Regardless of how you feel about Taylor Sheridan right now, ‘Landman’ is great TV

Taylor Sheridan wrote her latest TV series, Farmerspecifically for Billy Bob Thornton. “I will write it in your voice,” the Yellowstone said the creator, according to Thornton. The actor revealed in a Q&A after the premiere that he couldn’t believe it Sheridan until he finally received the manuscript. “I read it,” Thornton recalled, “and I’m like, ‘Boy, you got my vote, didn’t you?'”

IN Farmer (which debuted its first episodes today)Thornton plays Tommy Norris, a middleman for a Texas oil company. For fans of Sheridan’s work, Tommy is very similar Jeremy Renners character i Mayor of Kingstown. Instead of brokering deals between Michigan prisons and the gangs outside its walls, Tommy negotiates on behalf of the oil company with the workers in the field. He is a problem solver. Tommy Norris is also a loudmouth, a self-proclaimed divorced alcoholic, and yes, a character clearly written with Billy Bob in mind.

When Farmer’s pilot episode begins, Tommy couldn’t give a shit that he’s being held captive by a Mexican cartel. Sheridan’s new favorite TV enemy kidnapped our Farmer, put a sack over his head and tied him to a chair in the middle of nowhere. Even with a gun pointed at his head, fhv Tombstone actor threatens the cartel that the oil company will “bust them like a piñata” if their deal falls through. He negotiates to save his life. Oil is a drug, just like what they push across the border. “You’re selling a product that your customers depend on,” he tells him. “It’s the same. Ours is just bigger.”

Tommy monologues as he drives back home, which you should get used to by the way. There is very of driving in Farmer. “The oil and gas industry makes $3 billion a day in pure profit,” he explains. “It is the seventh largest industry in the world, ranked ahead of food production, car manufacturing, coal mining, and – at $1.4 trillion – the pharmaceutical industry does not even crack the top ten. The industries mentioned above oil and gas are completely dependent on oil and gas. That’s the size of this thing, and it’s only getting bigger.”

It cannot be understated how bad all that is for the country. Limited resources like oil and gas are helping to destroy the planet’s climate at alarming rates, but the benefits of the oil business are largely untouched in Farmer. That’s probably the best. As hard as it is to ignore, the facts of the case are not important to Farmer’s history. Tommy is just a man trying to find his place in a system of chaos. In Texas it is like that. So it’s Tommy’s job to secure the lease for the land in the oil company’s name and then make sure all the workers do their jobs. “The first part is simple,” he says. “It’s the other part that can get you killed.”

Working on the oil patch is a dangerous job. Most of the company’s employees are ex-cons. They pay oil workers $180,000 a year to bang old wrenches against pipes that hopefully don’t explode in their faces. It’s a field day every time an OSHA employee sets foot in Texas. still, Farmer isn’t it The The wages of fear. There is no time to really discuss ethics all this. In fact, the company pays Tommy to ensure that it never reaches the media discourse. Keep the oil flowing and the workers happy.

Tommy’s autonomy allows him to act as one of Sheridan’s capitalist cowboys in the 21st century. He vacillates between 1 percent lawman and Texas layman when the situation suits him best. His boss, Texas oil titan Monty Miller (Jon Hamm), is equally apolitical in his view of the American oil business. That’s just how he made his fortune – the same as everyone else.

Who else participates in Farmer?

The rest of the supporting cast are mostly all directly related to Tommy. His 20-year-old son, Cooper (Jacob Lofland), starts his first day at work on the oil patch. Ainsley (Michelle Randolph), his 17-year-old daughter, is played by an actress a decade older than 17. She also played Jack Dutton’s fiancee on 1923. Now she’s a teenager figuring out life while dating high school football prospect Dakota Loving (Drake Rodger). He is handy – and a walking red flag. When Tommy forbids sex in his house, Dakota refuses to spend time with Ainsley unless they’re together. So it looks like the guy won’t even survive the first episode.

Tommy also spends a lot of time visiting his ex-wife, Angela (Ali Larter from Heroes), exclusively over FaceTime while he’s driving. James Jordan from Lioness is also in this show. He is a petroleum engineer named Dale and one of Tommy’s housemates. A lawyer named Nate (Colm Feore from The Umbrella Academy) also lives with him. They hang out in the kitchen and shoot the crap out of old Landman before he goes to work.

What does the Farmer do?

As is the case with Lioness season 2—another Sheridan series currently airing on Paramount+—the Yellowstone the creator refuses to let the plot just develop naturally. Farmer going full throttle. Without warning, two smugglers quickly try to move a ton of cocaine from a van to a small plane as a massive truck barrels down the road towards them. The driver is dead with his foot on the gas, so he crashes into the plane and blows up the whole operation. Dead bodies everywhere. Cocaine in the wind. A new problem for Landman to solve.

Tommy tells the local sheriff that the plane was stolen from their company weeks ago. Now Monty hires smart lawyers to fly in from town and explain how one of their planes ended up in pieces as part of a botched drug deal. Oh, and there’s also the dead guy from the truck. What was that all about?!

Meanwhile, the oil workers spend the day disposing of Tommy’s son. It’s Cooper’s first day on the job, and he’s extremely green. He could have finished college and earned his degree in geology, but for some reason he dropped out to work in the oil field. Armando (Michael Peña), an oil crewman, picks him up at dawn with his friends.

They take him to a drive-thru coffee stand called Babes N’ Brew, where girls in pink bathing suits hand out black coffee to crew members. Cooper orders a latte, so one of the girls calls him “an aristocrat.” The guys complain. “We don’t have time for a latte!” they shout as the cars behind them honk. “You just ordered the most complicated shit.” Cooper will have to get used to plain old coffee, even if he doesn’t like the taste. “It’s not about the taste, it’s about the fuel,” Armando’s uncle tells him. Then he throws Cooper’s latte out the window. I hope there are a million more metaphors about oil on this show.

Later, they fuck him some more by making him climb a tall tower. The gang teaches him incorrect Spanish phrases and laughs as he struggles to eat spicy food. You’ve seen this kind of character in Sheridan shows before. He has a Jimmy from Yellowstone mood.

The next morning, something goes wrong at one of the oil rigs. They are working on a pipe when Armando’s uncle realizes he has the wrong size tool. He tells Cooper to go back to the truck and get it. Cooper isn’t sure which one is right, but the whole rig explodes when he turns around. It’s safe to assume that everyone is dead. Cooper just witnesses it, helpless.

The oil rig explosion is a perfect opening to Farmer. It’s a simple problem for Tommy to show what he actually does for a living, and it’s incredibly devastating. I can’t comment too much on the whole plane crash fiasco because it feels like an insane problem to jumpstart the series. Hopefully, which Farmer moving forward, we avoid the overcomplicated plots and get more to the heart of the show. Working on these oil rigs is hell on earth and the Farmer is hell’s guardian.

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