Disclaimer: The following article contains spoilers from the sixth season of Brooklyn Nine-Nine
This season of Brooklyn 99 sheds light upon the people who’re stuck in a professional limbo. A few characters in the show hit a bumpy road on their carrer. But, the way they handled their different yet similar professional situations with humour and wokeness was very motivating.
Captain Holt taught us how it is ok to take time to grieve your missed promotion, instead of just sucking it up and moving on.
The season picked up from when Captain Holt misread his email about the promotion. He always wanted to be the first gay, African-American commissioner of the NYPD. This was the promotion of his dreams.
After he was over the phase of denial, he took a few days off to get away from his workplace and grieve his defeat, instead of sucking it up and moving on.
And just like Raymond Holt, when somebody misses the promotion they deserved, they start questioning everything around them. Including their qualities and talents. Captain Holt had a mini existential crisis.
Holt took a few days, embraced his self-loathing phase, sulked in the temporary phase of low-self esteem, admitted the moment of his defeat and realised that work wasn’t everything.
After this, he got a hold of himself, bounced back stronger than ever and decided to take charge of the beloved Noine Noine.
Gina taught us how it is ok to not have an alternative plan.
As a 20-something-year-old, I can vouch for the fact that every millennial has faced what Gina was professionally facing. She was hit by the thought where she realised that there was no self-growth in what she was doing.
She realised that her multi-verse talents weren’t getting used to the fullest at her current position and she deserved better. So she took a leap of faith and decided to leave her stable job to follow her calling.
Even though she didn’t have a concrete plan before she made this decision, she believed in herself and her talents and took the risk. She taught us that contemplating your job-security is probably the only thing that’s holding us back from making a aplan that’d change our lives.
Terry taught us how important it is to face your worst fears to move ahead in your professional life.
After failing the Lieutenant’s exam in season 4, Terry was terrified of failure. Just like everyone else, failure made him believe that he wasn’t good enough. So, to run away from that sinking feeling, he kept on pushing the test.
But in this season of B99, Terry finally faced his worst fear of failure, bit the bullet and decided to give the Liuetents exam another go, he didn’t tell anyone that he had appeared for the test because he didn’t want people to expect too much out of him.
Well, let’s just say, he’s no longer Sergeant Terry Jeffords.
Now that the season for appraisals and promotions is approaching, I see myself coming back to these life lessons.