Landman Premiere Recap

For those of you who have complained — frequently, if not incessantly — about the vulgar language in producer Talyor Sheridan’s Yellowstone for the past five years or so, be forewarned: In the first two episodes of Landman, Sheridan’s latest series, Billy Bob Thornton drops more F-bombs than any character in any entire season of that show. At least, it certainly seemed that way.

In the new series, which kicked off Sunday with back-to-back episodes titled “Landman” and “Dreamers and Losers,” we were introduced to Thornton as Tommy Norris, a blunt-spoken and ceaselessly sardonic crisis manager who’s charged with putting out fires, literally and figuratively, for a major Texas-based oil company.

Among his equally well-cast co-stars: Jon Hamm (Mad Men, Fargo) as Monty Miller, a Texas oil industry titan who is Norris’ indulgent but not infinitely patient boss; Demi Moore (G.I. Jane, A Few Good Men) as Cami Miller, Monty’s wife and Tommy’s friend; Ari Larter (Heroes, The Rookie) as Angela, Tommy’s mercurial ex-wife; Jacob Lofland (12 Mighty Orphans, Joker: Folie à Deux) as Cooper Norris, Tommy’s college dropout son, who wants to work in the oil patch;  Michelle Randolph (1923) as Ainsley Norris, Tommy’s spoiled and strong-willed 17-year-old daughter; Kayla Wallace (When Calls the Heart) as Rebecca Savage, a steely litigator hired to represent Miller’s company who immediately clashes with Tommy.

Here are some random thoughts prompted by the premiere episodes of Landman. Warning: There are scads of spoilers here, so you should wait until you watch before you read.

• • Tommy made one hell of an entrance while, even as he was held captive and kept blindfolded, he fearlessly engaged in a foul-mouthed negotiation with the fierce leader of a Mexican drug cartel over mineral rights to cartel-controlled land. How fierce a leader are we talking about? Dude shot one of his own men for a relatively minor infraction — i.e., not letting Tommy use the restroom. After that concise illustration of Tommy’s brass cojones, it came as little or not surprise in the second episode when he waved away a troublesome cop like a bothersome fly during… well, you couldn’t really call it a face-off, because Tommy hardly ever looked at the guy.

• • Right from the start, Tommy comes across as an unflappable badass who’s rarely fazed by anything, and greets each new day with a promise that, no matter what life throws at him, he’ll throw it right back. (Looking at himself in the bathroom mirror, he defiantly challenges: “All right, Monday — show me what you got.” Fairly quickly, however, he got what he asked for: As drug cartel minions loaded their latest shipment into a small plane on a remote stretch of Texas highway near the M-TEX fields, a massive trailer truck smashed into their truck (stolen from M-TEX) and the plane, thereby causing a fiery explosion. Which, of course, causes a crisis that Tommy must handle, largely because the road to the oil fields is blocked by the wreckage (and dead bodies).

• • Evidently, badassery must run in the Norris family. Cooper Norris, Tommy’s son, has dropped out of Texas Tech to work in the M-TEX fields because he wants to learn the business from the bottom up. His ultimate goal: He wants to run an oil company. Tommy isn’t exactly ecstatic about his son’s ambitions, but he did agree to get him an entry job on an oil field crew. Not surprisingly, this didn’t work out too well. Cooper was just a few feet away when a more experienced co-worker accidently set off an oil rig explosion that killed everyone on the scene but the newbie.

• • Tell the truth: You knew that big blow-up was coming just as soon as that other guy started trying to turn a rusted valve by hammering away on a wrench, right?. Fortunately, the wrench was too small for the job, so Cooper was sent to fetch a bigger one. Unfortunately, while he was away, a spark was set off by the hammering guy and — ka-boom! Cooper wound up in the hospital anyway, but that’s better than being a bunch of charred body parts.

• • Tommy fared somewhat better when, arriving on the scene after the big ka-boom, he used another hammer and a bigger wrench to turn off the oil flow. True, he did smash the tip of his pinkie with the hammer, but so what? When he finally agreed to drive to an emergency room — naturally, in the same hospital where his son was being treated — he simply snipped off the tip of his pinkie, much to his attending doctor’s dismay and disapproval. But hey, when you’re a landman, you don’t have time to sit around and get things patched up in a more time-consuming manner. Of course, this means we’ll be looking at Billy Bob Thornton’s hand throughout every episode left in Season 1, just to make sure there’s still a bandage there.

• • By the end of Episode 102, two things were clear about Monty Miller: He’s dangerously unconcerned about M-TEX Oil operating bunches of wells that would never pass OSHA inspections, and he’ll indulge Tommy only up to a point before he drops the “I’m the freaking boss here!” hammer. He’s a smooth-talking, slick-moving fellow who has the redeeming qualities of truly loving his wife Carri — so far, at least — and readily agreeing to Tommy’s suggestion that survivors of the men killed in the rig explosion receive massive payoffs. Of course, the latter may be just a CYA public relations move. Monty obviously knows how the game is played.

• • Meanwhile, Tommy has other family matters to deal with. Ainsley, his spoiled 17-year-old daughter, showed up to visit for a few days with her hunky high-school football player boyfriend in tow. And even after the boyfriend left — Tommy made the dude feel less than welcome, but it was Ainsley who drove him away by testing his love — Ainsley stuck around to sun herself by the pool, coax her dad into bringing home take-out, and generally  discombobulate any other man who sees her in scanty attire (or no attire at all). Meanwhile, Angela, her mother and Tommy’s sexy/flirty ex-wife, occasionally calls the landman to tease him with double entendres while she’s off vacationing with her new lover. How many episodes do you think we’ll get into Landman before she and Tommy are back between the sheets?

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  Billy Bob Thornton as Tommy Norris and Jacob Lofland as Cooper Norris.

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• • On the other hand, maybe Tommy will eventually hook up with Rebecca Savage, the M-TEX Oil litigator who flew in to survey the situation after the oil rig blow-up. Mind you, it may take a while — two or three episodes at least — for them to overcome their frosty animosity. But remember: It didn’t take Dawn Olivieri’s crafty Sarah Atwood to wrap Jamie Dutton around her little finger over on Yellowstone, did it?

• • Two other characters doubtless will loom larger in upcoming episodes — Dale (James Jordan), a grizzled petroleum engineer, and Nathan (Colm Feore), an oil and gas attorney — if only because (a) they are Tommy’s housemates, and (b) they appear capable of providing comic relief. So far, they haven’t gotten as many laughs as Tommy. But they haven’t lobbed as many F-bombs, either.

• • Tommy aptly describes himself as “a divorced alcoholic with $500,000 in debt. And I’m one of the lucky ones.” We’ll see just how long his luck will run out as we follow his misadventures in subsequent installments of this 10-episode series. It promises to be a wild ride.

  Photography: Emerson Miller/Paramount+