S0WE31 - Ridealong

"Ridealong" is the thirty-first episode of the W-Series. Judy reaches Precinct 1 on the morning's first train, in dress blues and holding a clipboard, to host Alex Peppervine, a fifth-grader doing a school project, on a day of patrol calls with Nick. She has laminated his credentials. It is a workplace comedy with a Brooklyn Nine-Nine cameo.

Synopsis

Judy comes in to Precinct 1 on the first train, in dress blues, with a sign-in sheet, a spare pen and a laminated observer lanyard for Alex Peppervine, a rabbit in fifth grade doing a school project. Because an observer cannot sit in on confidential detective work, Chief Bogo has assigned her and Nick to community response for the day. The calls fall apart one after another. A laundromat fight is over before they arrive, two drivers at a garage each give up the parking spot they were fighting over, and a break-in turns out to be a beaver who locked himself out of his own hardware store, which costs more paperwork than anything else that morning. Between the garage and the hardware store, Alex admits he requested the pair of them because his class saw them on television. Over coffee he asks Nick what he likes best about the work, and Nick names Judy. Back in the bullpen Judy decides the paperwork has ruined the visit, and Nick stops her re-copying finished statements, takes his own reports off her pile and sends her back to the kit, who is happy with the date stamp. An afternoon theft call at a bakery finds Jake Peralta already there, the owner holding the thief, and Hitchcock and Scully full of the recovered cinnamon rolls. Alex, told to wait outside, watches from the doorstep. Judy takes the lanyard back at after-care on reflex. A week later his posterboard arrives saying the detectives solved problems all day. She pins it up and mails him the lanyard to keep.

Plot

Morning comes to Precinct 1 with Clawhauser at the front desk and Judy already set up beside him. She came in on the first ZTA train of the day, wearing dress blues pressed for a ceremony, with a clipboard, a sign-in sheet, a pen on a springy cord and a second pen in reserve. Alex Peppervine, a fifth-grade rabbit in a buttoned collar, arrives exactly on time, and his father, catching up at the sign-in sheet, signs him in and mentions that the kit has been looking forward to this all week. Alex straightens his own collar before his father can. He produces his permission slip, his emergency-contact card and a small digital camera from school, and Judy hands him his credentials, a laminated card on a blue cord that reads OFFICIAL RIDEALONG OBSERVER and ZPD PRECINCT 1, with his name in the middle. Clawhauser announces that the kit now outranks him, and when Alex tries to order him to hand over his donut, Clawhauser moves the donut behind his keyboard. On the way out Judy explains the day. With detective work closed to a civilian, Chief Bogo has given them community response, patrol calls from dispatch to report, and the one rule that is not negotiable is to stay close and wait where he is told. Alex writes it down and underlines it. Nick arrives with the carpool while Luther heads off down the corridor. Nick fixes Judy's collar, questions the dress blues, and introduces himself to Alex as the partner. Alex introduces himself as the observer. On the way to the cruiser Nick texts the pack chat that he is apparently the casual one. An empty document box sits between the front seats.

The first call is a reported fight at an Acacia Street laundromat. By the time they pull up, the manager, a porcupine, is waving them past from her doorway: the two regulars apologized to each other and went off to breakfast together. Judy shows Alex that a call resolved before arrival is still logged, and the first form goes into the box. Nick offers the back seat his first rule of detective work, that a call is never what the call says, and Alex writes WILDE in brackets beside it. Judy moves a double-parked hippo's box truck with a look. At a garage on Walnut Street a camel and an oryx have stopped traffic over one open parking spot, and before Judy has finished introducing herself each insists the other take it. Then both of them drive off. Alex asks whether resolving itself during contact counts as Judy resolving it, and she settles on the position that presence counts. Watching the oryx drive off, Nick says he sounded like her old neighbor, short only a husband shouting back, and Judy names Pronk.

Back on the road, Alex wants to know whether being a fox changes the job for Nick, and Nick tells him it did, and does less now. Alex then admits he asked for the two of them by name after his class watched them on the news. His father thought they might be too busy. When he asks whether Judy still gets scared, she gives him an answer Nick has heard her practicing through the bathroom door. The next call reports a mammal prying a window behind a hardware store on Oat Road, with tools, until dispatch passes on that the individual says he owns the store. He does. A beaver has locked his keys behind his new deadbolt and pried open his own back window, which set off his silent alarm and brought out a sheep from across the alley, who wants her civic duty on the record. A burglary with no victim produces an incident report, a damage supplement for the frame, a verification letter for his insurer, an incident number for the alarm company and a long statement from the sheep. Nick announces his second rule, that paperwork grows as the crime shrinks, and Judy concedes that one is real. At the cruiser Alex photographs the document box rather than the car.

At a Snarlbucks near Savanna Central station Judy sits Alex with his back to the wall and gives him a carrot juice box she cleared with his school's front office by email. She keeps her eyes on the door, the counter and the window. Alex asks Nick what he likes most about the job, and Nick, watching her, says it is her and covers her paw with his. Judy suggests that Alex write that Nick likes working with his partner. Nick tells him direct quotes are stronger.

Back in the bullpen the morning's reports keep multiplying. A records clerk sends the parking form back for an unchecked box, the alarm company faxes, the copier jams. Alex settles happily at the date stamp, and asks who reads the forms. When Judy tells him, he works out that the next officer sent to the hardware store will already know about the beaver. At the copier Judy tells Nick quietly that the kit picked them off a news broadcast, and that the whole visit has been arrivals after the fact and an afternoon at her desk. She thinks he is miserable and too polite to say so. Nick stops her copying statements that are already done, takes his reports off her pile, and sends her to keep the kit company. Alex is frowning at the parking form, which says no enforcement action was taken, and asks whether driving there was not an action. Judy gives him the technical meaning. Lunch is three labeled containers with index cards on the lids. Alex chooses two, and he would rather finish stamping than take the tour of the evidence intake window Judy offers him. Nick reports the tour offer to the pack chat, and Pawbert, between client sessions Downtown, replies that she is having the best day. All afternoon Judy keeps her portable radio up and the patrol map spread over her keyboard, looking for one more call before school pickup.

At 3:45pm dispatch sends a theft with a party detained at Millstone's, a bakery on Elm Street, and Judy is out of her chair before the call finishes. They park behind a Precinct 99 cruiser. Judy leaves Alex under the awning and goes in with Nick to frosting on the floor, a display rack knocked crooked, Hitchcock in powdered sugar holding a mop, Scully at a cafe table eating a pastry, a marmot cuffed on a chair, and a badger behind the counter. Jake greets Nick with their handshake routine and insists the scene was contained before he arrived: a citizen's arrest, with his detectives on hand to assist. The owner has come up short on cinnamon rolls on nine mornings. Today she caught the thief with his paw in the tray, sat him down and called it in, and the two detectives, who arrived as customers, ate the recovered rolls while everyone waited. Scully helpfully adds that the window tray was not them, only Hitchcock leaning on the case. Hitchcock argues that nobody called the rolls evidence until most of them were eaten, and Judy tells him the procedure is not eating the evidence. Asked to put his pastry down, Scully finishes it and hands her the greasy paper. Jake is taking comfort in the fact that nobody outside the room will ever know when the door opens and Alex looks in, his feet still on the sidewalk. He points out that he is technically outside. Jake reads the laminated card and sees the notebook. Alex asks why the detectives are covered in sugar. Judy tells him they ate the evidence and that it is going in the report, and that yes, their bosses get a copy. She sends Hitchcock and Scully to their cruiser, and Scully takes one cookie from the sample basket on the way out, which the baker permits.

Jake turns out to be good at the work. He walks the baker through her statement in order, asks that it be noted he mopped, and wants the report to name the two detectives plainly. The marmot tells Nick he always meant to pay eventually, hears how that sounds, and leaves with a moose and an ocelot from the transport unit after telling the baker hers are the best rolls in the district. She agrees. Alex photographs the scene while Judy writes, and when Jake asks whether he is in the picture, Alex says yes. On the way out the baker boxes a surviving cinnamon roll for the observer. Judy rules it is for after dinner, and Alex asks whether it is evidence.

At the after-care door Judy signs Alex over to a quokka coordinator with a binder that matches her own sign-in sheet. Alex winds the cord around his lanyard and offers it back, and Judy takes it automatically before she remembers she made it for him. Back in the cruiser Nick tells her the kit liked it, and that he asked to finish stamping before her tour, so she had competition. Then he says he was not joking over coffee. She tells him she liked hearing it, and kisses him. At the Pawthorne Mansion Pawbert takes the cooler from Judy before she can set it down, reads the menu card taped to the untouched sandwich, and takes a bite. Nick asks Judy whether she is practicing at having a kit and puts in a claim for favorite parent. Pawbert notes that he got one container, and Luther offers to sign his permission slip.

A week later Clawhauser carries a large flat envelope through the bullpen over his head. It is addressed to Detectives Hopps and Wilde in pencil, every line underlined with a ruler, and it went through interdepartmental mail twice because nobody believed it. Inside is a tri-fold posterboard headed WHAT POLICE OFFICERS ACTUALLY DO, with glossy photographs: the document box on the cruiser seat, Judy at the bakery counter with the baker mid-sentence and Jake pointing at the form, and Nick and Judy bent over the cracked window at the hardware store, too absorbed to know they were being photographed. Nick reads the pencil captions aloud, including one that says driving there is an action, down to a ruled box at the bottom with his conclusion: the two detectives spent the whole day on problems, mostly small ones, and saw every one through. Judy pins the poster at eye level on the bulletin board next to the duty roster, then mails Alex the lanyard with a thank-you note, "Yours to keep" written beneath it. The poster is still there after the notices around it have changed.

Key Moments

• Judy is at the front desk from the first train onward, in dress blues, with a spare pen in case the first one fails
• Alex receives a laminated observer lanyard with his name in the middle, and Clawhauser declares himself outranked
• Judy's one non-negotiable rule, to wait where she says, goes into Alex's notebook underlined
• The laundromat fight is over before they arrive, and the first form goes into an empty document box
• Alex brackets WILDE beside Nick's first rule of detective work
• A camel and an oryx each give up the parking spot before Judy finishes her introduction, and Nick hears Judy's old neighbor in the oryx
• Alex tells them he requested them by name because of a news broadcast his class watched
• The Oat Road break-in is a beaver locked out of his own hardware store, and it makes the most paperwork of the morning
• Alex photographs the document box instead of the cruiser
• Asked what he likes best about the job, Nick names Judy and covers her paw
• At the copier Judy decides the visit has failed, and Nick takes his own reports off her pile and sends her back to the kit
• Alex asks whether driving to the garage counts as an action
• Alex chooses the date stamp over a tour of the evidence intake window
• At the bakery, Hitchcock and Scully have eaten the recovered cinnamon rolls
• Alex stays outside by keeping his feet on the sidewalk, and Jake finds a kit with credentials taking notes
• Judy confirms to Alex that the report goes to the detectives' bosses
• Jake does the statement work well, and the baker boxes a roll for the observer
• Judy takes the lanyard back on reflex at after-care
• Nick tells Judy he was not joking over coffee, and they kiss in the cruiser
• Nick asks Judy in the mansion kitchen whether she is practicing at having a kit
• Alex's posterboard comes in an envelope addressed in pencil and underlined with a ruler, with a photograph of Nick and Judy they never knew was taken
• Judy pins the poster by the duty roster and mails Alex his lanyard to keep

Key Lines

Characters Introduced

Locations

• Precinct 1 — The lobby and front desk at shift change; Judy's desk, the copier and the bullpen through the afternoon; the bulletin board by the duty roster
• Patrol calls — A laundromat on Acacia Street; a garage entrance on Walnut Street; a hardware store on Oat Road and the alley behind it
• Snarlbucks — A branch near Savanna Central station
• Millstone's — A bakery on Elm Street, scene of the afternoon theft call
• Alex's school — The after-care room and its covered walkway
• Pawthorne Mansion — The kitchen in the evening

Items

• The ridealong lanyard — Laminated and hung on a blue cord, printed with OFFICIAL RIDEALONG OBSERVER, ZPD PRECINCT 1 and Alex's name; made by Judy at her kitchen table, returned at after-care, then mailed back to Alex with a thank-you note (first appearance)
• The document box — Empty between the cruiser's front seats in the morning, filled by the day's forms; photographed by Alex
• Alex's camera — Digital, labeled with the school's name beside the screen; its photographs end up on his poster
• Judy's lunch cooler — Three labeled containers, each with an index card listing the contents; comes home on Judy's lap
• The cinnamon roll — From the bakery's surviving stock, boxed for the observer, for after dinner
• Alex's posterboard — A tri-fold titled WHAT POLICE OFFICERS ACTUALLY DO, with glossy photographs and pencil captions; pinned up beside the duty roster at Precinct 1 (first appearance)

End Credit Song

"Little Wonders" (From 'Meet the Robinsons'), Rob Thomas

Rob Thomas's song from Disney's Meet the Robinsons (2007) is about ordinary hours, and how they turn out to be the ones that last once a hard stretch is behind you. It is keyed to the whole day, not the closing scene. Judy spends the shift sure that three calls that fizzled have let down a kit who asked for her and Nick by name. Nick takes his own reports off her pile and tells the kit that she is his favorite part of the job, and that being a fox officer is less different than it used to be. After the years behind them, a day of small calls is one they have earned. Alex photographs what neither of them noticed and hands the day back to Judy on a poster that is still up when the notices around it have changed.

Notes

• Judy's old neighbor Pronk, named after the garage standoff, is Pronk Oryx-Antlerson, who shouts through the wall of her Grand Pangolin Arms apartment, along with Bucky Oryx-Antlerson, in Zootopia (2016).