Landman is back, and so are we, which means it’s time to settle back into the familiar chaos that only the Norris family can deliver.
It’s been a year since we last checked in with Tommy, Angela, Cooper, Cami, and the rest of the West Texas circus, and it feels like they’ve been waiting for us.
Nothing about this world moves quietly, and nothing about these people softens with age. You blink, and suddenly someone is throwing dinner plates or drilling a dream well or wandering into an admissions interview straight out of a social experiment.
And that’s part of why it’s so easy to step back into this world.
These characters aren’t acquaintances you need to get to know again; they’re the friends you don’t see for a while, but the second you’re in the same room again, you remember exactly why you kept them close — and why they never let you get too comfortable.
Landman doesn’t bother with gentle reintroductions or easing us in. It assumes we remember, because how could we forget?
Season 2 Opens Exactly Where This Family Lives — in the Middle of the Storm
So Landman Season 2 opens not by rehashing Landman Season 1, but by reminding us why this world sticks with us.
It’s messy and loud and occasionally ridiculous, but it’s also grounded in something painfully human: people trying to figure out who they are while the ground shifts under their feet.
Some things have changed; a lot haven’t. But the minute that first scene began, I felt it. We’re right back where we left off, and this family and their friends have been busy.
Tommy Starts the Day Picking a Fight With Breakfast (Of Course He Does)
So the first thing Landman does this season is remind us that Tommy Norris wakes up every morning already annoyed at something, and today it’s breakfast. Not even his breakfast — the concept of breakfast, but the mythology of breakfast. The conspiracy of cereal, if you will.
Only Tommy could turn a simple cup of coffee into a TED Talk about cavemen gnawing on bone marrow over a fire, and honestly, it’s comforting. Some shows ease in. Tommy goes straight to war with Kellogg’s before the waitress even finishes her sentence.
It’s such a ridiculous exchange, but it says everything: Tommy feels more like himself when he’s bristling at the world, like irritation is the last thread holding him together. What can I say? I understand that all too well.
He’s grieving, he’s working, and he’s trying to keep an empire from collapsing, and the only thing he can control is telling a stranger that breakfast is a corporate scam.
It makes me laugh, but it also hits in that way Taylor Sheridan loves — the humor sits right on top of something that isn’t funny at all.
Cami Stops Pretending She’s Small
And then there’s Cami, who might be the quietest character in the show in terms of decibels, but she’s absolutely not soft.
I don’t think she’s ever been soft — she just hid behind Monty’s shadow because she could. But now she has to be something else, and she knows it, and that mirror pep talk in the bathroom is the first moment she lets herself admit she’s scared.
And she should be. She’s about to face a room full of men who don’t want her there, don’t believe she belongs there, and wouldn’t mind if her husband’s death was the beginning of her downfall instead of his legacy.
And then these two girls walk in like rude little hyenas, and suddenly Cami remembers something about herself she probably forgot: she used to be underestimated long before she became Mrs. Monty Carter.
The Bathroom Girls Aren’t the Joke — They’re the Catalyst
They think she’s weak because she’s older, because she’s alone, because she’s grieving — and it lights up something inside her. You can actually see it. They think they’re humiliating her when, really, they’re handing her the exact fuel she needed.
Her speech is one of those moments where the world tilts just a little. It’s not loud, angry, or even long. It’s just sharp, clean, and deadlier than anything Monty ever said because she doesn’t need swagger to back it up.
She doesn’t pretend she’s one of them. She doesn’t play nice and doesn’t pretend that this industry is anything but a blood sport.
She tells them exactly how she plans to beat them, and that’s more terrifying than swagger could ever be. There’s something I really love about that — that her “fragility” is only the chrysalis she was forced into. Everything else is claws.
Cooper Is Euphoric, Ariana Is Drowning — and Neither Sees It Yet
Meanwhile, Cooper is living a completely different emotional life. He hits that well like he’s been resurrected. It’s the happiest we’ve ever seen him, which is why the whole thing feels so bittersweet.
He’s practically levitating. Ariana is still stitched together by sheer force of will. When someone is grieving and someone else is dreaming, it’s almost impossible for them to touch each other emotionally.
When Grief and Hope Don’t Share a Timeline
Cooper keeps thinking that if he can show her something big enough — something that will change their lives — it will pull her forward into joy with him.
But that’s not how grief works, and her face shows it. She wants to give him the reaction he deserves. She just can’t. And he doesn’t see the gap yet — he’s too high on the possibility of their future.
That’s going to hurt later. It often does when couples love each other but fall out of sync without realizing it.
TL’s Sunset Hurts in the Quiet Way TV Rarely Gets Right
But nothing, and I mean nothing, guts me like TL sitting outside watching the sunset while the nurse tries to drag him inside for dinner like he’s a toddler.
Sam Elliott plays stubbornness like it’s a religion, and for TL, it is. He’s not fighting the sunset; he’s fighting everything slipping out of his control — his body, his dignity, the memory of who he used to be.
And then he hears that Dorothy is gone, and the way he breaks isn’t loud or dramatic. It’s the kind of grief that’s too old to make noise anymore.
The Line About Hell Means More Than It Says Out Loud
When he says that if he sees her again, he must be in hell too, it’s awful and beautiful at the same time. It’s the kind of line a man says when the woman he loved is at peace and he’s not. That will likely reverberate throughout Landman Season 2.
What TL is really saying is that the sun has set on any chance he had to reconcile the past, and Elliott carries that guilt in the way only someone like him — someone who wears age and regret the same way Billy Bob wears dust and swagger — truly can.
Ainsley Being As Ainsley as Humanly Possible
And we haven’t even talked about Ainsley yet, which feels criminal because her college visit is one of the most profoundly unhinged scenes we’ve seen yet.
Ainsley walks into a college admissions office like she’s just visiting a spa, and admittance counselor Greta Stickman meets her with the kind of expression usually reserved for diagnosing a slow-moving apocalypse.
You can see it in Greta’s eyes: she knows she’s about to experience something she won’t be able to describe to her colleagues later without sounding concussed.
And then Ainsley starts talking, and you can actually feel Greta’s soul leave her body. The whole “prettiest girls should date the tallest boys so they can make beautiful athletic babies” monologue? I mean… what do you even do with that?
I Swear, This Wasn’t Even Satire
Satire? I don’t think so. I think it was Taylor Sheridan grabbing society by the face and saying, “Look at what you created.” You could practically hear the country club moms nodding in agreement from across the state lines.
And the worst part? Ainsley wasn’t being malicious. She thought she was making sense. She thought she was presenting a thoughtful position. She thought she sounded intelligent. She thought she was showing ambition. It was like a TED Talk written by a cult that worships hairspray.
Meanwhile, Greta is sitting there looking like someone forced her to eat drywall. You can see her cataloging every single moment of her career that led her to this exact horror.
The hybrid-vigor line — and Ainsley thinking it was an insult — I had to pause. I truly had to pause. I needed a minute. Greta is using words as weapons, and Ainsley is just excited to be in the room. I mean, this probably really happens, right?
And then the tears. Oh my God, the tears. Ainsley is crying not because she’s emotionally overwhelmed — but because she knows the interview is “getting away from her,” as if she ever had control of it.
And when Greta says she’d deny her with enthusiasm if she had the power? And Ainsley only hears the part about getting in? OMG.
Social Commentary with a Warning Label
That is social commentary so sharp it should come with a warning label. It’s not just funny — it’s depressing in that very American way where you suddenly realize meritocracy is more mythological than Tommy’s bone marrow breakfast rant.
The whole scene is a masterclass in how entitlement, beauty, privilege, and obliviousness all braid together into something that looks like confidence from far away.
And the thing is — Ainsley isn’t a villain. She’s not even a brat. She’s more of a product. She’s what happens when a girl grows up in a world where the only thing anyone ever cared about was how she looked and who she could attract.
Ainsley is the cautionary tale wrapped in a purple cheerleading uniform, bless her delusional little heart. And I hate that I understood her. And I hate that so many people in real life are her.
And I hate that the show nailed it so painfully well. And most of all, I hate that Angela can’t see it, even promotes it, and that Tommy just pretends it doesn’t exist.
The Norris Dinner Is a Disaster — and Somehow Completely Honest
Which brings us to dinner, because of course, Landman can’t give us only one emotional tone at a time. This dinner is pure Norris energy — unhinged, expensive, emotionally volatile, and somehow still affectionate.
Angela comes in hot after her daughter’s success. Ainsley shows up in her full cheer uniform because God forbid anyone miss her moment. The whole thing is absurd, but the absurdity is exactly why the emotional moments later land harder.
A $2800 truffle. A $2800 TRUFFLE?? Tommy gives Angela a much wider berth than the average human would. I worry that my $13 bottle of third-rate truffle oil is too extravagant. Can you imagine the gall?
Keeping in the same vein as Ainsley’s ignorance at the university, Angela decides to take her anger out on the table like she’s auditioning for WWE, yet Tommy looks at her like he wouldn’t trade her for anything.
Their marriage makes absolutely no sense on paper, but emotionally, it’s airtight. They understand each other in ways that scare other people.
Tommy and Angela are Made for Each Other
Part of it is because they’re willing to listen to each other, even when the screaming reaches decibels that would send someone else fleeing from the room. And in the middle of the chaos, Angela hit Tommy with a reminder that every woman feels in her bones.
While she can’t control her hormones, Tommy can control the way he responds to them.
It’s not said as some feminist pronouncement. It’s just the truth coming out of the mouth of a woman who is sick of being reduced to her biology by a man who should know better. Tommy plays with those words often, but when Angela is already running on high, they only increase her aggravation.
That’s the kind of emotional honesty that will ensure this couple lasts longer than anyone from the outside could imagine.
And after Angela’s meltdown, Tommy calls out how incredible her breasts look. Another woman would be insulted, but not Angela. They see each other for exactly who they are, and I find it weirdly beautiful. Shut up.
The Sun Sets Twice — and the Season’s Real Story Begins
And then the phone rings. And grief — the big kind, the kind that sits in your bones — walks right back into the room. Tommy’s mother is gone. Another sunset. Another ending. Another person slipping out of the world before he got to make peace with them.
And it lands so quietly after all the madness that it hurts more.
Landman is doing a very specific thing this season by pairing wild, messy life with the quiet moments of reality that knock the wind out of you. Tommy and TL are about to be mirrors of each other, whether they want to be or not.
And that’s where the episode leaves us — with the sun setting on two men in two different places, each losing someone who shaped them. Everything is quiet. Everything stupid fades.
What’s left are the things you can’t outrun: family, grief, love, resentment, and all the unfinished business you hope you’ll get one more day to fix.
I absolutely love how impossibly human Landman is, letting humor and heartbreak sit right next to each other without apologizing for either.
The Little Moments Paint a Big Picture
The truffle fiasco shouldn’t mean anything, but in the middle of that absurdity, Angela reminds Tommy — and every man watching — that calling out a woman’s cycle doesn’t make you clever, it makes you dismissive.
That scene says more about love, marriage, and equality than half the prestige dramas out there shaking their fists at patriarchy. Taylor Sheridan buried a real truth in a plate-throwing meltdown, and it stands out precisely because it wasn’t dressed up as a monologue.
And then there’s TL. Sam Elliott carries grief the way only Sam Elliott can — with that weary, lived-in authenticity that makes you believe the loss didn’t just happen on screen; it happened to him.
The quiet devastation in that sunset moment is more than sorrow. It’s the weight of a man who knows his wife wasn’t easy, but that the window for apologies has closed.
When he says he’ll be in hell with her, it’s the confession of a man looking back on a marriage he never figured out, a son he didn’t raise gently, and a life that left more scars than softness.
Billy Bob Thornton and Sam Elliott together are a special pairing. It’s lightning in a bottle because they are both actors who wear their characters like a second skin.
Our Expectations for Landman Season 2
So if the first episode is any indication, Season 2 isn’t going to be about oil. Oil is just the excuse. This is a season about inheritance — the emotional kind, the generational kind, the kind that makes you who you are long before you ever make a choice.
Tommy is repeating patterns he doesn’t even see. Cooper is chasing a dream that may not save him. Cami is stepping into a power she never believed she had.
Angela is teaching Tommy how to love her without conditions, but teaching her daughter nothing about how to stand in her wake.
And TL is preparing his son for the truth he never got to hear from his own father. The sun is setting, but the fire this family walks through is just getting started.
What a fantastic hour to kick off the season. Clearly, I had thoughts. I know you do, too. So, let’s hear them in the comments below. And be sure to grade the premiere in our poll, too.
And if you’re up for more shows that make you think and feel in equal measure, be sure to check out our Tulsa King and Pluribus coverage. And hell, why not check out The Last Frontier, too?
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