Summary
Landman Season 2 continues to boast incredibly fine performances even in the absence of a major plot, and in “Dancing Rainbows”, this is truer than ever. Billy Bob Thornton and (especially) Sam Elliott are both remarkable here.
Taylor Sheridan has always had an odd fascination with having his plots turn on totally random events. Sometimes it’s an errant bear — between Yellowstone and Mayor of Kingstown, events have been bear-related surprisingly often — and sometimes it’s a meth lab or a traffic pileup or whatever. But it’s definitely a trend, one that has manifested regularly in Landman since it has never had much of a plot. This seems to be changing in Season 2, but it hasn’t committed to that change yet, which is probably why Episode 4, “Dancing Rainbows”, opens with an M-Tex Global truck ploughing into a pickup parked by an oil well, a chance event that will probably come to define a chunk of the season’s plotting.
In typical Landman fashion, the driver of the pickup was parked in the way because he had looped a pipe from the exhaust to the truck cab to take his own life via carbon monoxide poisoning. The collision and subsequent flip kill the other driver. This immediately becomes Rebecca’s problem, since everyone else is inexplicably attending Tommy’s mother’s funeral, despite even her immediate family barely having known her. But Rebecca isn’t exactly positioned to do anything about it immediately, since she’s boarding a packed plane — she’s the only woman aboard, naturally — about to be buffeted by strong winds. For a split second, it seems like Rebecca, who conveniently takes a seat next to the most handsome guy on the aircraft, is going to be humanised a little through a fear of flying, but not quite. Her aversion to flying comes from being such a control freak that she can’t stand being unable to just get up and pilot the thing herself.
This is kind of a meet-cute. Rebecca’s terror over the ridiculously over-the-top takeoff makes her susceptible to the charms of her new neighbour and his flask of watermelon-vodka cocktail. But it’s also a neat capsule of the episode’s underlying themes, which turn out to be travel over extremely long distances and, fittingly, death. You can see the former in Rebecca’s plane ride, and the seven-hour road trip through the Texas panhandle taken by Cooper and Ariana, in one vehicle, and Tommy, Angela, Ainsley, Dale, and Nate (or is it Neil?) in the other. You can probably imagine how both journeys go, especially the latter.
The former is a little more complicated. Ariana is fresh from working her first shift at The Patch Cafe, which is basically equivalent to being sexually assaulted for tips, but it’s oil money, which means working there two nights a week is like working anywhere else for a month. Even a single mother like Ariana can make that work, even if making her relationship with Cooper work is a little more complicated. It initially seems a bit contrived that she’s accompanying Cooper, given they’re not really on speaking terms, but when she gets home to find him passed out on her porch, she offers to support him as he supported her. It’s just as well, since in a roundabout way, she’s the most important character at the funeral, since she’s the only one who gets Tommy and his father to open up.
Landman Season 2 keeps doing this, and in Episode 4, it does it remarkably. It presents an episode in which almost nothing is really going on, that threatens to be dull and empty and pointless, and then has very talented actors deliver award-worthy performances out of nowhere. Every word that comes out of Billy Bob Thornton and Sam Elliott’s mouths in “Dancing Rainbows” is golden, dripping with sincerity and pain and experience. The latter is particularly remarkable, as he so consistently was in 1883. I often don’t know the point of this show, but I’m equally often resigned to the idea that it doesn’t need one. Or, perhaps, that this kind of thing is the point.
But as I mentioned at the top, there is a plot brewing here. Cami, who got in on the death action earlier by sobbing at Monty’s grave, is the one largely keeping it moving by jumping into bed — figuratively — with Gallino. Sure, he wants Tommy to negotiate the deal, but if Cami tells him to, it’s not like he has a great deal of choice. We predicted this, since it was largely the only direction the series could take, but in a show that thrives so obviously on small scenes and in conversation, there’s no reason why that predictability should be an issue. In fact, as an excuse to have Billy Bob and Andy Garcia verbally spar more often, it’s quite the opposite.
When you look at Landman like this, as a skeleton to hang various interpersonal dramas on, it all makes more sense. The funeral of a character we’ve never met seems unimportant on its own, but look at what emerges from it, how tender the reconciliation between Ariana and Cooper is, and how it causes even Angela to become introspective enough to suggest that Tommy’s father move in with them. It’s a crazy idea, at least as far as Tommy’s concerned, but I struggle to think of a better one for this season, given how great Billy Bob and Sam Elliott have been together thus far.
And Another Thing…
Here are a couple of other notes from Landman Season 2, Episode 4 that couldn’t fit into the recap proper:
- Jerrell is in the hospital after being exposed to the gas leak in the previous episode, but he’s not in a great way. The exposure has damaged his eyes, which may prove to be permanent, and there’s a pretty wrenching scene when Boss and the others have to hold him down when the dressing is removed, and he flips his lid after realising he’s blind.
- Rebecca wakes up with a hangover after her plane ride, having spent the night with her new “friend” from the plane. Needless to say, she’s a lot less inclined to be receptive to his charms in the cold light of day, but there’s still a hint of a connection here that makes me think we may see this guy — whose name I didn’t catch — again.
