‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’ new season focuses on characters, issues

“Brooklyn Nine-Nine” — starring Andy Samberg, Melissa Fumero, Stephanie Beatriz, Terry Crews, Joe Lo Truglio, Andre Braugher, Dirk Blocker and Joel McKinnon Miller as a ragtag group of NYPD officers — returns for its seventh season with an hourlong premiere on Feb. 6.

The season will see recently demoted Capt. Holt (Andre Braugher) adjusting to his new role on patrol duty and trying to reclaim his former position. “Saturday Night Live” alumna Vanessa Bayer will appear in multiple episodes as Debbie Fogel, a uniformed officer who gets paired with Holt.

“The inversion of Holt’s standing has really led to a lot of great comedy,” says co-creator Dan Goor, who serves as showrunner. He also teased there would be an episode dedicated to Hitchcock’s (Blocker) love life — “I think people will think it’s funny, hopefully, but not too disturbing” — and said viewers will at long last find out if Kelly is Scully’s (Miller) dog or ex-wife.

The season mark’s the show’s second on NBC, which picked up the series following its cancellation on Fox in 2018. And the peacock network seems to be enjoying the comedy’s company: It’s already renewed the series for an eighth season.

“Brooklyn Nine-Nine” is the first series Goor, 44, has helmed. He co-created the series with longtime friend and TV writer Michael Schur; the two previously worked together on “Parks and Recreation,” which Schur co-created with “The Office’s” Greg Daniels.

Before moving into the sitcom space, Goor wrote for talk shows including “The Daily Show,” “Last Call With Carson Daly” and “Late Night With Conan O’Brien.”

Topical episodes

“We’re trying to figure out (a topical episode). It’s tough. We don’t ever want to rush them,” Goor says. “We really wanted to do an immigration one, and it just — we like doing them when we have a nuanced view, and it felt like an issue for which there is no nuance. So it felt hard to do it in a way that didn’t just seem (like a) PSA. And there’s an argument that maybe that’s worthwhile anyway.

”So that’s a thing we’ve talked about a lot. I mean, we talked about ‘Moo Moo’ (an episode about racial profiling) for two seasons before we figured out how to do it.

“I think a thing that’s very interesting about police and immigration is that the police are often really anti-ICE, because it prevents immigrants and undocumented people from coming forward and being participants in the community. So it has this real rebound effect, which makes the world a less safe place,” Goor says.

“We’ve been trying to figure out a story that sort of gets at that element of it, because that’s a thing that people might not think about, or realize. But I feel like our characters are so woke that it’s very hard to do just a standard issue,” he continues. “It’s like, what’s happening is so horrible and so it’s a little harder to figure out a story. And also, our mandate is always, when we do these, to be really funny still.

Charting the design

“I started as an executive story editor (on ‘Parks and Recreation’), but I had (Schur’s) ear because we had a shared history and I was never afraid to argue with him about anything and he was never allergic to me questioning him,” Goor says.

“We always had a vision of the show being about this group of characters, of them as a family, of it slowly charting the maturation of Jake Peralta (Samberg) and slowly charting, not the descent of Capt. Holt, but the mellowing of Capt. Holt. So in that way, I think we’ve stayed true to our original design,” he continues. “I never would have envisioned that we would do an episode like ‘Moo Moo’ or ‘He Said, She Said’ or ‘The Box.’ So there are certain types of either form-breaking or stylistically different shows that I’m surprised and excited that we have done and will continue to do.

“The show was designed to be a show that doesn’t have an end. That doesn’t mean it won’t end, but it’s not like ‘The Good Place.’ Mike envisioned that as a beginning, middle and end. And so, it’s interesting now as we get into this late middle-age of the show to think about what an end would be.” Goor says. “When we get there, we want it to feel right, but in some ways it’s hard because it’s like I want to feel like these guys and gals, that they’re all going to hang out together forever.

“I was talking to (‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ creator) Phil Rosenthal about just this. I think he was saying it’s context-dependent, but one of the best ways to end a show is with the suggestion that it’s still going to go on, that you came into a world that existed and then the world will exist after you stop looking at it,” he says.

Job perks

About working on “Late Night With Conan O’Brien,” Goor says, “I was there from basically the day after the 10th anniversary to right before the 15th anniversary. (O’Brien) would frequently come into the head writer’s office and joke around and it was almost like a perk of the job that you’d have like a Conan show right there.

“I learned a lot about joke writing, about trusting audiences, about making comedy comedy and not anti-comedy. I learned a lot about writing and rewriting and being willing to acknowledge that it’s an iterative process.

“For a while I thought the secret to being a good sitcom writer was having been a late-night writer, because on late-night shows like ‘The Daily Show’ and ‘Conan,’ for every one thing that gets on the air, you’ve written 30 things that get rejected,” he says. “And because you do that day in and day out, every day, you have to learn how not to be too precious about it.”