You’ve got to be careful when it comes to scenes that hinge on your characters breaking out of their usual mode. I like Brooklyn Nine-Nine, but I would like it more if they stopped patting themselves on the back every damn time they have Holt do something wacky. “Look, it’s the SERIOUS character! Doing something UNDIGNIFIED! I mean… it’s like… HOW, WHY, WHAT?” I mean, it was refreshing in the clip above, but that was one of the first times they did it, and they act like every time is the first time. (I’d also like it more if it engaged more seriously with the issues surrounding law enforcement outside of that one woke episode, but that’s another talk.)

In Gravedust’s case, we’ve already had him do stand-up comedy, and had him smile often enough. But I wanted to make sure we’d never gotten a reaction quite like this from him before and never would again.

You’ll remember what I said in the last chapter about one character getting pulled back into their pre-Peacemaker life and their pre-existing relationships, and the other Peacemakers getting pulled along with them and seeing their ally in a new light. This is sort of a miniature version of that.

(Also, I appreciate the closing gag, in which Cliff is still mortal enough to get caught up in some of Gravedust’s nostalgia. It’d remove the meaning of the spirit world that we established through Gravedust if Cliff were simply a remote, stone-faced exposition dump.)