And, just like that, we are already halfway through the first season of “Landman,” the latest TV series by writer/creator Taylor Sheridan. However, five episodes in, and it still feels as if the oil drama is hammering out its identity on what who or what it wants to be. The latest chapter, released December 8, was all over the place — jumping in painful slow motion from a cinematic expose on the oil industry; to a live action PowerPoint presentation on the economics of energy; to a heartfelt drama with sprinkles of comic relief; to a decidedly riveting, compelling look at the dangerous work that is life on The Patch. Its attempt to be a “(Pump)Jack-of-all-trades,” if you will, for each has netted lukewarm results.
Launched on Paramount+ on November 17, and debuting at No. 3 on the streaming platform, Landman has already begun its downward spiral in ratings. No doubt, in part, because of its substantive lack of cohesion in the story it is attempting to tell. Based on the Boomtown podcast by Christian Wallace, the story follows Tommy Norris (played by Academy Award winner Billy Bob Thornton), as a crisis manager for a lucrative oil company in West Texas. Through a day-in-the-life lens, we continue to watch in real time as Tommy navigates his challenging work, an equally challenging family, and his desperate attempts to keep his employer in the black and out of the courthouse. While the series is hell-bent on shedding a spotlight on this incredibly important industry — Yes, we get it! Oil fuels a good portion of the American economy, it has fallen short on how to tell a fully-fleshed out, well-rounded story in the process.
As has become the custom, Episode 5 opens with a slow overhead pan of the oil rigs working diligently in the sunrise, as soft guitar strings pull your ears to attention, a constant reminder of who are the real workhorses in this storyline. When we last saw the timeworn landman, Tommy and crew were dealing with aging oil wells peppered across the hot and dry Permian Basin of West Texas, on the heels of the titular character working through some newfound changes in his personal life.
With a newly rekindled relationship with her ex-husband, Angela (Ali Larter) decides to host a family dinner night with Tommy and their kids, in an attempt at playing house. Oddly enough, she cannot do so without first fully redecorating the rent house/oilfield admin office Tommy has been sharing with his colleagues — oil company attorney Nathan (played by veteran character actor Colm Feore) and engineer Dale Bradley (played by James Jordan). The scenes surrounding the dinner bring a surprise humor to the episode.
Though, what has been most disappointing about the series is the women’s place in the narrative. If they are not vacillating between being demanding, naively unaware of the optics of their lack of attire, or turning on the waterworks for sympathy, they are shown as heartless and viper-tongued, inviting potential sexual harassment issues with their very presence or calling it out. There is very little nuance or depth to who these women are as characters, let alone authentic people. Bull dog corporate attorney Rebecca (Kayla Wallace) wanting to skirt ethics on paying out the settlement to the families of the oil field fire from Episode 1, and Larter’s portrayal of Angela as the needy and nagging ex-wife who cannot seem to find her way to being fully dressed, border on comical to the point of absurdity. Seriously, Angela adjusting her dress and breasts before delivering imported wild boar bolognese to the dinner table? Not sure Donna Reed would have chosen…um, that (color of) dress.
Much of the women’s time onscreen is borderline offensive, particularly, when every frustration that invites a modicum of emotion is explained away as a woman being on her menstrual cycle. Angela, as the petulant woman child who’s holding desperately onto her yearbook beauty, with her only offering to life being her body and a good time to a man, is such a cardboard caricature of a woman that, in this day and age, is desperately played out. Come on, Taylor, surely you can do better.
You gave us Beth Dutton, after all.
Landman’s breath of fresh air has proven to be the character of Cooper, Tommy’s son, played by Jacob Lofland. Apart from Thornton’s Tommy, Cooper is the only other character allowed to showcase a range of viable emotions.
In his weathered hat and oil-stained face, Cooper reluctantly goes to see Ariana (Paulina Chavez) on her request in the final fade-to-black scene of Episode 4. The chemistry between the two characters onscreen is nice, with equal parts sweet sincerity and just enough tension to make you look away. With his pensive, uncertain eyes, Lofland continues to carve out an authentic persona for Tommy’s son. A former college wrestler-turned-oil roughneck newbie, Cooper arrives on Ariana’s doorstep to help the young widow make sense of the “business of death,” as she so eloquently calls it, sorting through a mountain of paperwork representing her family’s finances. He stays to do some much-needed yard work on the property. The elongated B-roll scenes of Cooper mowing, raking, and weeding feel like filler content, but, were, no doubt, inserted to be a setup of something more for these two to come. Though, you can literally write the next lines having seen this story play out many times before, complete with all the obvious reasons why these two should not go anywhere beyond this moment, you still find yourself rooting for “them.” It’s the way Lofland and Chavez play their characters with both an intense vulnerability and a hidden strength lying in wait under that youthful skin. In short, they give you something to work with as a voyeur.
And, with all cultural tropes aside, when the El Camino turns that street corner as Cooper is finishing up out front, you know it’s going to be on. Because you know it will be Manuel, Elvio’s menacing cousin, and, with him, the memory of his knife-wielding threat to Cooper to stay clear of the young widow flooding your memory. When Manuel jumps from the car brandishing a gun at Cooper for even daring to speak to Ariana, it is Ariana’s planted kiss on Cooper as an in-your-face to Manuel, that seals the deal on how this will ultimately end. It is only a matter of time before these two find themselves in another embrace, for real, next time, and I am here for it. Hey, if this show is going to be a cavalcade of foregone conclusions, I will take this one. It is really the one that makes sense right now.
With this burgeoning forbidden love story sandwiched between the oil’s drama, I found myself ready to return to these quiet scenes time and time again throughout the episode.
Our requisite economics lesson for the Episode 5 comes miles away as we find Monty Miller (Jon Hamm), the grizzled oil company CEO, who lives to count his millions as much as he pops his heart pills. Around a table of titans of industry, Monty is among the suits at a clean energy summit, of sorts, embroiled in a heated debate on the need to embrace alternative energies and the need to remind everyone where the future growth and profits are to be found. And, if you did not know, America currently relies on — fossil fuels, nuclear, wind and solar, oil and gas. I know because that fact has been drilled in me for five straight episodes. As the dramatic music builds, Monty gets his own lessons as he is reminded that while his kids will inherit his oil future, his grandchildren will not, and it was time for him to get on board with embracing other fuels and his part in that reality.
The job of fueling the country’s energy is relentless and hard, as we are reminded repeatedly throughout the series — back-breaking and monotonous until it is not, as Tommy and crew find out when unexpected visitors arrive at the field as they are assessing rigs for maintenance. The drug cartel Tommy tangled with in the season opener have tracked him down to collect on the $30 million in product that burned in the oil tanker/plane fire. Though, armed and ready to go down fighting, Tommy talks his way out of certain peril with his all-too-familiar diatribe on the major players who now involved with the incident, to include the DEA, when the cartel decided to offload their inventory on a public highway. Not ones to be schooled or scolded, the drug dealers retreat, but not before making a less-than-veiled threat that Tommy would be seeing them again. Unfazed, the landman adds the warning to a growing To-Do list and radios his boss.
As an initial offering of something new for a Taylor Sheridan production, Landman has slowed considerably since its debut. But, it is in the last five minutes, two decidedly gripping closing moments, that make you remember why you started watching the series in the first place — for all the compelling stories that could be told about this power behemoth of an industry, the dynamic people who live it, and the danger that lurks around every turn documenting the work, if given the chance.
Landman continues its first-season run through January 12, 2025. New episodes stream weekly on Sundays on Paramount+.
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