By Dustin Rowles | TV | May 21, 2018 |
By Dustin Rowles | TV | May 21, 2018 |
I hate the cold-feet-before-the-wedding trope, because — to me, anyway — it doesn’t speak well of a couple’s relationship. Nerves and jitteriness, I get, but if a new couple is already feeling some doubt and apprehension about their marriage the day of the wedding, I worry about the future of that relationship.
I love that Mike Schur doesn’t dabble in that trope. When Andy and April decided to get married, they just did it. They threw themselves into it. Everyone else doubted, but not Andy and April, and that’s the way it works with Mike Schur characters — there are stumbles along the way, and there is even some on-again, off-again business, but once a couple commits — once they get engaged — on a Mike Schur series, all the forces that stand in the way of a marriage are exterior. It’s never about the doubt that a couple feels for one another.
And that’s how his couples have always been characterized: Two people who have problems, but doubt about their relationship together is never one of them (note that Jim and Pam only began to experience relationship problems after Mike Schur left The Office). They are good people who make mistakes but who love each other through it all, and Mike Schur does not erect obstacles — like affairs — that might otherwise assassinate the character of a couple’s love for each other.
Once Jake and Amy got engaged, there was never any doubt about their eventual marriage on Brooklyn Nine Nine, either. The Bachelor party might go awry; an ex-boyfriend might show up in the wedding band; and the perfectly-planned wedding itself might dematerialize after a bomb threat, but Jake and Amy never thought, “Maybe this is a bad idea.” When Boyle threw a last-minute wedding together in the Nine-Nine, we knew it would be as beautiful as anything Amy might have planned, just as Leslie’s wedding to Ben inside the Parks Department had been.
You know what else I love about Schur weddings: He writes his characters’ vows, and he somehow nails it every time, mixing the perfect amount of humor with romance. He delivers the perfect line — “as long as you’re with the right people, you can handle anything” — but knows the best way to someone’s heart is a well-placed joke, and Amy’s “Your butt is the bomb. There will be no survivors” line may be the first ass joke to ever nearly bring me to tears. It was the “I love you and I like you” of the Jake and Amy wedding.
The Brooklyn Nine Nine wedding was, as all Mike Schur weddings are: Perfect. Perfect for the show. Perfect for the characters. Perfect for the viewers. I’m so thankful that the series will be back next season for so many reasons, but one of the chief reasons is to see Jake and Amy handle all the many roadblocks that come their way in marriage, but who never turn on each other when things get difficult. May we all have Mike Schur marriages in our own lives (and I don’t mean being married to Regis Philbin’s daughter).