Summary
Landman hits a new high water mark in Episode 6, letting Tommy off the leash in a new way and raising the stakes for the remaining episodes.
Landman needed an edge, and Episode 6, “Beware the Second Beating”, provides it capably. It was obvious that Cooper’s savage beating wasn’t going to go unanswered, but I was a little surprised by the speed, ferocity, and completeness of Tommy’s retribution. This isn’t just a guy who makes deals for an oil company; it’s someone who is comfortable with the kind of violence and ruthlessness that he ends the episode fearing that his son “isn’t mean enough” to cope with. That remains to be seen.
This doesn’t happen until much later in the episode; close to the end, actually. It’s deliberately delayed so that we can finally see Tommy interact with Monty in person and see Angela be thoroughly outplayed by her current husband, Victor. This stuff is less visceral but will probably be more important long-term, at least the stuff involving Tommy and Monty. There’s still a very credible threat to deal with, after all.
The Cartel Conundrum
Tommy and Monty discuss a couple of issues, including the bereavement payouts that we briefly see Rebecca and Nate convincing the families to sign for. It’s Ariana who rightly points out that despite all the official-sounding legalese, this is essentially hush money. The amount being offered is enough that any financially struggling family would be foolish not to accept it, but doing so requires rescinding your right to ever point the finger of blame in the right direction – in other words, directly at M-Tex Oil.
But the bigger concern is the cartel. Tommy and Monty are both in agreement that it’s pretty bad for business if the crews are too scared to work the patch and having organized crime breathing down their necks is not going to fill them full of confidence. So, something needs to be done about this issue, though to be fair it isn’t entirely clear what that might be. Based on how Tommy handles Cooper’s attack (more on this soon), a part of me feels like he’s seeking out Monty’s permission to go scorched earth on the cartel with the company’s endorsement.
There could be another, more deal-oriented solution, granted, but we’ll have to wait and see. Either way it was nice to see Tommy and Monty interact face-to-face, even if the conversation is cut short by the news about Cooper.
Angela Gets Played
While Tommy visits Monty, Angela goes to see her current husband, Victor, to tell him that she’s leaving him. But her smug homecoming is undermined when she’s immediately ambushed by a couple of divorce lawyers who tell her that Victor has hired them to formalize the end of the marriage and distribution of shared assets – all of which default back to Victor.
She does get to keep the Bentley, to be fair. But even though Angela clearly never loved Victor in the first place and was only dropping by to tell him so, the experience throws her, especially when she’s taunted about having been replaced by a much younger scantily-clad woman. She strides in full of confidence and leaves in tears. But she does leave with the Bentley.
I think we’re done with this storyline now, and the worry about Cooper will probably give Angela enough to focus on that she won’t need to be reassured about how she was feeling when she left. In a roundabout way, it highlights how much more comfortable she is with Tommy even though their relationship is entirely dysfunctional. At least it’s authentic.
Tommy Gets Revenge For Cooper
The back half of Landman Episode 6, when Tommy learns what happened to Cooper and arranges swift retribution, is where the show really came alive for me. It gives multiple characters – Tommy, Angela, Ainsley, Ariana – an excuse to handle things in slightly different ways that are specific to them, but it also gives Tommy an excuse to be let off the leash in a way we haven’t quite seen before.
Ariana tells Tommy that it was Manuel who attacked Cooper, and it doesn’t take much for Tommy to get the name of Antonio and a brief idea of the other assailants. He has Boss assemble a crew, has the CCTV around the trailers turned off, and works with Sheriff Joeberg to bust in and beat Manuel and Antonio half to death. But that isn’t enough – he also makes sure that Manuel will be on the hook for a laundry list of crimes. “I’m taking 30 years of your life, and if you ever come back here, I’ll take the rest of it.” It’s an ice-cold line.
It caps off an ice-cold scene that I found genuinely quite uncomfortable. It’s a smart decision to leave whatever Boss and his boys did to Antonio off-screen, letting his terror in the aftermath give the audience all kinds of ideas instead. The efficiency with which Tommy handles the problem makes one wonder why Boss and his crew were hesitant to work the patch for fear of the cartel. It seems like they have everything pretty well figured out.
But perhaps it’s the bystanders, like Cooper, who are of real concern. Tommy’s lament that his son is ill-equipped to handle the patch caps off the episode on a thoughtful and melancholy note, implying that there’s going to be more violence coming and that Cooper will have to shed the things that make him decent to survive it.
