‘Landman’ Season 2 Episode 8 Recap

It turns out he has no reason to worry. But Rebecca, now she’s worrying about real stuff, life stuff, having just been told off by her geologist hunk Charlie (Guy Burnet) once he doesn’t bend to her will.

“What a lonely woman you’re going to be,” he says.

Wow—not something you say to a woman, let alone your coworker who you also happen to be banging. Even if it is true, and she, so cold and severe up to this point, admits she thinks it is true. It’s her most vulnerable moment to date, actress Kayla Wallace’s stony face turning to emotional putty.

“I’m mad too, honey, but goddamn,” Tommy says by way of cheering her up, sort of.

Rebecca is sulking on the company Gulfstream, as one does, because Charlie’s words hurt. But she still has plenty of time to prove him wrong. She’s already proven to be much more than the tightly wound walking corporate mandate we made her out to be. She can get drunk on a private jet and have messy sex with a scientist! Who knows what else she’s capable of? With any luck, she (and Wallace) will show us in due time.

Stream Landman here

The Audacity of Touching Demi Moore

Who else is feeling lonely and pissed and in desperate need of a win? Cami (Demi Moore). She looks like she’s winning, of course, in a coat that could be more expensive than my annual income. But her friends won’t call her back—she guesses they don’t want a rich widow around their husbands. So she’s eating lunch (okay, drinking) by herself at a fancy restaurant bar when a “very handsome” (I would say rich-looking, but this is her story) man sidles up next to her. And touches her face.

This sends Cami into a makeup-smearing tailspin in the bathroom worthy of another (Oscar-nominated) Demi Moore performance in The Substance. It’s a full-on meltdown. But we don’t know why. It was a violation of physical boundaries with a stranger, but a fairly minor one. Was it the sheer audacity of hitting on her? Or the unsolicited reminder that she’s alone, a “rich widow” her rich female friends are scared of? Or that, underneath it all, despite having more than $200 million in assets in a trust that she couldn’t possibly spend in this lifetime, she wants more?

(Whatever is driving Cami mad, Moore is doing some of the finest acting of her career on Paramount freaking Plus. Emmys, are you watching?!)

So Cami asserts her power in a meeting with Tommy, Rebecca, and Handsome Geologist Who Tells Off Rebecca. The geologist is ostensibly here to talk Cami down from the $400 million drill to appease the insurance company. Because, well, there’s only a 10 percent chance that they’ll actually find the gas they’re trying to drill into. M-Tex Oil has a 90 percent chance of losing $400 million—at which point litigation with the insurance company will look rosy.

But Handsome Geologist does his whole geology thing, rhapsodizing about the “trillions” that lie below the surface of the ocean, waiting for them, if they can find it.

So she makes her decision: Drill, baby, drill! She won’t go down as just the rich widow. She’s willing to make gambles even her ex-husband Monty (remember when Jon Hamm was on this show?) wouldn’t touch. When Tommy offers that she could just sell and sit by the pool with cabana boys all day, she sets him straight.

“I don’t want cabana boys,” Cami says. “I want success. Get that for me.”

And Tommy is bummed to hear this pep talk. Because it means he’s almost certainly out of a job once M-Tex goes under. So he goes behind his boss’s back and straight to el jefe, quite literally: venture capitalist and cartel leader Gallino (Andy Garcia), hoping that once he tells him the loan to M-Tex will likely never be paid back, Gallino will cancel the funding.

But Gallino won’t back out on his deal to Cami, he tells Tommy. More to the point, the loan is guaranteed by royalties that will pay out regardless. If Cami goes down, she’ll go down alone. But maybe she won’t! Either way, Tommy correctly identifies the instinct driving her to make a seemingly reckless business decision.

“It’s called wildcatting,” Tommy explains. “Drilling on a hunch. Dreaming it out of the ground.”

‘Let It Ride’

Tommy doesn’t have reason to worry, as I said. Because his woman, the endlessly optimistic Angela (Ali Larter), stays winning no matter what. In her volunteer work at the retirement center (how did this job start, anyway?), she and daughter Ainsley round up the seniors and their nurse to hit the casino. They come in tow with $10,000 in cash from none other than Tommy, who’s promised “Saturday sex” in return.

Angela finds time on the road to give the nurse, Margaret (Deidra Shanell), a makeover. She smudges on eyeliner and cuts up the hospital scrubs into a crop top out of a Y2K-era Britney Music video: Voila, Margaret is now Hot Nurse (and her husband is more than appreciative when she gets home).

Once at the casino, led to the roulette table where the male seniors are quickly losing their money, Angela doesn’t sweat. She bets it all on black and loses. Then loses again. And again.

“Let it ride,” she says, over and over. “Let it ride.”

And then she wins. And wins again, and again. And suddenly that $10,000 from Tommy becomes over $300,000 in cash that she brings home and plunks on the table, a fortune just sitting there as she makes hot dogs for dinner for everyone. Tommy looks very, very pleased. Maybe not as pleased as T.L. (Sam Elliott) who, thanks to Tommy’s imaginative scheming, is enjoying physical therapy for his ailing body, provided in the pool by a local stripper. But still very pleased.

Notes from the Patch

• Cooper (Jacob Lofland) is nearly absent from this episode, and Ariana (Paulina Chavez) is entirely absent. More Patch Cafe, please!
• Here’s hoping the stripper-turned-physical therapist is a repeat player. T.L. could use some bliss late in life.
• One episode after saying he’s going to enjoy life, Tommy is looking like he’s on the cusp of heart failure.
• Ainsley describing Angela: “She’s like a superhero if superheroes wore Tom Ford.” Not wrong. All praise to Ali Larter, who brings nothing but delight to this show.
• I admit that, like Angela, I had no idea what “you’re based” means. But now I can confidently say, she’s based. As is Ali Larter.

Tune of the week: “If You’re Gonna Be Dumb, You Gotta Be Tough” by Roger Alan Wade.

Paul Schrodt is a freelance writer and editor covering pop culture and the entertainment industry. He has contributed to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, GQ, Men’s Health, The Hollywood Reporter, Los Angeles magazine, and others.