‘Landman’ Episode 2 Recap: “Dreamers & Losers”

Taylor Sheridan loves to write and shoot a sequence that raises work to a sacred act. After all the deadly dramas of Yellowstone and the Duttons, it was cowboying as a verb that defined the show, with the camera lingering lovingly on skill sets specific to the profession. With that show, it was also wistful – the last vestiges of a way of life. With Landman, Sheridan, who writes and directs the first two episodes, is presenting the West Texas oil patch as a foul beast that consumes hard work blindly. It does not sanctify. And the only religion around here is the church of making bank. 

Boiling flame and curling columns of inky black smoke open episode 2 of Landman, as Cooper comes around to the realization that the lives of three men just ended. Out here, beyond the work crew that was Luis, Armando, Elvio, and Coop, there is no other support. There is nobody at all for miles. And Sheridan’s camera marks the distinction as the accident site continues to burn, a chaotic speck in miles of caliche, with the mens’ remains – their very existence – now as contribution to relentless, uncaring boomtown churn.

As police and fire finally arrive and Cooper receives treatment, it’s Tommy who’s gotta plug the pumpjack’s flame-spewing valve. But he also busts open his finger with a hammer, after which we watch him slice off the tip with his buck knife. Because the work doesn’t end, you see, and Tommy can’t be encumbered by years of hand specialists and surgeries. Nor can he find much sympathy for his son. “I’m going out to Elvio’s house to tell a 22-year-old mother to break out the fucking want ads and get a job. No time to grieve, no time to mourn. ‘Cause banks don’t wait.”

Together with Nate, his oil & gas attorney roommate, Tommy urged Monty to offer each surviving family $250k, “Just to get ‘em through.” But the accident is not going to shut down production. Crisis should not prohibit success. In fact, just like a plane stolen by drug smugglers that then explodes on an M-TEX-owned road, the realest questions are only about how and when the work will continue. Which is how Tommy meets Rebecca Falcone (Kayla Wallace). The corporate lawyer and chain of liability specialist was sent to Midland to deal with the TTP truck explosion from Landman Episode 1, but now she’s on point for this latest bit of trouble, and meeting up with Tommy at the Patch Cafe. 

“I quit drinking. I’ll stick with beer.” If that sentence makes no sense, then you don’t agree with avowed alcoholic Tommy Norris that the ABV in Michelob Ultra is only for maintenance. (Throwback to Taylor Sheridan’s script for the West Texas-based 2016 classic Hell or High Water, where Ben Foster’s Tanner Howard wondered who the hell could ever get drunk off a beer.) Rebecca wants to know how a manager like Tommy knowingly sending M-TEX employees to service faulty equipment isn’t a lawsuit asking to be lost. But he says those men knowingly sacrificed their safety for a competitive salary. And besides, if it’s about knowingly faulty wells and knowingly lax OSHA standards, then the entire oil industry is knowingly guilty.

With Cooper hurt and Ainsley pouting about breaking up with her boyfriend – “He’s supposed to change the way he feels and do what I want!” – Angela has decided to join her ex-husband and their kids in Midland. (Angela on FaceTime: “I’ll see you tomorrow, you fucking asshole.”) That will be fun. But in the meantime, Tommy’s corporate rental living situation continues to bring its own bits of broad humor to Landman. Like petroleum engineer Dale, who microwaves metal cans of beans – “they don’t taste the same” in a bowl – and who walks in on Ainsley in the shower because Tommy suddenly has his family living with his co-workers. 

Ainsley staying at the house is also an opportunity for Billy Bob Thornton, as Tommy Norris, to engage with some prime-cut Taylor Sheridan Speechifying. Because when she finds out that Cooper quit on his college degree to work in the patch, and that he got hurt doing it, Ainsley calls her brother a loser. Tommy’s features become a blank mask of stern. Loser? It used to be only those types and the dreamers who found their way west, either to make it or to die. But nowadays, as Tommy tells Ainsley, it’s the oil & gas boomtown where the dreamers and losers gather. And everybody’s looking to win. Which one will she be when it’s time to pick a side? It’s clear that Ainsley and Cooper don’t get along. But Ainsley was probably just making an errant comment, and not expecting a moody, barbed treatise on the oil patch as the American dream incarnate. 

When Tommy finishes lecturing Ainsley, he drives to the hospital to pick up Cooper and continue the lecture. “You know people are gonna blame you,” he says of his son and the accident. Especially since Cooper needs a favor. He wants to be put on another work crew. His studies at college? They’re losing value in his eyes. “I don’t wanna teach geology, I wanna live it. I wanna be a landman.” Despite nearly getting blown up, despite general response to the accident – what else is new; back to work – Cooper remains all-in on his path, where he’s the world’s first worm-to-roughneck-to-oil biz CEO. This kid could still be a loser. You know, of his life. But for now, he’s the dreamer. Tommy, an oil patch lifer himself, invites Cooper to the Patch for a beer.     

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.

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