams"-esque reaction.

"Brooklyn Nine-Nine" as a whole felt like it had to duck and weave creatively, to balance its seeming intent of crafting a fun, goofy ensemble comedy in the vein of "Parks and Recreation" and "The Office" with the realities of what it means to be a police officer in the 21st century. (Rewatching the series, it's honestly somewhat remarkable how often the show would grapple with the difficulties of being a show about cops in the modern era, even before the George Floyd murder in the summer of 2020 drastically shifted the series' eighth and final season.) The challenge is built into Raymond Holt as a character, as his personal struggles and quest to be taken seriously by New York cops who literally presume he's turning himself in when he first walks into his precinct as a detective have to be balanced with the need for Holt and the rest of the Nine-Nine to make us laugh. It wasn't terribly surprising how effective Braugher was at navigating the dramatic pitfalls of his character, whether when Holt has to handle homophobic jibes from cops and journalists alike, or when he and Jeffords talk about the agonizing pain of racial profiling.

But even for those viewers who had seen Andre Braugher on the TNT dramedy "Men of a Certain Age" (and if you haven't, you should), his performance as Captain Raymond Holt felt like a surprise and a revelation. If you knew Andy Samberg going into "Brooklyn Nine-Nine," you had an idea of what he would bring to the table as Jake Peralta. His performance, too, grew and got deeper over time, as was the case for the rest of the already talented ensemble. As we now ponder a world without one of the most immensely talented actors of his generation, it feels fairly obvious that as good as the other ingredients of "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" were to start, Andre Braugher didn't just deliver a performance to re-establish himself in the second phase of his career; he made everyone else around him raise their own bar of talent. He made everyone better while throwing down the gauntlet for his own work. It's genuinely heartbreaking to have lost Braugher at such an early age, but with "Brooklyn Nine-Nine," we can go back and marvel in a multi-faceted, emotionally complex, and incredibly funny performance that proved his talent to a younger audience.