Landman Premiere Recap: Billy Bob Thornton Does the Dirty Work in Taylor Sheridan’s Oil Drama — Grade It!
Every oil company has a landman, we learn in the premiere of Taylor Sheridan’s new Paramount+ drama. The person in this position secures the company’s rights to drill land, keeps the employees in check and generally keeps things running — even if he has to do things that aren’t exactly legal to make that happen.
Tommy Norris (played by Billy Bob Thornton) holds that role in Landman, which premiered Sunday, and he’s good at it. Within minutes of the series’ premiere, he’s dealing with a drug lord’s plane that has landed on one of the oil company’s private roads and cause a giant, ugly, fireball of a lethal accident with a tractor-trailer.
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One of the bigger problems associated with the accident, aside from the deaths? The plane belongs to the oil company and was stolen, but Tommy never reported it, because apparently this type of thing happens a lot in his biz: Equipment goes missing, then later comes back. Tommy works the local sheriff, asking him to fudge dates a bit on the report, then quickly gets to work having a new road built. He also calls his boss, Monty (Mad Men’s Jon Hamm), to let him know what’s up. Oil stops for no one!
Tommy’s dedication to his job, of course, has had its price. He’s not close with his son, Cooper (Justified’s Jacob Lofland), who has chosen to be the “worm” — or the lowest-ranking member — of a crew that works on oil derricks owned by the company that Tommy works for. Tommy is closer with, though no more of an active parent of, his 17-year-old daughter Aynsley (1923’s Michelle Randolph), who lives with his ex-wife Angela (Heroes’ Ali Larter).
But when Angela goes away with her new husband, Aynsley and her boyfriend, Dakota, come to stay with Tommy for a few days. She’s ready to form her college plans on Dakota’s dreams, but after he shows no interest in being near her after she makes it clear they’re not going to have sex on her dad’s couch, she tearfully realizes he’s a giant turd and climbs into bed with Tommy as she cries.
Cooper’s crew gives him a hard time, making him climb really high on the derrick as a form of initiation. But he slips on the way down, seriously cutting his hand as he falls. They take it a little easier on him after that, inviting him to dinner and generally accepting him as one of their own. That’s why it’s all the more tragic when, the next morning, the derrick they’re working on explodes while Cooper is grabbing some equipment from the truck. As the flames engulf everything, the premiere cuts to black.
Now it’s your turn. Press PLAY on the video above to hear Thornton and Larter talk about their characters, grade the premiere via the poll below, then hit the comments with your thoughts!
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