“The oil and gas industry makes $3 billion a day in pure profit, generates over $4.3 trillion a year in revenue. It’s the fourth largest industry in the world, ranked ahead of food production, automobile production, and at $1.4 trillion the pharmaceutical industry doesn’t even crash the top 10. The industries ranked ahead of oil production are all completely dependent on oil and gas. The more they grow, the more we grow. That’s the scale. That’s the size of this thing, and it’s only getting bigger…”
If Taylor Sheridan does not own a big chunk of stock at Paramount+, then he should be a major shareholder, because he’s bringing in more bucks than everything else combined except for Star Trek. I’ve enjoyed every one of his shows to date some more than others. I think that Landman has to be the best of them yet. Yellowstone has been the great amber-captured jewel of the kingdom for over five years, but his split with Costner brings all of that to an early end, with the exception of spin-offs. I think I’ve found the new champ, and it’s Landman. Landman is absolutely as good as television gets or has ever gotten. Paramount has released this first season on Blu-ray now, and if you’re not planning on adding it to your collection, then you need to get back up, move that rock you hit your head on, and order it now. Or wait for the paramedics and hope for the best. Up to you.
“…But before any of that money is made, you gotta get the lease. You gotta secure the rights and lock up the surface and babysit the owners, babysit the crews, then manage the police and the press when the babies refuse to be sat. That’s my job. Secure the lease, then manage the people. First part is pretty simple. It’s the second part that can get you killed.”
I’ve often expressed my opinion that Sheridan is a crappy storyteller. The second half of Yellowstone‘s final season is proof enough of that. Yet he continues to produce compelling drama that you just can’t stop watching. If ever there was a content king who invites binging, it’s Sheridan. He’s a bad storyteller, but he has a rare skill that makes the rest of it moot. He has the ability to create awesome characters, and he places them into the most authentic environment anyone has ever done, and most importantly, he knows how to cast. He has a natural gift for writing stuff that will only work for one actor. Then he secures that actor because the character is so good, and before long you’ve forgotten the story. You just can’t tear yourself away from these characters. Casting Billy Bob Thornton as Landman Tommy Norris is nothing short of brilliant. Billy Bob doesn’t exist for as long as you are watching. Tommy is so natural and authentic that I can watch him doing this all day, and that’s pretty much what I did here. And you should watch this for that alone, and you got triple your money’s worth.
Tommy is that guy. He works for a billionaire named Monty Miller, played by Jon Hamm. He has the money, but he relies on Tommy for everything else. His health is getting worse, and his wife, Cami, played by Demi Moore, is just as dependent on Tommy. Tommy has to deal with workers in a dangerous business. When someone makes a mistake, a bunch of people die horribly. He’s dealing with drug cartels that he has to try to ignore to keep the black gold flowing. And these guys are pretty cocky. They steal the company’s plane to transport drugs. They land on the oil company’s private road to transfer them to a van, and when a tanker blows through and blows it all up, they come to Tommy wanting to be compensated for the lost drugs. I mean, these guys don’t play. So Tommy gets the crap kicked out of him almost on a daily basis while putting out what are often literally fires.
Tommy has a new problem, as if his life wasn’t complicated enough. His teenage daughter wants to live with him in the house he shares with his rather uncouth chief engineer, Dale, played by James Jordan, and the company’s lawyer, Nathan, played by Colm Feore, who’s a friend of us here at Upcomingdiscs. We’ve talked with him a couple of times, and I hope to do so for this show. The daughter is super sexually active and about to give Nathan a heart attack. We soon learn where she gets it from when his ex-wife, Angela, played by Ali Larter, also wants back in. His son, Cooper (Lofland) is a newbie who wants to learn the business to own his own someday. His first day on the job he makes a mistake and people get killed. It doesn’t help that he falls in love with the widow of one of those lost workers who has a young child. She’s Ariana, played by Paulina Chavez. So, guess what? Like father, like son. He gets the crap kicked out of him every day as well. In just 10 episodes this father and son team get beat up more than James Rockford did in seven years.
As you can guess, there is plenty of action here, and it doesn’t stop there. Monty hires a shark lawyer to lowball the families of the dead workers, which goes against everything Tommy believes in. Her name is Rebecca Falcone, and she’s played by a Sheridan returnee Kayla Wallace. Like the cartels, she doesn’t play, and she bumps heads with Tommy … you guessed it, pretty much every day. It’s a lot going on in just 10 episodes. It all ends with Tommy coming face to face with the big boss of the cartel he’s having trouble with. Gallino is played by Andy Garcia, and from just the little tease we get in the last episode, I’m telling you, these guys have some explosive chemistry, and I can’t wait to see that relationship go full tilt in Season 2.
Jerry Jones makes a cameo of himself. How ’bout them Cowboys? Whatever. I’m a Vikings fan. But football is a background theme here. Tommy’s daughter is playing around with the local high school quarterback, and the show takes place in the same town as Friday Night Lights. Thornton played the coach in the film, followed by Kyle Chandler in the series. There is a very big effort made to blend into that show’s environment, particularly by the music. They capture that show’s climate quite well. It’s a hell of a rollercoaster ride, and worth every minute of it.
You get all 10 episodes on four discs with the usual Sheridan behind-the-scenes extras. I’ve never been left with wanting more so badly as with this last episode. I’m told it could be more than a year and as long as two years for the next season. “I think I’m gonna take up drinking again.”
