Taylor Sheridan’s new hit oil drama, Landman closes out its debut season with a finale that will take you up and down the highway of unsettling emotions, no doubt, leaving you reeling from the good, the bad, and the ugly of life on The Patch. And, fair warning on this one, there will be blood.
“The Crumbs of Hope” opens with a bit of nostalgia as the distinctive voice of iconic radio broadcaster and storyteller Paul Harvey, gives his familiar textbook take on the symbiotic relationship of big oil and the international diplomatic unrest that follows in its pursuit. Harvey’s resonant prose serves as the soundtrack for a grainy montage of vintage oil pumpjacks images fading in and out of focus on your screen. For me, if I close my eyes, for just a brief moment, hearing Harvey’s familiar cadence seep through the speakers immediately transports me back to riding in my dad’s ‘86 Ford conversion van on the way to school listening to KFRO-radio in El Paso, Texas, as Harvey regales us with a “rest of the story” history lesson, of sorts. Artistically, while the opener provides another beautifully woven together monologue on the prominent place the oil industry holds in our lives, it provides no actual tie-in to the fictional narrative at hand.
Nevertheless, as the oilfield images fade into modern day technicolor, we find ourselves back in a Fort Worth hospital where
we all wait, alongside landman Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton) and Cami Miller (Demi Moore), holding our collective breaths to hear if the latter’s husband Monty (Jon Hamm) lived to see another day. Episode 9 left us viewers as the only witnesses to the oil tycoon suffering through yet another attack of his ailing heart — and, for those keeping score, he’s up to four.
As the doctor delivers the tough news to Cami that her husband is need of a heart transplant sooner rather than later, Monty’s attorney must activate Plan B and name Tommy successor to running M Tex Oil.
THE GOOD
Despite the medical dire straits the landman’s boss has found himself in, Tommy and Cami must make some tough business decisions in preparation for the inevitable. Moving caustiously through the what ifs and will he make its, the dialogue moves quickly back to what the show gets right — giving us an intimate look at how the oil industry functions and how the players involved make their money. These brief scenes are what the entire series should have been about from jump — powerful and provocative dialogue, intensity, characters you actually care about, and the compelling scenarios they find themselves in as they rage against the machine and bemoan their complicated cog it in.
Thornton, who earned a Golden Globe nomination for his portrayal of the often grizzled landman in the West Texas oil business, excels in the role of the titular character who spends most of his fictional days putting out bonfires with what feels like a rusty-tipped garden hose. But, what adds considerable depth to these early scenes of the episode is that there is finally meat to the scenes that involve Moore as the socialite wife forced to confront the reality that she and her husband’s money cannot put his broken heart back together again.
Moore, now considered an accomplished actress, is stunning in this role, not just for her physical beauty, although, she is still the most beautiful single teardrop cryer ever to grace the screen, but also for the quiet strength that she pores into this simple, yet seemingly background character, who is pulled to the front of the line to carry the weight of her family and her husband’s legacy on her narrow shoulders. To know that it has taken 10 episodes to get to a scene where we actually get to delve into this character’s purpose, is such an unfortunate what-could-have-been for this role and a true showcase of Moore’s talents. Talents that have finally been rewarded with a Golden Globe win for her leading actor work on The Substance. But, I digress.
Fast forward back to Midland, we find young widow Ariana (Paulina Chavez) finally taking the steps to clear out what was her old life with her deceased husband, a victim of an oilfield explosion in the series’ season opener. As Ariana pensively packs away the memories of what once was in poignant scenes, marked only by reflective music and soft tears, her soon-to-be new love interest, Cooper Norris (Jacob Lofland) is out in the oilfield laying the groundwork for what is to come.
With a plan and a prayer, Cooper is working to secure leases, by cobbling together smaller oil producers through old school negotiating — no suits, no hidden clauses, just his word and a handshake. Surely, his dad would be proud.
THE BAD
As the tension ramps up with the military still on edge from the training exercise gone wrong, the drug cartel have cleaned up the mess of their wrong-place, wrong-time deceased smugglers. In doing so, they are still a little sensitive to Tommy having left them on read while he tends to his boss.
Nothing like a drug dealer scorned.
Nevertheless, the seriousness of the drama about to unfold, as a result, takes an unnecessary intermission to cut to an asinine sequence of scenes at a gentlemen’s club, entertaining octogenarians before they fall out for their afternoon naps. Angela (Ali Larter) and Ainsley (Michelle Randolph), who I am now firmly convinced are solely on canvass for nothing more than comic relief, have made good on their promise to give their nursing home community service besties a day they will not forget — a day the scriptwriter should have really considered to be an ill-advised field trip to a strip club. The absurdity is on full display when Ainsley goes so far as to talk her high school quarterback boyfriend into serving as the entertainment for the ladies of the group. Wait, what? Physique aside, the boy is just not equipped for the moment. And, the moment is just not right for where this episode was going.
Nevertheless, back to the pressing issues at hand, with the prospect of losing his boss and taking over the company to get it sold, Tommy must negotiate just one more deal as a way to ensure his boss’ family sees their inheritance. In doing so, Tommy must bring his burgeoning nememsis Rebecca Falcone (played by Krista Wallace) up to speed to help negotiate the existing leases and wells.
THE UGLY
Driving away from the impromptu planning meeting with Rebecca, Dale (James Jordan), and Nate (Colm Feore), the thorn in Tommy’s side re-emerges. The cartel nabs him in an ambush, and just like that we are back where we started with Tommy being in the same predicament we found him in at the start of the series. However, short of coming full circle, the episode takes a vicious turn when the cartel take our favorite anti-hero out to The
Patch to demonstrate how skilled they are at destroying oil companies’ products. But, in a not-for-the-faint-of-heart torture scene to follow, the message they really want to send back to their big oil friends is literally stamped all over Tommy’s face, literally — putting a nail in the notion that drilling for oil can very well cost you your life. To survive, Tommy may be forced to cut a deal with devil — a partnership that could prove to be a blessing and a curse.
To say this finale was all over the place with the feels would be an understatement. From hurt and fear, to tenderness and care; from mild disbelief, right up to I can’t believe they just did that,
in just 80 minutes, the emotions run the gamut. And, oddly enough, with no proverbial tying up of loose ends, wrapping up of storylines and plot points, the “finale” gives no sense of closure on the season to balance it all out. Instead, you are left feeling like there is more to come in another episode, as if what you have just seen was meant to be just another day at the office for the landman.
Nevertheless, to find out what tomorrow will hold will be a wait-and-see if the series gets renewed for a sophomore season.
So, in case you missed how it all started, watch all 10 episodes of the season debut again. Based on series co-creator Christian Wallace’s podcast, “Boomstown,” Landman is streaming now on Paramount+.
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