Seamus Murphy (Paul Adelstein) meets with Holt (Andre Braugher) to finally ask for the favor he owes him: he requests a permit for a block party that will cover up their planned robbery of $20 million worth of bonds from armored trucks.
Jake (Andy Samberg) and Boyle (Joe Lo Truglio) decide to befriend Seamus' incompetent nephew, Kyle (Mike Mitchell) to learn more about Murphy's plan and stop it without compromising Holt's end of the deal.
When they ask a retired civil servant for help in making the application, she reveals that she deliberately created the form to be logically impossible to file out of spite, shattering Amy's faith in the bureaucracy.
Humbled by his experience in prison, Jake convinces Holt to take Kyle into protective custody under the pretext of an arrest for unpaid parking tickets.
In its original American broadcast, "The Favor" was seen by an estimated 1.81 million household viewers and gained a 0.7/3 ratings share among adults aged 18–49, according to Nielsen Media Research.
'The Favor' is still an impressive episode though, specifically in how it takes Holt's moral compass and refusal to use 'loopholes' into account without sacrificing the story quality of the fix (temporary as it ends up being) for the Seamus Murphy problem.
"[3] Alan Sepinwall of Uproxx wrote, "'The Favor' in a way has a higher degree of difficulty, because it's trying to present a relatively serious plot idea with long-term ramifications for Holt and the series in the context of a mostly silly story where Jake and Charles try to work around the profound stupidity of Murphy's nephew Kyle.