Last season it seemed like every Landman episode featured an oil rig explosion, a plane crash, or your general mafioso-fueled chaos. But after the relatively tame premiere of season two, I was beginning to wonder if Tommy and the gang were settling in for a less pyrotechnic and more serene, subdued ride. Oh, how wrong I was. (Our regular reminder: Landman is based on the Texas Monthly and Imperative Entertainment podcast Boomtown, and TM is an executive producer).
This week’s episode began with Cooper getting soaked in oil: Another one of his wells has struck black gold and is spewing it across the sky. Meanwhile, Ariana is worried. Cooper won’t answer her calls, and the last time a man she loved didn’t pick up his phone while out in the fields, it was because he was engulfed in flames. At last Cooper returns home and explains to Ariana his latest success. Instead of celebrating, Ariana begins to cry. She doesn’t think they should keep seeing each other. “I’m so glad your dream came true,” she says. “But being rich isn’t my dream. It’s yours.”
It’s the next day, and we cut to Cami and her security guards, who almost beat up a man as he attempts to give Cami some legal documents. Turns out, she’s been served. Tommy jumps on a group call with Cami, as well as with M-Tex’s trusted lawyer, Nate (Colm Feore), and the team’s new, token-liberal lawyer, Rebecca (Kayla Wallace)—who, if you remember, Monty brought on full-time before his death. Apparently, M-Tex received an insurance settlement of $420 million after a well off the coast of Louisiana blew up; it stipulated that the money be used to drill a new well in its place. That new well hasn’t even begun construction—and worse still, Tommy and the gang don’t even know where the chunk of change went. The insurance company behind the settlement is now suing for damages.
This legal breakdown is all very wordy, but watching Rebecca rip Nate apart is worth the jargon. Nate questions her ability to handle the case, because she has no experience with offshore drilling. “You are on the wrong side of this company’s chain of command to be raising your voice at me,” she snaps back. “Don’t ever do it again.”
Tommy is heading toward Amarillo to arrange his mother’s funeral and picks up Cooper, who has been freshly kicked out of Ariana’s house. They stop by Cooper’s drill site. “This is mine,” he tells Tommy—a proud kid at show-and-tell. Tommy is stunned: “A new restaurant has a better success rate than blind drilling,” he says. The only hitch? Cooper didn’t have anyone review the contract he signed with Sonrisa, the company that’s financing his $40 million drilling project. Tommy calls Nate and asks him to dig up everything he can on them. Back on the road, Tommy passes off some sage relationship wisdom: “Your girl problem is a lot easier than your business problem,” he says. “All you gotta do is ask and listen, and remember what she said, and then make it come true.” Simple.
Let’s head over to the old-folks home, where Angela and Ainsley—who took a group of seniors to a strip club last season—are still volunteering. No pole dancing here: These days, they’re doing aerobics with the retirees (and pouring gin and juices). Unfortunately, Human Health Service inspectors show up. One of them makes the grave mistake of laying his hands on a visibly frustrated Angela, which leads to a knee in his junk and an elbow in his face. “The old-people police just got their asses kicked,” squeals an octogenarian, delivering the line of the night.
Later, in Fort Worth, Rebecca verbally shanks the aforementioned insurance company’s entire team of lawyers. It’s satisfying to watch, but the lead counsel plants a seed of doubt in M-Tex’s otherwise unassailable jurist. He essentially offers Rebecca a job; she says she’s happy where she is. “I highly doubt that,” he retorts as she walks away. He might be right—Rebecca and Tommy had some pretty big dustups in season one. Could she potentially be lured away?
Back to Tommy and Cooper, who finally make it to Amarillo. As they scope out caskets, Tommy gets a call from Sheriff Walt (Mark Collie): Angela and Ainsley have been detained (and ’cuffed). Tommy yells a bit and gets the situation sorted, picks out a coffin, delegates flower duties to a funeral worker, and hits the road again to see Grandpa T.L. They arrive, and T.L.’s outside, back waxing poetic about sunsets. He then calls his son a crook, admonishes his grandson for following in his crook father’s footsteps, and then begins to recall fond memories of his wife—memories unfamiliar to Tommy. “I remember when she was the brightest light everywhere she went,” T.L. says. “The sun had already set by the time I was born,” Tommy replies.
On the ride back to Midland, Tommy reveals to Cooper that his parents were both abusive. T.L. “worked himself into being a cripple” after years spent on rigs and drank to keep up with his wife, who abused cocaine. T.L. would then come to Tommy’s room to “beat his failures out of me.” Tommy says it’s probably for the best that he only ever saw Cooper on weekends after he and Angela split up and could thus avoid mimicking T.L.’s parenting faults. “I love you, dad,” Cooper replies. “You did your best, and your best is good enough for me.” For the first time in the entire series, Tommy is speechless; he looks as though years of pain and guilt have been lifted off his shoulders. It’s a genuinely heartwarming moment in a show oftentimes overstuffed with soapy ridiculousness. Damn if you’re not sniffling as Tommy lights up a cigarette, holding back tears.
But this episode’s not over. The next day, Nate hands Tommy all the intel he dug up on Sonrisa, the new company Cooper’s gotten into bed with. Smiling back from the page, right next to Sonrisa’s letterhead? It’s Gallino (Andy Garcia), the Mexican-cartel head who not only saved Tommy in the last season’s finale but promised the two would one day be friendly. Looks like that day has come.
“That’s your new partner,” Tommy tells Cooper. “And it’s a real f—ing problem, son.”
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.texasmonthly.com ’
