Summary
Landman grinds to a halt in Episode 7 and puts its focus in some unusual places. It’s a shame after the momentum gained from the previous outing.
Landman grinds to a halt again in Episode 7, which is a shame considering it was really starting to get going. “All Roads Lead to a Hole” sidelines the overarching storylines for a bit to focus completely on the Cooper clan as they adapt to life on the patch, but as well as a classic case of Sheridan going off the rails with pointless and reiterative subplots, there’s a bit of sting taken out of the more intriguing dangers with the cartel. It’s all a bit of a disappointment, really.
As ever, it’s hard to recap because little is happening that’s truly meaningful. I’ll try and break it down in roughly chronological order but you can summarize it thusly: Angela is too impulsive, Ainsley is too promiscuous, and Tommy is too busy. If you’re thinking that none of those are new developments, so am I. So is everyone.
Anyway, I think the biggest Sheridanism of this outing is Angela and Ainsley visiting a nursing home because they’re bored, getting all the residents drunk, and hosting a game of Cards Against Humanity. What is this all about, really? Sure, there are serious points to be made about how a society treats its elderly by shutting them into the equivalent of human filing cabinets until they eventually die, but I don’t think this is the show to make those points. Instead, I think we’re just giving Angela and Ainsley something to do because they have no real involvement in the main oil plot.
Inexplicably, Angela is invited back the next day. I have no idea whether she’ll go or whether it’ll matter. But this is enough to keep her busy. Ainsley, on the other hand, has a very reiterative little plot where she attends a patch party, meets a local quarterback, and immediately throws herself at him until Tommy arrives and slaps him around a bit. You can even tell through Ainsley’s demeanor that none of this will matter. It’s just another annoyance for Tommy to deal with. (Also, that giant drunk quarterback would have killed him in reality.)
Cooper fares better. He’s still all messed up from the beating he suffered at the hands of Manuel and his goons, but he’s released from the hospital, at least, and goes to stay with Ariana, mostly at her insistence. Ariana doesn’t really mention what happened to Manuel and neither does anyone else, so we’ve probably seen the last of that subplot. Instead, Cooper does the gentlemanly routine with Ariana, demanding that she doesn’t sleep on the couch and promising to keep his hands to himself if she shares the bed with him. He keeps that promise, to be fair, but Ariana puts the moves on him instead.
They’re interrupted, though, by the arrival of Nate and Rebecca. Remember, Ariana refused to accept the hush money that M-Tex was offering, and this is holding up the whole deal. Nate and Rebecca intend to apply some pressure here, but they have no idea Cooper is there. When he limps out of the bedroom, Ariana asks him to take a look at the forms, and Rebecca, rather oddly, claims that they’ve been looking for Cooper. What’s all that about?
This is one of the few ways in which Landman Episode 7 ties in with the overarching storytelling. The other is Monty making a new deal for more oilfields despite the concerns Tommy has already raised about the cartels. This is doubtlessly going to lead to an escalation in that conflict, and we do get a brief glimpse of that in “All Roads Lead to a Hole”. But if I were Tommy, I’d be much more annoyed with Monty trying to line his own pockets at tremendous risk to Tommy and the crews. I do feel like there’s some inevitable tragedy in this show’s near future, but I also worry that the scattershot storytelling might have scared off most of the audience by then.
