LANDMAN: Episode 1.1: “Landman”

LANDMAN is a 2024 business crime drama series co-created by Taylor Sheridan, the mastermind of YELLOWSTONE and TULSA KING. In West Texas, Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thorton) is a middle-aged manager for a large oil company oil looking to exploit the recent rise in oil prices created by the Biden Administration. Tommy handles the new oil leases and manages workers in the oil fields, which the workers call “the patch.” Divorced, Tommy has a fragile relationship with his ex-wife and his teenage daughter. Meanwhile, his college graduate son, Cooper, just started working for one of Tommy’s foremen in the patch.

Episode One begins with Tommy trying to negotiate a “surface lease” with a local drug cartel that has bought land from an American ranch family. Tommy’s oil company, M-Tex, still owns the oil rights under the land, but now Tommy has to secure the surface lease in order to build new oil wells, roads and living quarters for oil workers on the land. The cartel leader doesn’t understand the economics of what’s happening, so he’s had his men kidnap Tommy to force him to leave. However, Tommy explains to the leader that the oil company can come after the man’s family and alert the federal drug enforcement agency to put a substation nearby, thereby ending the cartel’s drug business in that area. Also, Tommy tells the cartel leader that, once he signs the surface lease, Tommy’s oil company will pay a regular monthly fee to the cartel and build roads in the area. Finally, Tommy impresses on the man that the oil company is much bigger and more powerful than the drug cartel but adds that they both sell things to customers who depend on their product. So, they have the same business model. The cartel leader finally sees that Tommy is making sense. So, he signs the surface lease, and lets Tommy go.

Six months later, one of M-Tex’s oil delivery trucks accidently slams into a small plane and a white van sitting in the middle of the road. The men in the plane and the van were unloading bags of cocaine or heroin from the plane to the van. A big explosion occurs, setting the men, the plane, the van, and the drugs on fire.

Tommy already knew that the plane was stolen from his company a while ago. So, Tommy travels to the crash site where the local sheriff, Walt, is handling things. Walt asks Tommy why he didn’t report the stolen plane to him. Tommy explains that oil company vehicles get stolen mysteriously all the time and usually end up back with the company later. Besides, he reported the stolen plane to the “airplane police” and didn’t think it necessary to report it to the local police. Tommy at first asks Walt to write in his report that Tommy had told him about the stolen plane the same time he informed the oil company’s insurance carrier. When Walt says he can’t do that, Tommy asks him to include in his report the date Tommy told the federal airplane police about the stolen plane, and Walt agrees.

Meanwhile, it’s Tommy’s turn to babysit Ainsley, his 17-year-old daughter. The visit goes south once Tommy meets her shallow “jock” boyfriend. The two teenagers openly talk about sleeping with each other, much to Tommy’s chagrin. Tommy also gets upset when they go to a local high school football game, and the boy puts his hand on Ainsley’s rear end while they talk on the sidelines.

At the same time, Cooper, Tommy’s son with an engineering degree, works his first day in the oil fields that Tommy manages. Cooper learns just how dangerous the job can be.

Will Tommy be able to cope with all the chaos swirling around him?

The pilot episode of LANDMAN is a slam dunk. The writing is sharp, the direction is solid, and the acting across the board is fantastic. The cinematography is also top notch. The writers did a great job showcasing Tommy’s personal struggles with running a risky enterprise. The lynchpin to LANDMAN’s brilliance, though, is Billy Bob Thornton’s performance. Thornton is able to express his “gritty executive” side while being a flawed father who cares for his children. His performance carries the entire program, including its moral content.

LANDMAN has a strong pro-family outlook. Tommy Norris is an anti-hero, but he’s a divorced father who cares deeply for his children. He also still loves his ex-wife but knows that that ship has sailed. In one scene, he jokes with his daughter that, if her mother were mute, he’d still be back together with her.

Also, Tommy tells Ainsley that dating and marriage is filled with many hurdles. He also tells her that true love will only happen with the last person she dates. In this way, he reminds her that, when it comes to boyfriends, she should save herself for the real deal. He also manages to convince her in that scene not to have intercourse with her current boyfriend. In another storyline, Tommy’s son tries to prove to his father he can handle the physical demands of oil extraction.

The first episode shows that Tommy values hard work and persevering under immense pressure. However, it also shows that he works in a rough business that forces him to make some compromises. In fact, he’s the virtual “man in the middle” caught between the demands of his job, the demands of his boss, played by Jon Hamm, and the need to make a decent living. Future episodes probably will exploit this conflict and Tommy’s relationship with his two children. How those issues will develop, however, is impossible to tell by just one episode (there are 10 episodes in LANDMAN’s first season).

The biggest downside to LANDMAN is its foul language and some lewd innuendoes. The first episode has 100 obscenities and profanities, half of which are “f” words. The episode also has references to the sexual situation between the title character’s precocious and rebellious 17-year-old daughter and her new boyfriend, a state football hero. However, that situation is saved by the father’s argument for chastity and his sensitive treatment to his daughter at the episode’s end. One could argue that LANDMAN is the Texan equivalent of BREAKING BAD. The first episode shows that, like the character in BREAKING BAD, the title character and his son work in a tough, dangerous business. As he says in the beginning, securing the surface leases is simple. It’s managing the people that can get you killed.