Landman

The Black Gold Blues

Taylor Sheridan has become the undisputed architect of the modern American mythos, a storyteller who has single-handedly repopulated the cultural imagination with cowboys, convicts, and kings of industry. Yet, with *Landman* (2024), the sprawling ambitions of his television empire collide with the gritty, unglamorous reality of the Permian Basin. If *Yellowstone* was an operatic tragedy about land ownership, *Landman* is a bruised, dusty noir about what we rip *out* of that land. It is a show that oscillates between profound industrial horror and soap-opera absurdity, held together almost entirely by the magnetic, world-weary gravity of Billy Bob Thornton.

Visually, the series is a testament to the oppressive weight of the West Texas sun. The cinematography does not romanticize the oil fields; it presents them as mechanical scars on the horizon. The pumpjacks bow and scrape like iron insects, and the camera lingers on the grease, the sweat, and the terrifying scale of the machinery. There is a tactile danger here that feels genuine. When a drug-running plane collides with an oil rig in the pilot episode, the resulting inferno isn’t just a spectacle; it feels like the inevitable violent consequence of a world run on combustion and greed. The aesthetic is suffocating, effectively mirroring the entrapment of its characters, who are all—rich or poor—shackled to the volatility of the market.

At the center of this industrial storm is Tommy Norris (Thornton), a "landman" or crisis executive whose job description is essentially professional sin-eating. Thornton is the show’s beating heart, delivering a performance of slumped shoulders and razor-wire wit. He plays Norris not as a master of the universe, but as a man eroding in real-time, a functional alcoholic who knows he is merely the janitor for billionaires like Monty Miller (Jon Hamm). Thornton brings a soulful exhaustion to the role that elevates the script’s often repetitive machismo. When he speaks about the "boom," he sounds less like a businessman and more like a priest describing a curse.

However, the narrative machinery often jams when it steps away from the rigs. The show struggles profoundly with its human element, particularly in its depiction of women. The criticism surrounding the writing of Norris’s daughter, Ainsley, is hard to ignore; she is frequently reduced to a sexualized caricature, a distracting flaw that undermines the show’s attempts at serious drama. Similarly, the domestic disputes with his ex-wife often descend into shrill melodrama that feels disconnected from the high-stakes corporate espionage.

The only relationship that rings with genuine emotional truth is the one between Tommy and his son, Cooper (Jacob Lofland). In sending his son to work the most dangerous "roughneck" jobs to "learn the business," Tommy enacts a brutal form of love—preparing his child for the throne by first breaking his back. These scenes possess a quiet devastation that the rest of the series desperately chases but rarely catches.

Ultimately, *Landman* is a fascinating, frustrated beast. It wants to be *There Will Be Blood* for the streaming age—a serious examination of the geopolitical and ecological costs of energy. But too often, it settles for being a high-budget pulp fiction, relying on shock value rather than nuance. It survives, and occasionally thrives, because Billy Bob Thornton is incapable of a dishonest moment, even when the world around him feels constructed from clichés. He grounds the series in a rough-hewn reality, reminding us that behind every barrel of oil, there is a man selling his soul one crisis at a time.