Amy Santiago (Melissa Fumero) is a very driven detective in Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and nothing will get in her way. At the start of the series, she is a detective that is in a battle with Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg) to try and get the most arrests in a year, which gave viewers an early look at her passion and commitment to the role. Her long-term career goal was to become a captain and even go beyond that, but she was able to switch off her serious mindset and be goofy every now and then and it was never more apparent than when she was dancing.
Dubbed the ‘Dork Dance’, Santiago would periodically bust out some of the worst dance moves seen on TV after accomplishing a really difficult or important task, much to the amusement of her colleagues. Many of her fellow detectives would ridicule Amy for doing the dance, all in good fun though. But, the writers of Brooklyn Nine-Nine wasted her real-life talent, because Melissa Fumero is actually a great dancer.
Amy Santiago’s Bad Dancing Joke Wasted Melissa Fumero’s Talent
Although she would disagree because in her mind she is cool, Amy Santiago is nerdy, and her bad dancing perfectly embodies that. On many occasions, we would see Amy bust out her awful dance moves after she achieved something or was very happy with an outcome. This usually brought with it many jokes and teasing by her colleagues, not that she really cared what people thought. But, although it was funny, it did waste Melissa Fumero’s real-life talents.
Contrary to what we saw on screen during Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Fumero is a highly skilled and well-trained dancer. Before being cast in her defining role as Amy Santiago in Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Fumero spent her younger years dancing and even brought her skills to some of her earlier roles. One of the more notable took place five years before Brooklyn Nine-Nine when she starred as Ati in the movie Tiny Dancer, which led to her training in both modern and contemporary dance for the movie. We did get to see Fumero’s dancing ability briefly in the season one finale when Jake Peralta and Amy Santiago hit the ballroom while undercover, although all attention was on Captain Holt (Andre Braugher) whose dancing left both detectives shocked and amazed.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine Missed A Great Amy Joke
Amy Santiago is a character that has time and again been full of surprises. Her ideas and abilities were often doubted and sometimes made fun of, but more often than not she proved her doubters wrong. This long-running theme for her character would have helped to set up the perfect swerve in the finale of Brooklyn Nine-Nine if it was revealed that Amy Santiago could actually dance all along.
It is no secret that Amy Santiago is a perfectionist. She sought the approval of Captain Holt and has an unhealthy obsession with organization and binders, although many of us could take a leaf out of her book. As the show came to a close we were able to reflect on how much the characters have changed during our time watching them keep the streets of Brooklyn safe, with the most notable being Jake who went from a care-free and immature bachelor to a caring father that put his children over being a police officer, something nothing else has ever made him do not even Die Hard.
The writers of the show missed the mark as there were two obvious options that they could have taken. Amy could have suddenly begun dancing well and revealed she was always good at it, which would have left her friends stunned and could have created some great comedic moments in the scene. Perhaps, Amy Santiago’s desire to seek approval and be a perfectionist could have led her to become a skilled dancer in order to not be mocked for her bad dancing as she had been throughout the show. This would have been a perfect way to cap off the end of Brooklyn Nine-Nine.Captain Holt
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