There is no one who plays the world-weary working man in a white-collar job quite like Billy Bob Thornton.
On Paramount+'s engaging new drama series, Landman, his pissed off, cynic-with-a-heart-of-gold character is Tommy Norris, a crisis executive with fictional M-Tex Oil company. It's Tommy's job to troubleshoot M-Tex's crews of roughneck pump workers, securing leases from landowners allowing the company to pump oil from desolate swatches in the Permian Basin — an area in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico considered the highest producing oil field in the U.S.
That means Tommy does everything from negotiate a lease agreement with members of a Mexican drug cartel — while blindfolded and bound like prize turkey — to accidentally crushing the tip of his pinky finger while shutting off a valve to keep a burning pump fire at bay.
If only there was a female character drawn as well as Tommy in this series, Landman would transform from an entertaining TV drama to a captivating classic.
Making us care for a money-grubbing oil company
Tommy is the profane, chain-smoking glue that holds Landman's compelling story together. Admittedly, he doesn't look much like a white-collar guy here, shuttling between crisis spots in a looming pickup truck, a cowboy hat and a knowing scowl.
He's also a self-admitted non-drinking alcoholic (who doesn't count downing the occasional Michelob Ultra) moseying through a disaster-filled day with a worn-out, self-aware confidence. When his grown daughter marvels at his salt-of-the-earth wisdom, he tells her, "I spent all my life being wrong. I never forget the lessons."
This is a masterful bit of storytelling magic by co-creator and writer Taylor Sheridan – the wunderkind who co-created the hit show Yellowstone and lots of other testosterone-filled series. Based on Landman co-creator Christian Wallace's hit podcast Boomtown, the show manages a unique magic trick: getting us to care about a profit-obsessed oil company that Tommy admits is sending roughnecks to work dangerous wells that couldn't pass federal labor standards, ending the first episode Sunday with an accident that kills three of them.
As Tommy tells it, the oil industry is a dirty-but-necessary business that fuels everything from our cars to the clothes we wear and the medicine that keeps us healthy. And the only part of it Tommy doesn't have clocked cold is the part that involves his family – including a wild child daughter, even wilder ex-wife and an adult son determined to learn the business by working one of its most dangerous jobs, as a newbie roughneck.
On the surface, it's another of Sheridan's many drama series triumphs, harnessing Thornton's on-screen charisma to fuel a gutsy story about a modern-day oil boomtown. Like so many of his shows, it portrays a working man's culture from an area of life rarely highlighted in Hollywood, educating viewers on its subtleties while highlighting the stuff that binds us all.
But — like most of his other shows — it is also a very male culture. Which is where Landman misses the mark by a mile.
Too many of Landman's women are caricatures and male fantasies
The stark contrast between how working men are humanized in Landman's first episodes and how the women aren't made it tough to enjoy the many parts of this that work so well.
In the first two episodes, which debuted Sunday, the female characters are mostly empty caricatures. Heroes alum Ali Larter plays Tommy's volatile ex-wife Angela, who has to debate whether to leave a vacation with her current wealthy husband to see their son when he's caught in the explosion mentioned earlier. Demi Moore is Cami Miller, wife to Jon Hamm's oil company owner Monty Miller – we mostly see her swimming in a pool and lounging at gala dinners in early episodes. Michelle Randolph is Tommy and Angela's grown daughter Ainsley, who is beautiful, self-centered and often blithely unaware of how her sex appeal affects the men around her.
Just about the only female character shown working in the first few episodes – besides waitresses in local watering holes and coffeeshops – is Kayla Wallace's Rebecca Savage, a powerhouse lawyer sent to represent M-Tex. With razor sharp suits and a no BS attitude, she dominates by bringing more masculine energy than the men around her.
Sheridan is one of the most successful showrunners in TV today. Currently, he has created or co-created four series all airing new episodes at the same time, mostly on Paramount+ – Landman, Tulsa King, Lioness and Yellowstone (which is his only series on the Paramount Network cable channel, but on Peacock streaming).
When star Kevin Costner bumped heads with Sheridan over conflicts between filming Yellowstone and Costner's passion project western Horizon at the same time, guess who got written out of the show? This is true Hollywood power.
It's tough to imagine drafting actresses as amazing as Moore and Larter, only to leave them playing caricatures and male fantasies. So I'm hoping Sheridan will accept the challenge of creating female characters who exist outside the male gaze – beyond empty tropes, oversized emotionalism and calculated reflections of male energy.
Because, once he nails that, his series can finally be as strong creatively as they are commercially.
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