Goor writes workplace comedies in which nobody is the villain and the lessons stick. Brooklyn Nine-Nine is the proof: warm, quick, built on formula, and better than the formula for as long as Andre Braugher stands still in the middle of it.
Fi1m perspective
The best joke in Brooklyn Nine-Nine is usually the one nobody says. Andy Samberg's Jake Peralta says something childish, the scene cuts to Andre Braugher's Captain Holt, and Holt does nothing at all. Daniel J. Goor and Michael Schur built the series on that boss who does not blink, and Goor's comedy has the same shape everywhere: the loud line is only the set-up, and the real laugh belongs to whoever is left standing still. We laughed harder at Braugher saying nothing than at anything Samberg said, and felt slightly unfair to Samberg, who is doing all the visible work.
Goor learned the trade in late-night, writing for The Daily Show in the late 1990s and for Late Night with Conan O'Brien up to 2008, and it shows in the density. His episodes carry more jokes per minute than most sitcoms, and the jokes are rewritten until the fat is gone. He moved into scripted comedy on The Office in 2005 and then to Parks and Recreation (2009–2015), where he wrote, produced and directed, including the episodes 'Campaign Shake-Up' and 'Ron and Diane'. Brooklyn Nine-Nine followed in 2013 and ran for eight seasons and 152 episodes, to 2021, with Goor as showrunner throughout. Since then he has co-created Killing It (2022–2023) and served as executive producer on Grand Crew.
What he does well is the ensemble in which nobody is the enemy. His colleagues want each other to do well, which is harder to write than rivalry. He uses the genre as a shortcut: a police precinct tells you who the boss is, who the rookie is and who does the paperwork before anyone has spoken, so the characters can get on with being people. And he keeps the lessons. 'When a character learns something on a show, they should really learn it,' he has said, and Jake Peralta at the end of the run is not the boy at the start. Luke Del Tredici, his long-time writer and executive producer, deserves some of the credit for that.
What he does less well is the week the news gets in. The series is built to be quick and kind, and when it stops to deal with something serious the jokes have nowhere to stand. Our review found the later seasons thinner and the final one caught in something it could not joke its way past, and we would not argue with it; the effort is visible and honourable and the laughs are not there. Goor is at his best with small stakes and large personalities, and Killing It is another ensemble comedy, so he seems to know it. Whether he can find another Braugher is a different question, and not one a writer can answer alone.
Biography
Daniel J. Goor, also credited as Dan Goor, is an American comedy writer, producer and director. He graduated from Harvard University and began his career writing for comedy talk shows including The Daily Show, Last Call with Carson Daly and Late Night with Conan O'Brien.
Goor wrote episodes of Parks and Recreation (2009) and directed two of them. He co-created Brooklyn Nine-Nine (2013) with Michael Schur, serving as writer, executive producer and occasional director on the series, which ran for eight seasons. He has also created and produced other series including Killing It (2022).
