The bitter taste we got of TL Norris, at the top of Landman Season 2, didn’t tell the whole story.
But here in Episode 5, that story arrives like 104° heat on a Texas Wednesday, and everybody’s wearing black. It’s the funeral for Tommy’s troubled mother, known as “Dottie,” in his hometown of Canadian, way up in the Panhandle as you head toward Oklahoma. It’s a place sometimes called “The Oasis of the High Plains.” It’s also the place Tommy walked away from at 14 years old, with a bloody, busted nose, from where his alcoholic mother kicked him after he learned over-the-phone CPR to revive her. TL wasn’t around, just like always. He’d spend a year in the work camps, never come home even once, which Tommy says was out of fear. “He was too weak to leave her,” he tells the gathered at a post-funeral lunch, and pulls at his necktie. “So I left all of ‘em.”
But while Tommy was confronting his past, Rebecca Falcone saw her life flash before her eyes. On an M-Tex corporate plane that’s more like a party bus, with oil and gas guys pounding Bud Lights as the jet performs a short-runway, high headwind TTL, or takeoff rated thrust, Rebecca makes the acquaintance of Charlie (Guy Burnet). He works the rigs, too, but with a lot more charm. And he offers Rebecca a swig from his thermos as defense against the control issues she has with flying. Charlie’s got vodka and watermelon juice in there, with a touch of simple syrup to go with his Simple Minds haircut. And later, after they’ve landed, after she has awoken at his place, Rebecca will also discover that Charlie’s got aromatherapy discs in his shower.
Everybody made the funeral trek. Tommy, Angela, and Ainsley, joined by a scrubbed Dale and black cowboy-hatted Nathan. And in his own truck, Cooper, who was joined at the last moment by Ariana. She was determined to be there for him, as he was for her. And Ariana becomes instrumental, since she draws out of TL part of the man he once was, before the decades of regret and the uncaring creep of time. He is charmed by the young woman, who he correctly senses is no stranger to funerals. And looking at her next to Cooper, TL also understands his grandson doesn’t even know what kind of game he’s in. With warmth and a wink – watching the old man’s emotions come to life is also why you hire Sam Elliott, he’s incredible throughout this episode – TL backs up what Ariana already told Coop earlier in the ep. He can sad puppy dog his standing with Ariana, or he can listen to her, learn from her, and pledge to be better. And if Cooper plays his cards right, TL adds, “She might even tell you the rules.”
TL’s way with Cooper is true, as is his love toward Ainsley, who he hasn’t seen since she was 5. He’s gracious with Angela. And while the funeral is full of stinging silences, and Tommy won’t bridge a lifetime’s worth of bad blood with one lunch at Canadian’s version of The Patch – his father orders the corn dogs – what’s done is done. Underneath all their combat, Angela cares deeply for Tommy. She sees TL’s ease with his grandchildren, even though he doesn’t know them. And she builds an equation in her head, deciding the sum of all these parts is resolution.
We’ve suggested it a couple of times this season, that the elder Norris would escape being forgotten, would avoid dying alone as the sun goes down, and it’s Angela who finally makes it happen. Tommy is at first apoplectic – “Are you out of your fucking mind?!” – then resigned, the way Tommy always gets with harsh news. He just knocks his hat back and pivots, especially when it’s about obeying his wife’s wishes. TL will come to live with the Norrises in Midland, or wherever the family ends up in the M-Tex executive level extravaganza.
Cami went to a cemetery, too, but not in Canadian. They placed Edward Montgomery Miller’s headstone, and she visits her husband’s fresh grave with a cigar and a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle. (“You can have this again.”) It’s decision time, and though she tells Monty it’s hard not to be mad at him, the grief that roared out of her last episode has been replaced by pragmatism. It’s time to protect his legacy. Their company. Cami tells her assistant she’s selling the Millers’ enormo-mansion, and she meets Gallino for a business lunch. That business with the gas well in the Gulf? The one M-Tex got sued for not drilling? Which might have financed Monty’s last wildcat streak? Cami asks Gallino to finance hundreds of millions in experimental drilling.
One thing Cami doesn’t ask is where Gallino’s funding comes from. Nor does she flinch when he says it’s not because she’s a woman that he wants to finalize their negotiation with Tommy. Cami lets Gallino go on a tangent about how he’s a snake, snakes only eat other snakes, she’s not a snake, and Tommy’s a hawk, which also eats snakes. That’s fine. He can weave metaphors, suggest he’s protecting her from the darker arts at work behind his largesse. She owns M-Tex, and selling her mansion to finance this loan from Gallino is the right play to buoy the entire business. Cami is not a snake, but she’ll shake a snake’s hand if it gets the job done.
“Listen Pop, second chances don’t come around that often. And this one ain’t ever comin’ around again, for either one of us.” TL is taken aback when Tommy arrives at his facility the day after the funeral with a plan to take him home. But the shock on his face is from habit. There is hope dawning there, too, maybe for the first time in decades. He’s not sure if he deserves this chance. Maybe Tommy isn’t sure, either. But they know Angela was right. Tommy pushes his father’s chair out of the frame at sunset, toward their second chance together.
Landmania for Season 2 Episode 4 of Landman (“Dancing Rainbows”):
- We haven’t mentioned the music in Landman Season 2 just yet, but when it doesn’t sound like the Georgia Satellites, who open Episode 4 with their 1986 single “Keep Your Hands to Yourself,” it sounds like loyalty. Feels like we’ve heard Charlie Crockett’s deep lonesome baritone in every episode, including this one (“Hard Luck & Circumstances”). The Texas musician’s Sheridan affiliation goes back at least to Yellowstone, and proves the creator can be just as loyal to an act as he is to his actors, who either call him Shakespeare or have become everyday Sheridan-O-Verse Players. Like James Jordan as Dale, who we also know as Two Cups in Lioness, or from supporting roles in three more Sheridan shows plus two of his movies.
- And while one family comes together after years of trauma, hard luck and circumstances threaten the future of another. The saga of Jerrell (Elijah Collins), the member of Boss’s workcrew injured in the H2S leak, continues here in Ep 4. He’s recovering in the hospital and stable, but with sensory damage including to his sight. Boss has to tell Jerrell it’ll be OK while knowing it sure as hell might not. “How’s a man supposed to take care of his family if he can’t see?”
Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.
