A color-washed series about tough, no-nonsense guys dealing with high-pressure hands-on stuff in rural America, “Landman” is raw, uncut Taylor Sheridan straight from the source. Set in and around the oil fields of Midland-Odessa, Texas, the series trolls the mesquite-mixed grasslands of the Permian Basin for the artificial drama so endemic there. Smuggling mishaps, oil well blowouts, appendage mangling, and plain old heartbreak provide the fuel in this regard, which flows more liberally than what’s pumped out of the ground.
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There are a few different storylines through the first five episodes, but all have some connection to Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton), a fixer for oil company M-Tex. Tommy negotiates with cartels to lease mineral rights, runs interference on accident investigations, coordinates well openings/closings, and jumps on anything else that might cause headaches for his corporate overlords. One of those bosses, Monty (Jon Hamm), seems to appreciate Tommy’s role in keeping everything in motion, yet the accidents that are the direct result of M-Tex’s way of doing business are beginning to add up, and the buck stops with the two of them.
While M-Tex drama is more than enough to keep Tommy busy, his two young adult kids and ex-wife make sure he’s got headaches that aren’t work-related as well. Son, Cooper (Jacob Lofland), has dropped out of college to try and work his way up as a roughneck in the “patch,” while his distractingly beautiful daughter, Ainsley (Michelle Randolph), and ex-wife, Angela (Ali Larter), are angling for a place back in Tommy’s life. And while events in the first few episodes seem drastic enough to hold Tommy’s attention, like any good Sheridan show, the juiciest bits occur between the sheets, not in the streets.
Thornton plays Tommy with a weary reluctance that might be the best fit for his “talents” that any director or producer has captured. Tommy’s whole existence is jerry-rigged together with cigarettes, soda, Michelob Ultras, and deadly obligation. One gets the sense watching him operate that the early grave his lifestyle promises is his best-case scenario. It’s hard to tell if Thornton is phoning it in or channeling the exhaustion of his character at times, but the fact that this role doesn’t require any such distinction seems to be a net win for both actor and show.
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And while the “who,” “what,” and “where” of “Landman” is straightforward enough, the “why” of it all is more difficult to pin down. The biggest threat through the first five episodes comes from M-Tex itself, which seems poised to cut Tommy loose as a sacrificial lamb to the consequence gods. Besides the relationship drama bubbling up in the B- and C-plots, the primary conflict of the series comes from the protagonist’s close proximity to the potential antagonist. While this development might well bear interesting dramatic fruit in the back half of the season, it creates a dilemma Sheridan never overcomes through this first stretch.
Who should we be rooting for here? Tommy is the obvious answer, as he seems to be at least following the rules of the corrupt little corner of the world where he has domain. Yet, by his own admission, he is a coarse, gruff, law-breaking, OSHA-ignoring fixer working in one of the most nefarious industries on the planet. Angela is an industrial-grade trouble magnet, and both Norris kids seem well on their way to becoming some twisted version of their parents.
But maybe that’s the point? Devoid of any kind of defensible worldview or policy, the hero of the new MAGA U.S.A. isn’t the person fighting against injustice; it’s the blue-collar sucker carrying the water of those doing it. To that community, the whole world and everyone in it is screwed anyway, and the heroes among them are the vulgar, unapologetic straight shooters who work to get theirs while the getting is good. It’s a depressing thought, but it seems to be the only one Sheridan and “Landman” have to offer. To boot, Thornton’s Tommy also seems to be “fuck your feelings” personified; too busy to sugarcoat, too much money at stake for euphemisms or political correctness, which the show seems to revel and take great pride in (not unlike Sheridan’s “Lioness” or “Yellowstone”). There’s not one f*ck given to anything resembling liberal (read: humanist) tears.
Still, the show is entertaining enough, and Thornton holds the screen well as a beat-down everyman working a crap job for horrible people. Hamm gets the luxury of rattling off lines like, “Our business is one of constant crisis interrupted by brief periods of intense success,” while the producers cook up ways to keep Larter, Randolph, and Demi Moore (oh yeah, she’s in this series…kind of) in bikinis. To be fair, there is one featured female character that “Landman” doesn’t sexualize, causation of liability attorney Rebecca Falcone (Kayla Wallace), but that’s because almost every scene where she appears forces her to explain how seriously everyone should take her.
When it’s all said and done, Tommy is good at his job, and when “Landman” focuses on him and the others who are operating comfortably in their oil-lubed groove in the world, the show can be interesting and exciting in equal measure. Sure, if one squints hard, they might be able to make out the subtext of all this, which is to champion the petroleum industry and rail against all the pesky regulations that put a hard-working guy like Tommy in peril. Some people will watch this and lionize these characters and their world just like the smooth-brained weirdos who looked up to Tony Soprano. The difference here is that Sheridan, the architect of all of this, maybe one of them as well.
This is all to say that playing around in this world is harmless enough and a fine waste of time. Sheridan and Thornton make it easy to enjoy, but as Tommy says to Ainsley at one point, “There are two types of people that work in the patch: the dreamers and losers.” As it happens, audiences looking for depth or anything besides some cheap, escapist fun in “Landman” fall into an identical dichotomy. [C+]
“Landman” premieres November 17 on Paramount+.
