Cop Hawk
Season 1
Episode 6
Editor’s Rating
4 stars
****
All of Bill Lawrence’s shows run on their own fantasy social logic. But honestly? Let’s embrace it.
Photo: Katrina Marcinowski/HBO
In the Bill Lawrence cinematic universe, any act that’s extended with kindness is fair game. We suspend disbelief when a coach from Kansas goes to run a football team in England, when a therapist invites a patient to live in their home, or when a chief of medicine appoints an old intern of his to the top spot at a teaching hospital. All of Lawrence’s shows run on their own fantasy social logic (many character interactions envision a world where everyone is truly excellent to one another, sometimes at the expense of authentic character development), and fully immersing in these narratives often requires a setting aside of our skepticism of human behavior. But honestly? I want to set that aside. I want to believe humans are nice and good! Give me a world where people break the rules to extend kindness to one another instead of slights and insults, please! The country needs it. And Rooster has been delivering every week.
I took a (very) long road to say that the idea of Tommy living with Greg, even just for a short while, is absolutely preposterous and surely violates a million ethics and laws, but I loved every second of it. Tommy and Greg are basically like The Odd Couple in every way, with Tommy’s haphazard approach to life directly contrasting with Greg’s more measured approach. Tommy borrows all of Greg’s toiletries and immediately misplaces them. He also calls Greg “everyone’s dad,” but really, Greg is everyone’s mom. He keeps a running grocery list in the kitchen and assures Tommy that he’ll get him back on track with his grades. He even makes a bougie version of celery and peanut butter for Tommy and his buddies when they drop by. When the guys asked for the recipe, I snorted a little, until Greg revealed his secret ingredients — lemon zest and sea salt. What?! That’s some Top Chef–level snacking. I’ll be making these for me and my kids (but mostly me) very soon.
Everyone stops by to give Greg advice on his blossoming relationship with Cristle. Once he realizes that this isn’t just a hookup situation and that she wants to actually date him, he wants to do the right thing. Steve Carell is just getting hotter by the day, so I definitely understand why Cristle would want to “wife him up,” as Tommy so perfectly puts it. Cristle and Greg have great sex, but other than the physical attraction, it doesn’t seem like the two have much else in common. Greg misses his first date with Cristle due to a combination of a faulty phone charger (Tommy’s, naturally) and an encounter with Officer Rory. (Scovel, that is. I still don’t know his character name, and I don’t think I care to learn it. Sorry, not sorry.)
Greg and Officer Rory share two scenes in this episode, and they both had me giggling uncontrollably. The bit where Rory tells Greg that he’ll be watching him like a “cop hawk” and Greg asks if he’s saying “car park” in a Boston accent quickly devolves into the two men basically just braying long “A” sounds at one another. Friends, I had to rewind this sequence three times because it made me feel such glee. As the bit starts to take off, Carell and Scovel playfully raise their eyebrows at one another, mischief dancing in their pupils, and you can clearly see that they’re having a grand time. Me too. Later, Greg runs into Officer Rory again, and he hands him a “Get Out of Jail Free” card as a thanks for saving his kid from getting punched by an erratic Coach Jake earlier in the episode. One caveat: The card won’t work for murder. That’s a different card entirely. I’m excited to see how Greg ends up using Chekhov’s Monopoly card.
The reason Greg keeps getting stopped by Officer Rory is that he has a brand-new ride. It’s an electric bike of some sort, and Katie disapproves, but she also tells him that if he ever finds a woman who’s into the bike like he is, he should keep her. Curiously, we don’t see Cristle react to the bike in the episode, but we do see Dylan shriek with excitement when she sees it. She even goes for a cruise with him around campus, riding pillion. Sure, the relationship with Cristle is fun for Greg and all, but Dylan is his true match. (Sorry, Cristle, but it’s true.)
For her part, Dylan takes some advice from Greg when he tells her to treat the dean job as the real deal. She’s done some good on campus, getting the Ludlow Review reinstated and raising pay rates for the adjunct professors, and she’s liking the power her new job affords her. Greg’s advice is sound, but unfortunately, as she’s just starting to settle into the dean’s office, Dean Riggs returns with Walt in tow. Walt gives Dylan an apologetic look, but it feels like there’s not much he can do in this situation. Let’s hope Dylan fights for the job, and let’s hope we get more snarky Alan Ruck, because who doesn’t love snarky Alan Ruck?
Now, I know we talked about the loving kindness of the Bill Lawrence universe at the top of this recap, but I do also enjoy the threads of snark that are woven throughout this series. I’m thinking these might be thanks to Matt Tarses, Lawrence’s collaborator on Apple TV series Bad Monkey, which had far more violence and drugs and amputated limbs than any other Lawrence series. (I recapped that one, too. It’s good!) Dean Riggs is a character with a somewhat sinister motive, and even though I don’t believe Archie is acting with malice, he’s slowly emerging as an actual villain. He embodies almost none of the warm and fuzzy traits of most Lawrence characters, and I just want to punch him every time he’s onscreen. When he told Katie that he was still sleeping with Sunny, sometimes even sleeping with both of them on the same day (!!!), I felt nothing but rage and nausea. Good for Katie for ending her sexual relationship with this man, because he is serious garbage. We also see him in action in this episode, and he does not look like a great lover … because of course he’s not.
Cristle and Greg are very compatible in the sack, though, and after they finally have their dinner date, they get busy at Cristle’s house. However, Tommy has also taken Greg’s advice and returned home. Home is with Cristle, his mom. (Ding ding ding! Bragging rights for everyone who got this right in the comments!) The episode ends with a half-naked Greg standing in front of a gobsmacked Tommy, his mom screaming at Greg to bring whipped cream for sex play in the background. The reversal of traditional age roles here is very fun, with Tommy’s surrogate mom (Greg) fucking his real mom (Cristle). I must commend Maximo Salas again on his portrayal of Tommy, because the genuine horror on his face when he sees Greg puttering around his kitchen with his dick out is absolute gold. This kid is a keeper. I just hope his brain doesn’t break before the next episode.
• In retrospect, I’m super glad that Greg refrained from kissing and telling when Tommy and his buddies asked him about how the sex was with his new girlfriend. That’s something Tommy could never unhear, although it’s going to be very hard to unsee Greg in all his postcoital glory. Where are the therapists from Shrinking when you need them? (For what it’s worth, Tommy would totally work best with Jimmy.)
• Sunny not only lands her internship, but she also gets a full-time job offer in New York City. The woman offering the job is some sort of old paramour of Walt’s (he gets in trouble with his wife when Sunny mentions her name), but it feels like the offer was extended genuinely. Sunny now has to decide if she wants to move away from Ludlow and Archie or stay. Honestly, there’s not enough narrative friction here for this to feel like a choice for her. There’s more reason for her to stick around Ludlow for her bestie Mo than there is for Archie. He has proven himself to be disinterested and unsupportive … and he’s also still married. Sunny, go to New York, girl.
• Fun fact: The painter Katie is lecturing about, Margaret Keane, is the subject of the Tim Burton movie Big Eyes, starring Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz. So much of the art world is made up of shitty men. I’d love to see Katie come up with a speciality seminar on this topic.
•.Katie also has a few beats with her student Zoey in this episode where she freaks out at her for spearheading the “FOR KATE” campaign, but then she makes up with her by the end of the episode. I like Zoey very much, and I hope she’s given more to do as the season progresses. Maybe she can be the TA for the shitty men in art course?
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