[Editor’s note: The A.V. Club will return to recap this season’s fifth episode on December 14.]
At the end of Landman‘s season-two premiere, grizzled Texas oilman Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton) is trying to convince his furious ex-wife Angela (Ali Larter) that they should end their argument and hop into bed. “Why don’t we just skip the crazy and go right to the sex?” Tommy asks, to which Angela replies, “Where’s the fun in that?” Tommy wonders: Why can’t it be all fun?
That’s a question that just about anyone who watches Landman has to ask once or twice per episode. There’s so much to recommend about this show: the starkly beautiful Texas landscapes, the nitty-gritty details about the modern oil business, and Billy Bob Thornton getting the chance to cut loose with one of the most Billy Bobby characters he’s ever played (all growly, sarcastic, and opinionated). But then, for some reason, co-creator Taylor Sheridan keeps undercutting everything he’s gotten right with Landman by piling on a lot of his usual Yellowstone shlock: the dead-end plotting, the gratuitous violence, the smug sociopolitical lecturing, and the reduction of most of his characters (especially women) to one-dimensional cartoons.
Take that scene above between Tommy and Angela. It’s a repeat in a way of one of season one’s most memorable moments, when Angela decided to reassert her presence in her ex’s life by cooking a fancy gourmet meal. That dinner also ended with Angela screaming at everyone for their ingratitude. In the season-two premiere, the meltdown is preceded by Tommy letting everyone at the table know—repeatedly—that it’s “the wrong side of the calendar” to be crossing Angela. He even goes so far as to suggest that space aliens would probably enjoy watching premenstrual women in a zoo “like we watch gorillas eat fruit, pick their asses, and swing around on shit.”
Minutes later, all of the dinner party’s plates of cacio e pepe with shaved truffles ($2,800 an ounce!) have been splattered and smashed. It’s…funny? If you’ve forgotten what happened in Landman season one, here’s a quick refresher: Tommy began the series as a sort of oil-company fixer, resolving frontline crises in the Permian oil basin while managing land-leases for his old friend and boss, Monty Miller (Jon Hamm). Monty, an independent in a world of consortiums, held fast with his M-Tex through lean times and boom times, then in season one he faced his biggest obstacle yet: a chronic heart condition. He died at the end of the season finale, after appointing Tommy as M-Tex’s new president and ensuring his wife Cami (Demi Moore) retained ownership.
For another example of how Landman squanders its resources, look no further than Hamm and Moore, who were largely nonfactors for most of season one, popping up mainly in a scene or two per episode and far removed from the main action. Now Hamm’s character is out of the picture altogether, and it’s unclear whether Moore’s Cami will be better-integrated into the main story or if she’ll continue to be more of a bench player.
Cami does anchor the best sequence in the season-two premiere. The episode, “Death And A Sunset,” gets off to a good start, with an extended cold open—nearly 17 minutes!—mostly set at a Fort Worth hotel, where Cami’s hosting a “get to know me” luncheon for all the major industry players. (There are a lotta old dudes in oversized cowboy hats milling about and bossing around cocktail waitresses.) Thornton shines in these scenes, as Tommy verbally manhandles all the opportunists who intend to use Monty’s death as a way to renegotiate or cancel contracts.
This opening captures the best aspects of Monty, a pragmatic pessimist who remains loyal to his friends even when he thinks they’re making terrible mistakes. Everyone in the oil business thinks Cami should cash out, selling off M-Tex and living out the rest of her life as a loaded heiress. Tommy agrees (or at the least, he says, “I don’t disagree”), especially given that the banks at any time could nullify Monty’s old leases and leave Cami and Tommy flat broke. Nevertheless, he backs Cami’s play, in deference to their shared past with Monty—and because it pisses him off to hear the other oilmen run her down.
All of this is setup for Cami’s big speech at the luncheon, where she shocks her guests by skipping any bland big-picture platitudes about the energy business and instead telling them that she’s gunning for their leases and equipment if they underestimate her. “Enjoy your lunch,” she concludes. “I paid for it with your fuckin’ money.” It’s the best moment Moore’s yet had on Landman. Please let there be more Moore.
Alas, even this scene is tainted by Sheridan’s warped preoccupations with traditional gender roles. What inspires Cami to come out swinging? Right before the speech, a couple of would-be trophy wives mock her in the bathroom for being old. (“No offense,” they giggle. “I’m still offended,” Cami replies.) Her speech is meant to make these ladies miserable, by getting under their men’s skins. Before she ascends the dais, she says, “That’s where men and women differ, Tommy. Fear alone doesn’t motivate us. We need something else.”
No offense? The episode goes downhill from there. Season one’s minimal plotting didn’t leave season two much to work with, but it’s still surprising that “Death And A Sunset” features no follow-up to the finale’s other big cliffhanger involving a drug cartel boss offering to become Tommy’s friendly partner. (Andy Garcia, who plays that boss, appears in the opening credits as a new season-two regular but is not actually in the premiere.) The rest of the hour is mainly concerned with two minor season one subplots: Tommy and Angela’s son Cooper starting his own career as an oilman and the Norrises’ daughter Ainsley (Michelle Randolph) trying to get into college.
There’s not much to say about Cooper’s story. His team starts drilling on his first well, and they hit a deposit that should produce enough to generate about 10 million dollars a year until it levels off. Good for Cooper.
Ainsley’s story though…. If not for the PMS-themed family dinner, the worst scene in this episode would easily be Ainsley’s college-admission interview at TCU. While a prissy administrator (a woman, of course) gets increasingly steamed, Ainsley plays out every “dumb blonde” stereotype, from not knowing what big words like “precipitated” mean to making a blindly bigoted argument for why cheerleaders should mate with football players and fill the world with strong, beautiful babies. Granted, this scene is meant as comic relief, and Sheridan (the credited writer) seems to sympathize as much with the administrator as he does with Ainsley. Still, Sheridan’s persistent unwillingness to give one of his main characters any noticeable dimensionality is more depressing than amusing.
At least Larter’s performance as Angela has some bite, even when the character is similarly shallow and materialistic. Larter has some sharp moments during the terrible dinner scene, including when Angela—correctly—blames Tommy for baiting her into flipping out by constantly commenting on her raging hormones. (She also has one of the best lines of the episode at dinner when she sees the direction Tommy’s headed and says, “Here’s what we’re not doin’: any of this shit.”)
In the interest of fairness, it’s also worth noting that as entertaining as Thornton is in this series, his Tommy can also be pretty overbearing. His first scene in the premiere sees him contradicting a hotel waitress about whether breakfast is really the most important meal of the day, delivering a little rant about how American society is just doing what Kellogg’s wants. He then tips her $100 and asks her to scrounge up some cigarettes for him—“anything but menthol or those little skinny ones.” As a TV character, Tommy is, to put it politely, “colorful.” In the real world, he’d be exhausting.
There’s one other bit of business in “Death And A Sunset,” related to its title. We meet a new character, T.L. (Sam Elliott), who’s defiantly watching the sun go down at his assisted-living facility. This, we later find out, is Tommy’s father, who is about to learn that Tommy’s mother died while in memory care. (Tommy gets that same news just before the closing credits.)
Elliott is always welcome on any TV screen, but it’s a little concerning that the first time we meet T.L. he’s arguing with a female nurse about whether he should be allowed to watch the sun during the facility’s designated dinner hour. The woman expresses some confusion as to why the sun is setting later than it did the day before, and T.L. growls that he’d explain it to her but “you wouldn’t understand.” So…hooray, welcome Sam Elliott to the Landman cast! And…oh no, his character is horrible and sexist. Why can’t it be all fun?
Stray observations
- • Welcome to The A.V. Club’s drop-in coverage of Landman. I’ll be back twice more this season, at the midpoint and end, to see if this very strange, very frustrating show has anything new to say. Will Tommy, a man who handles billions of dollars worth of oil business in a single year, continue to complain about having to pay tuition to a private college for his daughter? Stay tuned!
