Oil and masculinity: both often crude, both considered toxic in the twenty-first century. So it only makes sense that the two are tied as tightly as bolts on a rig in “Landman,” neo-western television auteur Taylor Sheridan’s latest hit series on Paramount+. At the center of the show is Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton), a irascible and eccentric but ultimately good-hearted advisor to a reckless oil field billionaire, Monty Miller (Jon Hamm). Where Sheridan’s sprawling “Yellowstone” franchise focused on the landed class, “Landman” depicts the much less glamorous world of middlemen toiling for the rich. Tommy drives his beige Ford F-350 pickup truck, emblazoned with the logo of Monty’s M-Tex company, across a dusty, flat expanse of the West Texas Permian Basin, nicknamed The Patch. His job as titular landowner is to secure leases for oil extraction, manage Roughnecks’ staff, and deal with the local government and police. As he’s racing to solve a plethora of crises – leaking oil pumps, encroaching drug cartels, mysterious highway accidents – he’s the show’s existentialist antagonist, armed primarily with wit and Thornton’s sarcastic flow of cigarettes and expletives. In “Landman”, oil pollutes the landscape in the same way masochism pollutes the soul, resulting in fights, brawls and broken families. But according to Sheridan’s statement the poison is also a balm: oil leads to wealth, and wealth enables escape from oil fields; Masculine posture, deployed judiciously, creates a sense of power over other men as well as respect for the few elite women who have the courage to become lawyers or chief executives.
For traditional prestige-TV viewing, the politics of “Landman” are harmful. The show is completely anti-environment; In an infamous scene from the first season, Tommy makes a factually absurd argument that wind turbines are as bad for the planet, if not worse, than oil wells. The screenwriting plays fast and loose with gender stereotypes; Tommy’s ex-wife, Angela (played by Ali Larter), with whom he resumes a relationship, is a kind of red-state manic pixie dream. milfShowing off her cleavage, taking to the streets, and acting crazy when she’s on her period. (“I want a Midol and a fuckin’ margarita,” she groans in one of the many hit-or-miss one-liners that punctuate the script’s more naturalistic dialogue.) But something about “Landman” has made it a sleeper hit even among liberal audiences, especially with the recent launch of Season 2. The show is whispered about carefully, lest anyone’s enthusiasm be offended: I’m kind of , , , in this?? My colleague Inkoo Kang wrote in August that its initial season demonstrated “how much of a good time a conservative show can be.”
Part of the appeal lies in getting a voyeuristic glimpse of the workings of a particular industry full of money, not unlike how watching “Succession” gives a behind-the-scenes look at a media merger. We see profit-sharing splits of oil leases, refurbishing of old wells, and lobbying confabs where rich bosses in cowboy hats make handshake agreements. “Landman” is based on the so-called podcast “Boomtown,” whose creator, Christian Wallace, is a co-creator of the series, giving its depiction of the oil business a journalistic frisson. The show’s aesthetic choices also complicate its apparent enthusiasm for extractive capitalism. Drone shots depict a barren land adorned with ever-rotating pumpjacks against a sunset haze, reminiscent of an Edward Burtynsky photograph or a Werner Herzog documentary. The soundtrack combines recognizable country hits with Andrew Lockington’s sweeping guitar compositions that are reminiscent of post-rock band Explosion in the Sky. These artistic flourishes are artisanal juices drizzled over the storyteller’s chicken-fried steak, melding their flavors to the benefit of both.
Ultimately, the show’s success may depend on the charismatic power of its central character, who articulates the mood of our moment. Thornton, as the debt-ridden and alcoholic Tommy, pulls hangdog faces and looks just as weary with the state of the world as the rest of us feel. Thornton has embraced the physical realities of late middle age to such an extent that it seems almost daring – his skin color, his beard clean, the clothes he wears practically wafting sweat and oil and tobacco smoke through the screen. There is nothing aspirational about him apart from his attitude of charming fatalism. As he laments at the beginning of Season 2, after being harassed and nearly killed by drug smugglers on Monty’s land, “Life took its big dick out and smacked me over the head.”
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