Landman (season 1)

Set in the oilfields of West Texas, Landman follows the lives of roughnecks and billionaires in the booming oil industry.

Landman (season 1: episodes 1-9) Review

Another sepia-rich and gritty drama from Tyler Sheridan, the man who pays Paramount+’s mortgage and subsequently keeps modern Star Trek’s lights on despite their canon-breaking, non-binary beta male bs, Landman’s first season stars Billy Bob Thornton as the grizzled manager of a relatively small independent oil company in the middle of nowhere, Texas and all of the familial and professional drama that entails.

Unlike other Sheridan programs like Yellowstone and Tulsa King, both known for their relentless and over-the-top drama, be it repeated gang wars, manhunts for kidnapped children, or dumping whole towns’ worth of bodies off at the “train station,” this first season of Landman feels far more grounded. This is likely due to the copious real-life dangers involved in pumping crude.

Annually, deaths for those who work in oil and gas number in the hundreds, and hospitalizations in the thousands. With this level of danger organically present, it would take very little to cross over into melodrama, which, so far, the program has more or less avoided.

Another divergence is that of its lead characters. Where many of Sheridan’s other projects are overflowing with bigger-than-life characters like Sly Stallone’s Dwight “The General” Manfredi, who is a charismatic and tough gangster right out of a Scorcese film, and Beth Dutton, who makes manic and maniacal into an art form, Billy Bob Thornton’s character is far more of a no-nonsense everyman who’s just trying to get through another day in one of the most dangerous professions in the world.

The one over-the-top character in the program, Billy Bob’s wife, played by Ali Larter, is a volatile foil hot enough to be completely out of touch but aging out and coming to understand what’s truly important in life. She is a crass and classless slut who has relied on being a 10 to survive throughout her life. Even though she’s trying to settle down, her narcissistic amorality threatens to ruin every situation in which she finds herself.

When paired with Billy Bob, who only wants to survive, be it to the next day or the end of dinner, the audience is treated to a delicious mix of tension and unease without the life-altering consequences that are so often the plot points in the Tylerverse.

The wonderful chemistry isn’t limited to just these two. In fact, Landman may be the most perfectly cast program in the last 20 years. It helps that their characters are so well defined and that the performers who embody them are so talented, but there’s also that little spark of something extra that helps the mix, no matter the pairing.

One thing Landman does share with its brothers and sisters is a cast of morally ambiguous characters. There are no “good men” or women and few truly evil ones. Instead, amoral characters with only the basic foundational ethics (e.g., it’s generally wrong to kill, working hard to feed your family is good, etc.) flounder in life without understanding why, with perhaps one exception.

In a shockingly touching and brilliantly performed cameo, Dallas Cowboy’s owner, Jerry Jones, playing himself, shares arguably the season’s most impactful and certainly its deepest monologue about those things we value in life and what few things among them have the ability to generate meaningful happiness.

That may be Landman’s greatest attribute. It’s not afraid to take its time and judiciously deliver impactful moments while still managing to be engaging. It’s a surprisingly well-balanced series, especially when one considers the frenetic and sometimes high-octane flavor of its Sheridan contemporaries.

WOKE ELEMENTS

None

• The show is filled almost exclusively with those living secular lifestyles but everyone who shares in them is a mess, and the program never celebrates their fallen nature.
• Some might argue that the young female lawyer is a snarky b-word who is fantastic at everything especially at the expense of men, and they aren’t entirely wrong. However, unlike other programs in which she would be heralded as the Second Coming, the show acknowledges her capabilities while painting her as a horrible person- possibly one who you can love to hate in later seasons.

Landman (season 1: finale) Review

Arguably, Landman’s defining quality is that of its showrunners’ willingness to slow-roll its various plot points. They seem to know that, unlike so many other programs today, Landmand has sufficient talent on both sides of the camera to hold the audience’s interest without spastically spewing forth a never ending deluge of nonsense, half of which is forgotten about by the next episode.

That said, the powers behind the camera either don’t have enough faith in their work to forego cheap and narratively bankrupt T&A as they dangle 17-year-old character thirst traps in front of the screen whenever there’s a break in the action, or they are a bunch of morally bankrupt perverts (it’s Hollywood, so I know where my money would go). The irony is that these titillating Lolita lull-fillers are the most narratively banal elements of the program. Each one brings their respective episodes to a screeching halt. Fortunately, they as sparse as the starlet’s underwear.

As unfortunate and unnecessary as that might be, the rest of the season finale is yet another brilliantly crafted bit of streaming TV yum yum. Deliberately paced to draw you to the edge of your seat and packed with more intrigue to carry you to season 2. If I had my druthers, I’d have had a little more conclusion and a little less teasing, but all in all, this final episode does what it’s supposed to.

WOKE ELEMENTS

She Was Just 17. You Know What I Mean… Yes, I Think I Do

• Simply because the actress is pushing 30 (those are some seriously good genes), doesn’t make the sexual exploitation of her 17-year-old character (or that of her character’s boyfriend) any less egregious- just less legally ambiguous.
  • While I was never a proponent of having her class-A underwear-clad hiney being used as a regular prop, as a father of teenage daughters, I could at least (to some degree) identify with Billy Bob’s character’s misery and discomfort at having men drool over her- which was the point. However, with this latest episode (and arguably the previous one), it has become clear that her character is nothing more than T&A. I can’t, in good conscience, promote a series that delights in implying and seemingly celebrating that a minor is allowing her boyfriend (who she’s known for a week or less) to sodomize her.
    • For that reason, I have removed the series from our Worth it selections.