Andre Braugher's Ray Holt on “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” was hilarious and quietly revolutionary

The Emmy winner brought his gravitas to the often silly comedy and was its emotional center.

"It's been a tough year to be a Black man. And a police captain. And a human," Captain Ray Holt (the late Andre Braugher) says near the end of Brookyn Nine-Nine's eighth, and final, season opener. He has just revealed that he and his husband Kevin (Marc Evan Jackson) have separated because he has "been pushed to the brink emotionally and physically," thus neglecting his personal life.

It's a rare, vulnerable admission from the comically stoic Capt. Holt, but it also revealed just what was so great about the character and the actor who portrayed him. Braugher's deliciously deadpan delivery as Holt often provided some of the funniest moments throughout the show's eight seasons, particularly when juxtaposed with the more cartoonish exploits of his cadre of kooky cops.

But as the sitcom came to an end in 2021, the workplace comedy that just happened to be in a police station had to come to grips with the nature of that workplace. BK 99 was long on jokes but short on sentimentality, but Braugher was always its soulful center. As a gay Black man, he never obscured the struggles he had to face to become a police captain — the racism, the homophobia, the leisure suits of his '70s flashbacks — and despite the prevailing wackiness all around him, he always took his work seriously.

So when Brooklyn Nine-Nine returned for its final season, following a world-changing pandemic, the killing of George Floyd, growing distrust of the police, and mass demonstrations for racial justice, Braugher was the natural choice to ground the show. His gravitas and those wide, searching eyes provided comfort in the comedy. Yes, this was still a fun and funny show but it was not divorced from reality and its characters were not immune to the outside world.

We recently lost the great Norman Lear, who first introduced this kind of social commentary into primetime sitcoms. Capt. Ray Holt was just as groundbreaking as Archie Bunker, or George Jefferson, or Maude Findlay, but quietly so. Despite being a police captain, he was always just on the outside, by virtue of being born there, which informed his view of his work. As a steadfast believer in justice for all, Holt was a dying brand of TV cop — and perhaps one out of step with, but still necessary to, the times.

Braugher was always great on BK 99 but he really shined with Jackson as his equally impassive husband Kevin (Cozner, because, again, jokes). Before season 8, and the series, wrapped up, the estranged couple reunite in a moment straight out of every swoony romantic comedy, but one not often reserved for two middle aged gay men.

Holt and Kevin were loathe to show emotion, even to one another, but this moment of romantic abandon showed just how profound their love was. Holt was a man without expression but never without feeling. And he was a wonderfully complicated character, a man full of contradictions — a gay Black police captain that thanks to Braugher's talent and skill, was also human.

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