The Taylor Sheridan television empire can be marked by a few recurring themes: Western or neo-Western thematic architecture, casts stuffed with aging former A-listers cashing checks from Paramount to entice older viewers, and the crazy, atonal mix of prestige drama and campy soap-opera antics. He’s like Ryan Murphy, but for the straights. When its first season debuted last year, “Landman” was one of the stranger entries in his non-“Yellowstone” catalog, transferring the no-nonsense politicking and political/relational infighting of the Dutton family to the oil boom of West Texas. Now, with its second season underway, the show struggles to find new reserves to plumb and veers off in some crazy directions to do it.
When last we left no-nonsense oil man Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton), he’d just recovered from a beating by the Mexican cartels, rescued at the last minute by cartel boss Gallino (Andy Garcia, now upgraded to regular status), who spares him in order to involve himself in the landman’s multi-billion-dollar company. Said company, however, is in dire straits, ever since its president, Jon Hamm’s Monty, died at the end of Season 1, leaving Tommy as VP of Operations and his widow, Cami (Demi Moore), in charge. Together, the pair tries to iron out their place at the top of the pecking order, whether it’s dressing down lazy investors or delving into the company’s shockingly unstable finances. (Lots of men in suits staring down our heroes and talking LLCs and oil rights. Thrilling stuff.)
That’s just the tip of the oil derrick for this second season, which flits between actual oil-business stuff and the soap-operatic happenings of our main characters: Loved ones die and are mourned, characters make sweeping romantic decisions for good and ill, the list goes on.
Then there’s the tone, which contrasts mournful drama (accompanied, of course, by Andrew Lockington’s plaintive country guitar and more than one soulful ballad set over drone shots of oil factories) with a sitcommy elan that grasps for conservative humor. In scene after scene, Billy Bob drawls one deadpan crack after another about the sissification of modern society; the season’s opening scene sees him go off on a waitress about cornflakes (“You think our ancestors had breakfast?”). His sarcasm approaches hot-button observational comedy but lands somewhere near “gussied-up Tim Allen standup act.”
Then, of course, there are the women, who are both “Landman”‘s greatest strength and weakness. Granted, there’s a perverse entertainment value to watching Ali Larter and Michelle Randolph vamp it up as, respectively, Tommy’s oversexed MILF wife and jailbait-y, nymphomaniac daughter Ainsley. Both of them are peas in a pod, ogling the bulges in college-boy sweatpants and talking sex while conquering neighboring stair machines in the gym.
I’ll admit, there’s great entertainment value in watching these actresses sink their fangs into incredibly tawdry material; if I trusted Sheridan more, I’d say these were roles that emphasize radical sex positivity in women, both young and old. But as written (and contrasted against Thornton’s head-shaking judgment of both), these characters feel like case studies for Sheridan and crew’s psychosexual hangups. One entire episode revolves around Angela’s period literally making her crazy, and Ainsley campaigning to go to an expensive private school because she explicitly aims to gold-dig for any hot college football player who has NFL prospects.
These are scenes that, if we set aside how regressive they are, play as top-tier comedy (particularly for Larter, who throws herself into Angela’s hysterics with all the brio of a Real Housewife). At least Moore survives relatively unscathed, Cami stepping up to the plate with devil’s eyes and a venomous tongue in one verbal confrontation after another. But “Landman”‘s worldview lands firmly in the “women are crazy” mold.
A few glimmers in the season’s first three episodes break the “Dallas”-on-Diazepam business drama, though. Sam Elliott appears as Tommy’s estranged father, T.L., and he gets a few soulful scenes reflecting on the beauty of the world and how time can gradually take it from you. The third episode actually introduces a novel disaster setpiece relevant to the dangers of oil drilling (hello, hydrogen sulfide!) that evokes, of all things, Shyamalan’s “The Happening.” It’s these moments that make your ears perk up and sit forward in your easy chair, when you’re not guffawing at Larter saying lines like “When properly motivated, man can achieve anything… That’s why god created tits.”
“Landman” somersaults between camp and cringe at the speed of a burst oil main, which is part of its frustration: I wish it were more consistently funnier, and I wish I wasn’t just laughing in incredulity at what I was seeing. It often feels like Sheridan’s humor works best when it’s inadvertent, which I guess tracks with its crude-digging premise: Sometimes you strike oil in the places you’re not looking.
Three episodes screened for review. Airs weekly on Paramount+.