Landman- Season 1 Episode 2 Recap & Review

Dreamers and Losers

Episode 2 of Landman starts where we left off after the oil rig explosion that consumes the lives of everyone in Cooper’s crew, leaving him as the only survivor. While Cooper is devastated after the loss of his new friends and still stranded at the oil rig, Tommy and his pals, Nate and Dale, and his daughter Ainsley are having a leisurely but somehow disturbing morning for the viewers.

From Ainsley crying over Dakota leaving, to Nate gawking over Ainsley as she walks around the house and a misunderstanding in the bathroom that leaves Dale injured and Ainsley screaming all over the house. 

Tommy gets a call from Walt, who informs him about the explosion, and he rushes out, calling Monty on the way. Monty’s reaction shows he is under immense stress about the plane crash, and now he must deal with the blowout issue. Tommy arrives at the scene and sees Cooper in the ambulance.

However, he is seemingly less concerned about Cooper’s welfare and more worried about whether a valve was shut off. He springs into action, asking Walt and the firefighters to step back as he shuts off the valve. Tommy huts himself but takes time to enjoy a beer and a cigarette before asking the company’s fire crew to head to the location and then drives off to the hospital. Meanwhile, attorney Rebecca Falcone lands at the airport ready to handle the current woes affecting M-Tex oil company.

At the hospital, Tommy calls Angela to inform her about Ainsley’s break-up with Dakota and Cooper’s hospitalisation. He denies surgery to reattach the tip of his finger and chooses to cut it off with a pocket knife, leaving the doctor horrified. He asks the doctor to arrange for a stitch-up while he steps out to see his son. On the way, he gets a call from Walt telling him about the bodies found at the oil well.

In the ER, Tommy shows no sympathy to Cooper, who is clearly distraught about the sudden death of his friends. Instead, he lectures him about being selfish. He encourages him to rethink his career choice, or else the next time he has to approach a family to talk about the settlement after a horrific accident, the recipient will be Angela. 

Next, Tommy calls Monty, who is at an athletic competition for his daughter. Tommy informs Monty about the dead crew and suggests making a settlement of a large sum of money to each as compensation. Tommy gets into an argument with a police officer as he waits for Walt to pick him up so they can head to the victims’ families together. On the way, he calls Nate to prepare the necessary documents and send them to accounts. Walt and Tommy arrive at Medina’s home, where the whole family is gathered.

Tommy then heads to the bar, where he has another flirty call with Angela, which ends with her saying she will be coming over to see Tommy and the kids the following morning. Meanwhile, Rebecca settles at the hotel and heads to meet Tommy at the bar.

She suggests shifting focus from the plane crash to the blowout to minimise exposure. Tommy agrees to take Rebecca to the incident site, but they argue about faulty equipment below OSHA standards and risking workers’ lives. Rebecca wants to speak to Cooper, but Tommy deflects, saying she can wait until he leaves the hospital. 

On the way home, Tommy calls Monty and expresses displeasure for sending Rebecca, saying she is out to get him. He reminds Monty that none of his wells can pass any OSHA checks due to poor standards.

Monty tells him that he will look into the issue to figure out who the attorneys sent and also warns Tommy to never raise his voice at him again since he is the boss. Tommy receives two more calls on the ride home. One is from Ainsley asking him to bring her a burger and fries, and the other is from Angela insisting on Tommy asking her to come to Midland to help care for the kids. 

Tommy arrives home later that night and enjoys dinner with Ainsley. He tells her about Cooper quitting school to work for him, and Ainsley calls Cooper a loser. Tommy reminds us that dreamers come to work at the oil patch nowadays, not losers. The next morning, Tommy picks up Cooper from the hospital, and on the way home, he insists that he wants to work as a landman like his father. 

Tommy mentions that for every one Monty, there is a hundred Landman to show his son that becoming a landman is not a lucrative career. Cooper says that the difference between Tommy and Monty is that Monty did not quit, which angers Tommy, and he stops the truck.

He fires back at Cooper, saying that the difference between him and Monty is that he did not have a trust fund, so he chooses to bleed out. Cooper insists that he wants to run an oil company someday and wants to understand how every aspect of it works. 

At the end of the episode, Cooper asks Tommy to set him up with another crew. Tommy reminds him that he will be blamed for what happened to the previous crew, but Cooper insists, and Tommy promises to find him in another crew. 

The Episode Review

After the cliffhanger ending in the gripping first episode, this second episode offers some answers. However, the second episode slows its pace and concentrates more on character-building by showing us more of Monty and Tommy’s family affairs.

By the end of the episode, we know less about the drug deal gone wrong in episode one, and it seems like Rebecca, the lawyer, wants to sweep the incident under the rug by shifting focus to the explosion. Is the explosion just an accident, as Tommy thinks, or is there foul play? 

Sadly, Cooper lost his crew. Though it is a traumatic experience, he is still hoping to learn the oil business. I wish Tommy applied some tough love to his daughter too. The scene where he throws away food because she asked was annoying and frustrating. She needs to understand her privilege and do better.