Landman Episode 1 recap: Strange business and strange daughters

Taylor Sheridan’s Landman is finally here, and in Episode 1, ‘Landman’, we’re introduced to Tommy Norris and the explosive oil industry. (Warning: spoilers ahead!)

Had enough of cattle? Taylor Sheridan has now turned his attention to the Texas oil industry, and according to Landman Episode 1, it’s a perilous and unpredictable world.

Starring Billy Bob Thornton, the new TV show follows Tommy Norris, a landman for M-TEX Oil whose job is to negotiate land leases for oil tycoons. As he puts it, the land is the easy part – it’s the people that are dangerous.

Before we can think about what comes next, let’s recap the first episode, along with that explosive cliffhanger.

Tommy strikes a new deal in Landman Episode 1

The first episode kicks of with Tommy tied up in a mysterious hangar in the middle of the desert with a bag over his head. He’s being held by a gang of drug dealers, whose boss soon arrives. Tommy doesn’t panic, not even when the boss shoots one of his own foot soldiers.

Instead, Tommy explains why he’s there. He’s a landman – someone who works for M-TEX Oil who’s been sent to negotiate a surface lease for the land the gang owns. As he explains it, they own the land, but M-TEX Oil has the mineral rights, which allows them to drill for oil there.

Paramount

Tommy and the gang leader eventually reach an agreement, on the basis that both parties leave each other to do their business. M-TEX Oil won’t contact the DEA, and they’ll also pay to pave a road for them and the dealers to come and go as they please. Tommy succeeds at getting them on the same page and explains that they’re both selling products; Tommy’s is just bigger.

The leader signs the lease and lets him go. As Tommy gets in his car and leave, he explains all via voiceover. The oil industry makes $4.3 trillion a year in revenue, but someone has to be the bridge between the landowners and the oil tycoons. This is Tommy’s job.

This is Landman.

Trouble on a Monday

Six months later, a plane is landing on Tommy’s new road on the land previously negotiated. When it arrives, drug dealers quickly load packages onto a small van. However, they don’t see the large truck hurtling towards them.

It doesn’t brake in time, and the truck slams into the plane and van, causing a dramatic explosion and killing everyone.

Elsewhere, Tommy’s son Cooper is waking up for his first day on the oil patch. Before first light, he leaves the “man camp” and gets called into the truck of Luis, Armando, and Elvio – three workers who have been instructed by Tommy to help make his son a “roughneck”. (Their first day starts badly when Cooper makes the mistake of ordering a latte at the coffee window.)

At home, Tommy has breakfast with his pals Dale and Nate, with the latter reminding him that he has to be in court for a deposition at 11am sharp. But no time for that, because Tommy gets a phone call about the plane! Tommy actually reported the plane as missing six weeks earlier, so he races to the site of the crash.

When he gets there, Sheriff Walt is pissed that Tommy didn’t initially call him about the missing plane. But Tommy doesn’t care – he’s got 4,200 barrels of oil that need transporting through that road, asap! He calls his team and instructs them to come out and build a new road around the crash, but not before asking the Sheriff if he would kindly backdate his police report. (Or at least note that the FAA was notified.)

Tommy’s family drama

Tommy is trying to get through to a man named Monty Miller when he gets an irritated FaceTime call from his ex-wife Angela. Thus begins Taylor Sheridan’s strangest family dynamic to date. Angela asks Tommy to take care of his daughter, Ainsley, for the weekend while she’s on vacation with her new husband. Why? Because she wants to stop her daughter from having sex with her heartthrob football player boyfriend.

The idea of preventing his daughter from jumping into bed is enough to get Tommy to agree instantly. He finishes out his incredibly flirty call with Angela by discussing Cooper’s first day on the oil patch.

Paramount

Soon after, he gets through to the suited-and-booted Texas oil titan, Monty Miller. Monty’s having a high-rise lunch with some fellow big-shots, but he stops to help Tommy organize some legal help for their new plane troubles.

On the oil patch, Cooper is having a rough time. The fellas are playing a prank on him, asking him to climb up to the top of the well and fetch a completely fictional valve. On his way back down, he slips and falls. Luckily he’s wearing a harness, but it takes a lot of coaxing from Elvio to get him back down.

At lunch, Tommy meets with a lawyer and his landowner client, who want to sue Tommy for damages to their land caused by a fire. Tommy tries to argue that it was a natural disaster, while the client argues over faulty drilling equipment. Smooth as he is, Tommy offers them $300,000 to avoid going through the official surface damages process. (Fronting the money as a “solar lease” so he can justify the payment.)

Dakota Loving

Tommy meets Ainsley at the airport, the two greeting each other happily. But uh-oh, Ainsley has managed to sneak her boyfriend onto the trip. His name is Dakota Loving, and he’s about as big of a jerk as his name suggests.

On the way home, the three stop at a football game, where it becomes clear Dakota is something of a minor celebrity. He flirts with other cheerleaders, which doesn’t seem to concern Ainsley in the slightest. When Tommy presses her about whether they’re being safe, she tells him sweetly that…well, Dakota is never allowed to finish in certain places. Just on certain places.

Needless to say, Tommy’s expression is one of abject horror. Later in the stands, he watches as Dakota gropes Ainsley in front of the crowd, and his annoyance grows.

At the end of a long hard day on the job, Cooper gets invited into Luis, Armando and Elvio’s home for dinner. They attempt to teach him a little Spanish, and he learns Armando was once in prison and also has a daughter. Cooper then almost chokes eating spicy tacos.

Please, make it stop

Back at home, Tommy and Ainsley’s bizarre back-and-forth continues when he separates her and Dakota for the night. Standing in front of her father in her underwear (yes), she asks if she can please sleep with Dakota on the couch, since she’s never actually slept with him or woken up in his arms.

Under the promise that they won’t do anything more, Tommy relents. But when Ainsley goes into the living room and lays out the terms to Dakota, he looks baffled. The idea of not being able to go any further is completely off the table for him, and he refuses to let her sleep on the couch without anything else.

Ainsley goes back into Tommy’s room, sobbing. Tommy then comforts her and assures her that Dakota doesn’t know what he’s missing out on. (Please God, let this be the last time we see Dakota Loving.)

The next day, the boys are hard at work back at the oil well. They ask Cooper to run and fetch a 24-inch pipe, which he struggles to find. While he’s searching, Luis, Armando and Elvio are hammering at a pipe, which slowly hisses, releasing gas.

Paramount

When Luis strikes another blow, the hammer sparks a flame. In seconds, the well erupts in a fiery explosion, knocking Cooper back into the air and onto the ground.

Landman Episodes 1 and 2 are available to stream on Paramount+ now.

For more, check out where to watch Landman. You can also learn about what’s going on with Taylor Sheridan’s other shows, like 6666, The Madison, and Yellowstone Season 6.