#A Murder Most Boyle (RECAP)

The Boyle cousins are a… unique breed, to say the least. They dress almost exclusively in beige. They get mono from kissing each other. They have seven-hour family Zoom calls. And above all, they love each other, as they tell each other constantly. Constantly.

But what if they don’t? In “Game of Boyles” it appears a Boyle committed murder to inherit Pappy Boyle’s money… but that’s not the biggest shocker in the episode.

NBC

Terry (Terry Crews) and Jake (Andy Samberg) accompany Boyle (Joe Lo Truglio) to the family farm for the funeral, but one of the cousins informs them they can’t find the will, so Pappy’s son, the “black sheep” of the family, is set to inherit everything. “Something doesn’t smell right here,” Jake says. And when he examines the body, he finds he’s right. Pappy Boyle was poisoned. Someone murdered him!

They interrogate the son, who, of course, says he loved Pappy Boyle and had a good time at his birthday party the day before his passing; but the other cousins disagree. They say he was angry at the party, specifically with his father, who called him into his study. Voices were raised, and he didn’t even say “I love you” after he left! The son’s story leads them all to the barn, where Jake finds an opened box of rat poison with a brown hair attached… which ends up being a rat hair, so that’s a false lead. But the DNA results, which included voluntarily submitted hairs from all the Boyles (so no one felt left out, of course), drop a different shocker: Boyle isn’t related to the other Boyles.

NBC

And it’s true — when Jake calls Charles’ dad, he says his mom had an affair and that Charles is not his son. Gasp! Jake and Terry’s new plan is to solve the murder before Charles asks about the results, so they don’t have to tell him he’s not biologically a Boyle. And in the end, Jake does solve the case… one of the rats on the Boyle farm killed Pappy, as it died from the same thing Pappy died from. But the truth about the DNA test comes out eventually, and Boyle sees the results; he announces he’s not a Boyle, stunning the family.

He confirms it with his father after a 14-hour phone call, and Boyle no longer wants to stay for the funeral. But they discover the revelation was the result of cousin-on-cousin jealousy — one of the Boyles wanted to give the eulogy, but Boyle was chosen to do it, so they drove the officers to investigate deeper and do the DNA test on all the Boyles.

NBC

Meanwhile, Rosa (Stephanie Beatriz) talks Holt (Andre Braugher) into starting to date again to “beat Kevin at therapy.” At first, Amy’s (Melissa Fumero) angry at Rosa for it, but Rosa explains — she’s only doing it because once Holt sees what’s out there, he’ll go running back to Kevin (Marc Evan Jackson). Holt’s utterly befuddled by dating apps, but he ends up going out with a chiropractor. At first, it appears to go well and Amy and Rosa are horrified. But in the end, Holt says he played them: He was never going to go home with the guy.

That drives Holt to a realization; he cares so much about winning that he’s lost everything. He thinks he’s lost Kevin forever, but then, in a sweet romantic gesture, Kevin runs to him in the rain. They kiss, and they say they love each other. Awww!

Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Series Finale September 16, 8/7c, NBC