Matthew "Dot" Cottan Character Analysis

welcome back to clem's content corner the number one place for line of duty content on youtube today we will be digging a little deeper into another line of duty character this time chosen by you the audience after taking a poll of the line of duty subreddit the consensus was clear that the character study you wanted next was detective inspector matthew cotton so without further ado let's begin a tale in three acts cotton was first introduced as part of the entourage for the opening season serving as a detective sergeant on tony gates to20 team starting out as a fairly peripheral figure appearing on the surface to be the crass joker of the group going by the nickname dot given to him by dc nigel morton casually using lewd innuendos and making a mess of steve's car but he was kept out of enough of the action that we didn't suspect him of being the real bent copper of the season despite some clever foreshadowing along the way this is developed in season two as he sets up the ambush of tommy hunter giving the first audience to the code name of the caddy with season three then resolving the character arc with dot having to do more and more bad deeds to cover his tracks trying to pin the blame on steve appearing to develop romantic feelings for kate in the midst of it all and ending up in an action-packed chase in what is still seen by many fans as the best season finale live judy has given us after eight years on our screens so what kind of character is dot i've described lindsey denton as a maverick cop and john corbett as a lone wolf and continuing in that vein the character model i would most associate with dot is that of a mole someone the good guys think is on their side but is actually working for their adversaries it's not an uncommon type of character to have around and in general line of duty does have quite a lot of archetypal characters but manages to create distinct identities within those character models by either subverting the tropes of the template like with lindsey denton or fleshing them out with a lot of unique character lore like john corbett which of these does jade use to beef up dot's outline well as much as i like the allusion to dot's troubled past with drinking and gambling problems mentioned he's grooming as a youth by tommy hunter being a huge turning point in his life the breakdown of his marriage all before the events of the series these fleeting tales provoke thought rather than cementing points about the character we don't know how much of what dot says about his past is as he describes when lying to keep his real identity hidden is such a big part of who dot is and i think that's a great part of the storytelling with the icon there's a lot of room for the audience to use their imagination as to why his marriage might have really broken down whether his addictions might have been a cover story or coping method for his ocg activity and just to his debts might have seen him indebted too so i think what makes this character distinct in their role in terms of what is established in the narrative is the subversion of what we expect from a mole character an extreme example but if we look at a character like worm tale from the harry potter series first introduced in the prisoner of azkaban as someone harry's parents had once considered an ally and whose betrayal cost them their lives every measure is taken in both prose and on the screen to make him appear overtly weak cowering in front of everyone hesitant to speak hunched over hands drawn in defensively as if he is anticipating the worst of every moment wormtale is completely subservient to whoever can offer him the safest deal never striving for or even showing much desire for any freedom or responsibility of his own in his opinion being small fry keeps him safe because he isn't worth hurting when there are more important figures at large fantasy is of course never going to be like for life with police drama but this expectation of a weakling yes man of a mole character is so at odds with what someone like dot is and i think that's a big part of why we don't suspect him as being an infiltrator in the first season craig parkinson who portrays dot is six foot four he's usually the tallest character in the room along with dot's sure-footed demeanor and blunt unaffected brand of humor he isn't the kind of person you'd suspect of being someone's pawn when cotton decided to leave surveillance a few minutes early in the opening season whilst i didn't believe the gates had ordered this i just figured that was being a bit lazy at a very inopportune time because it was easier to think of the pubgoing jugger as being work shy when it came to the late shift than doing dirty work for somebody else dot also wasn't planning on holding tight to the caddy roll forever he saw himself safer in the positions of power with more room to delegate down the ladder and keep his own hands clean even hoping to retire once he had thrown ac-12 off the trail and this brings me to one of dot's most significant character relationships his subservience to tommy hunter despite having just one short scene together hunter had maybe the biggest impact on dot's life of any line of duty characters so far dot began working as a literal caddy for tommy when he was still a child with hunter pressuring him into going into the police to serve as an embedded agent for the ocg it's the reveal that dot once worked as a caddy that later provides the context to see things as they really are for the first time without having suspended surveillance on greek lane claimed gates had put him up to it and questioned kate as to whether gates was the only target of her undercover op all in plain sight but it's only with that connection to hunter a criminal organizer and golf enthusiast that the illusion is broken and while season one was a bit rougher around the edges and subsequent batches that piece of misdirection was some of the show's best and i'm yet to come across anyone who twigged the dot was the bent cop and not gates before that first carrying reference was made in the conversation between cotton and hilton even though all the clues were there dot's betrayal of tony gates when interviewed by ac12 falsely claiming the gates had personally ordered their early suspension of surveillance is also the first time that we see that machiavelli inside the dot throwing someone who had helped salvage his career under the bus to make things easier for himself then taking the inspector's exam on hilton's advice so that he could effectively take tony's job this is mirrored at the end of the season when tommy is arrested on the evidence against him gathered by ac12 with help from gates it is on dot's recommendation that hunter goes into witness protection to escape going to prison but all with the plan to have him killed whilst in witness protection which is handled by ac9 the unit dot is transferred to after to20 disbands dot is opportunistic in this way and not at all afraid to bite the hand that feeds if he thinks it will put him in a better position but then why did dot have tommy hunter killed in the way that he did why did he betray someone that had helped him climb the ranks and claim more power and organize crime with hunter perhaps even seeing dot as his eventual successor well on the face of it dot was wary that tommy could let slip that he was a bent copper after all hunter was granted immunity on the grounds that he would help provide information to bring down other influential ocg figures dot could have seen it as a race for who would turn on who first fearing that hunter would drop his name to uphold his part of the bargain as a regular street criminal might be worth letting go to bring in a bent copper about to become an inspector but then there was more i think we could draw out of this tommy had forced him into organized crime and forced him into the police he had manipulated him into doing all kinds of immoral things from a very young age just so hunter could command more power and wealth hunter may have even been abusive to dot just as he abused boys of a similar age at sam's view boys home around the same time and whilst that's really just an unfunded theory that could potentially line up with events of the series and one that may require a video of its own examined properly dot had plenty of personal reasons to hold a grudge against hunter for the life of crime he had forced him into which may have just pushed him to have hunter taken out in a particularly brutal fashion season three marks the final chapter of dot's story having to go to greater and even more immoral lengths to keep his ties to organize crime from being found out after discovering that danny waldron was hunting down child abusers from his past dot fearing someone from dany's list might item his event cover has danny murdered by harry beans as repayment for harry's ocg gambling deaths his manipulation of beings beans begrudging compliance and shameless lying in the aftermath leaves a great sense of irony because it sees dot use somebody else in the same way that he himself is unfairly used and yet he feels no sympathy for harry by the end of season 3 dot has become everything he hates these little nods to dot's past catching up with him and eventually being exposed are a touch i really like such as his pursuit of dc morton taking him onto a golf course and a shot of a betting shop coming into focus while dallas driving in what is dot's biggest personal storyline season 3 sees a new found romance between cotton and kate fleming along the way it looks as if this could be part of dot's plan to turn ac-12 against steve diverting suspicion away from himself but the season finale would seem to confirm that those feelings at least became real even if they began with an ulterior motive on several occasions dot had the opportunity to potentially kill kate in the armed chase scene but never pulled the trigger instead asking kate to leave before the ocg reinforcements arrived and finally throwing himself in the way of several bullets aimed at kate when their escape had been brought to a halt so with dot's role in the show established let's examine his personality and where a dot would fall on the alignment spectrum in regards to the law he definitely didn't adhere to it but i never got the impression he actually enjoyed breaking the law or disobed laws out of principle dot broke the law because it was necessary to keep his identity a secret whilst also keeping his ocg superiors content in regards to his morality whilst he had many more bad moments than good ones again this wasn't because he actually enjoyed moral acts or even enjoy the profits of immoral acts dot doesn't appear to be a rich man he lives in an ordinary flat makes a pot of chili at the beginning of the week so that it can be stretched to several dinners and doesn't indulge in drugs or prostitutes like many ocg associates do and if he did gamble in the past he hasn't seen to anymore yet dot can call in tens of thousands of pounds to use his bribes so the money is definitely there he just doesn't want to use it if he can avoid it sometimes dot even appeared to be troubled by the things he had to do shaken when left with no option but to shoot lindsey denton which i always felt was implied to be the first time he had ever directly killed someone himself so i am inclined to say that dot does immoral things regularly but out of fear rather than for his own satisfaction and while stott serves as the primary antagonist in the third season i would consider him more of a self-preserving neutral than a genuinely evil villain i mean once escape becomes impossible he is willing to take bullets for kate and once death is inevitable and he has nothing left to lose he does testify against the ocg in the most convoluted way possible in the scene where morton hands over the fake sim card it seems to be implied that dot is thinking about killing him now that his only hold over him is gone appearing to reach for a gun but then decides against it like he is genuinely happy that he and his friend can both retire so true neutral is my opinion more bad than good but acting out of fear and emotional weakness rather than a liking for breaking the law or active immorality and all along he had the desire to turn good but just wasn't quite brave enough to follow it until it was too late as for my thoughts on the worth of the character dot is one of the best written characters in the whole show and one whose personal storylines successfully advanced the plot in a very smooth way some have said that the show hasn't been quite the same without dot and that's hard to argue with seasons two and three which were the most dot heavy were my two favorites and even though all of the five seasons have been good so far there is a void left by dot's departure and the dynamic of a bad guy pretending to work with our protagonists that hasn't really been filled in terms of an acting performance i think craig parkinson acted this part very well having to seamlessly switch between two very different personas the dot that we see at the pub with the to20 team or the dot that we see at the curry house with steve or the dot having dinner with kate seems like a pretty nice guy not entirely politically correct but someone who is naturally funny and outgoing speaking of which line of duty isn't really a show that has very much comedy in it but on the occasions that there was comedy in the first three seasons at least it was often coming from dot in the scene where ac 12 find the body of linus murphy whose torture was about as dark and heavy as the show was got dot has a line which is a simply hilarious piece of gallows humor i'm not going to try and spoil it or retell it i wouldn't do it justice but just go back and watch season 3 episode 2 again and it'll be worthwhile and the best part of dot's comedic moments is that they don't feel like they were written to lighten the mood it comes across as very genuine and connected not only because dot is a funny guy but also because he has seen so many scary scenes across his life that he's become comfortable joking about it or maybe even uses the laughter to distance himself from the very grim reality of these situations that he has a hand in but then the dot that costs nigel morton or quietly pressures mini bindra or shoots lindsey denton in the head is a much more sinister and intimidating kind of a character and the show keeps us guessing which one the real one is playing with our sympathies along the way craig parkinson also confirmed that he received the scripts one at a time and that he didn't know that dot had any ocg connections until near the end of the first season which is a great way of feeding into dot's ability to put that entire half of his life over to one side while he's being a normal copper by day it does make you think as well that dot must have been good at his job quite a lot of the time he must have solved his fair share of crimes to endear himself for promotion he successfully passed the inspector's exam and even if he used it for the wrong purposes he was very quick-witted incisive and good at detective work he was the only one in danny waldron's interview to figure out what danny was doing and all he had to go on was the identity of the deceased suspect and the little information about dany's general background that they had unearthed dot probably could have been a very valuable member of the ac 12 team if it hadn't been for tommy hunter dictating his moves for more than half of his life so i do feel a bit bad for dot that he never got a chance to be the person he wanted to be even though i think we were all rooting for the team to catch him by the end of season three one final thing there have been debates over whether dot is really dead if he could return in some capacity if there might be remaining parts of his character arc that could unfold and whilst i do personally believe that he is dead unless there are bent surgeons and bent nurses in the ocg 2 there is a lingering plot point that feels like a potential avenue for having just a bit more dot in the show and that is dot's wife who has never seen but is mentioned and referenced and was said to have worked with the police in forensic examination i may do a video on that or a post in the line of gd subreddit it depends how much time i have but that's a wrap for now if there are any other video essays you would like me to make just drop a comment and i'll see what i can do i've had a few requests and i'm glad to know you're liking the content i'm thinking maybe ross huntly next don't forget to like and subscribe and most importantly have a great day

Channel: Clem'sContent

Views: 24,789

Rating: 4.9261212 out of 5

Keywords: Line of Duty, Dot Cottan, Matthew Cottan, Craig Parkinson, Martin Compston, Vicky McClure, Adrian Dunbar, Keeley Hawes, Stephen Graham, Jed Mercurio, Series 6, Season 6, Line of Duty Series 6, Line of Duty Spoilers, Video Essay, Character Study, BBC, BBC One, Police Drama, AC-12, Anti-Corruption, Bent Coppers, Detective Sergeant, Detective Inspector, Lennie James, The Caddy, Tommy Hunter, 'H', Balaclava Man, Who is H Line of Duty, Who is Balaclava Man Line of Duty

Id: 224LuNvNyyk

Length: 14min 42sec (882 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 29 2020