‘Tommy’ Episode 11 Review: Could Donn Cooper become a threat to Chief Thomas?
Things are heating up in the sunny Los Angeles as the LAPD Chief Abigail Thomas aka Tommy (Edie Falco) is about to face the Ethics Commission. In the previous episode, we saw how the city Mayor, Buddy Gray (Thomas Sadoski) made a public announcement on opening an investigation on the police chief owing to her personal involvement in a case. That, coupled with Blake Sullivan’s (Adelaide Clemens) disclosure on her lost friend and being blackmailed, Tommy starts digging into the backchannels of LAPD and the city government and get to the root of the matter.
Tommy's rebellious attitude seems to upset her Chief of Staff, Donn Cooper (Russell G Jones). He also starts behaving suspiciously, when Blake gives him the details of the blackmailer and Cooper seems to recognize him. This is where things start to get intense and we learn a lot more about Cooper than we have seen so far.
He meets with his former colleague and friend, Len Egan (Paul Schulze) and then attends a meeting with a couple more people, Milt Leakey (Corbin Bernsen) and real estate mogul, Lovell (Micheal Cumptsy) who turn out to be a secret trio set to bring down Tommy. The former chief, Milt Leakey (Corbin Bernsen), who preceded Tommy as the Chief of Police goes gung ho on his criticism about Tommy and says how she is incapable of running the department, mostly because she is a woman and doesn’t understand men while adding a few sexist connotations.
Egan tries to persuade Cooper into considering how his policies oppose that of Chief Thomas. The conversation implies that Tommy’s days as the Chief of LAPD are numbered. But what happens after that? While Cooper will fill in the position, it will only be temporary. But Lovell thinks that Cooper should be the next Chief, albeit to keep the department under their control while monetarily backing the city’s government, and thus controlling the entire city of Los Angeles. Cooper is sure that these men are out to get Tommy. But what concerns us more is that he doesn’t seem concerned, at least not as of now.
What we know of Cooper so far from the story is not enough to establish him as a trusted person in Tommy’s life. Not that he has not displayed enough responsibility towards Tommy, but he also holds a very strong ground of his own. Also, he has been around in the LADP longer than Tommy, worked with all the good, bad, and the ugly ones across the department, and knows how things work. He tends to work by the books, instead of picking a war like Tommy and tries to stay safe and within the guardrails of his own principles and department policies.
While this might be some of the great qualities to have in a man of his position, it could also make him weak, especially to dangerous and powerful men like Egan, Leakey, and Lovell, making him stand up against Tommy and become a threat for her, instead of being her support, when she really needs it.
And now as the first season of the CBS crime drama is about to end, we wonder what is to become of Donn Cooper and his dynamics with his Chief.
‘Tommy’ will air its final episode 12 on Thursday, May 7, only on CBS.