‘Landman’ Season 2, Episode 6 Recap – One Heck Of A Road Trip

I’ve realised what it is about Landman that I find so fascinating and peculiar. Originally, I mistook it for the show not really having a plot, but in Season 2, especially, that isn’t quite accurate. At some point in Episode 6, “Dark Night of the Soul”, I figured out what it is. Landman is comprised of all the bits that, in other shows, would happen between big moments. It’s the long drives and the pointless phone calls and the getting-to-know-you evenings that occur after the deals have been struck. It’s what the characters do after they get home from work, not just what they do at work.

The reason this is so obvious in “Dark Night of the Soul” is that it’s an hour in which nothing happens beyond the in-between bits. It has the laidback tone of a filler episode, enough that you barely notice it contains the most significant moment of the season thus far, with Tommy and Gallino finally getting into bed together officially. Of course, Gallino might not even be the villain that Tommy is assuming he is. The real enemy might be much closer to home.

But how this manifests is a long drive for Tommy and T.L., who asks to accompany him on his trip for lack of anything better to do, and Cooper continuing to jump through hoops for the privilege of asking Ariana to marry him. Angela and Ainsley turn a gym session into a weekend in Fort Worth, and Rebecca runs back into her one-time beau, Charlie Newsom, who turns out to be a geologist she’s going to need to work with pretty closely, both professionally and, it turns out, personally. But all of these things exist in the space between major plot points. They’re the supplementary scenes that would usually be left out, given pride of place.

Once again, Sam Elliott is wonderful in Landman Season 2, Episode 6. His presence is a joy, and there’s so much pleasure in watching him interact with anyone, though especially Billy Bob Thornton, that he could carry the whole hour just sharing his sage opinion on things. Tommy needs to hear his wisdom more than he’d readily admit. The father-son dynamic works so well because it’s so fraught, so full of pain, and T.L. wears that pain like he might have once worn the Stetson he admires at a horse show while waiting for Tommy to shake hands with Gallino. It’s such a lovely, lived-in performance that it elevates all of the character dynamics around him.

Tommy has no choice but to accept the deal, because Cami is eager to accept any offer Gallino presents. She’s desperate, not just because M-Tex doesn’t have any walking-around money, but because she’s trying to prove a point to Tommy. President or not, he’s not really in control. It’s a strained dynamic that Gallino himself picks up on later. Tommy confesses that Cami doesn’t trust him because she thinks he’s a loser – in the ‘08 financial crash, he lost everything and had to go and work for Monty, who was once a peer. To Cami, if he lost his own fortune, that means he’s liable to lose hers. But she doesn’t understand enough of how the business works to understand Tommy’s value to it.

Gallino rightly points out that if the sharks in the business world sense Cami’s mistrust of Tommy, it won’t be long until they persuade her to cut him loose. And that’ll mean no more private jets for Angela, and no more shopping sprees for Ainsley. Perhaps Tommy finds it so difficult to bond with T.L. because he can sense how close he is to becoming him.

This all gives Cooper’s storyline an additional pang of resonance. Far from being the black sheep of the family, Cooper is perhaps the only one who has his life figured out. He’s in love with Ariana, and he knows that his life needs to revolve around her. His interactions with her dad, and here with the mother of her late husband, ring with his authenticity. He’s the most satisfyingly uncomplicated character in the show because he’s the only character who really admits how he feels.

This is pretty much the opposite of Rebecca, who treats a personal life like some kind of infectious disease. But Charlie is winning her over, and it’s nice to see her finally exhibiting some vulnerability. Since she wants him to lead the offshore gas drilling platform that M-Tex is obligated to set up on a radically short timeframe for insurance purposes, there’s still plenty more wooing to be done. It’ll probably be good for her. She needs to lighten up.

But what a wonderful show Landman is, so replete with terrific performances and moments of uncanny truth and wisdom. Even when it seems like nothing’s happening, the secret is that everything is happening, all the time, and all at once. We’re over halfway through the season, and I barely even noticed.