Warning: This post contains spoilers from “Landman” Season 2, Episode 2. Proceed accordingly.
Season 2 of “Landman,” Taylor Sheridan’s latest macho show about tough guys with wounded hearts, is treading the path the series began in Season 1, albeit with one key difference: This time around, the Paramount+ series has more of a focus on Tommy (Billy Bob Thornton) and his dysfunctional family. This week’s hour is Exhibit A.
Episode 4, titled “Dancing Rainbows,” delivers a harsh and emotionally turbulent trip down memory lane as the Norrises attend the funeral of Tommy’s mother, Dottie. (Read full recap here.) That means some of them meet Tommy’s morose, disabled, and resigned dad, T.L. (Sam Elliott), for the first time. The service is peaceful and brief; the luncheon afterwards quickly turns into a raw and devastating recollection of a woman, wife, and mother whose destructive nature ruined lives. As the Norrises and those accompany them sit around a restaurant table, Ariana asks why no one is talking about T.L.’s late wife. Tommy says he doesn’t have a memory of his mother that’s worth sharing. In the heavy silence that follows, though, he changes his mind and tells a haunting story.
We find out that Dottie was a raging alcoholic whom Tommy found naked, face down in a bathtub, when he was 14. After Tommy revived her — with help of a 9-1-1 operator coaching him through CPR — she kicked him in the head and went to the kitchen to pour herself another drink. That was the day when Tommy grabbed a backpack and left his childhood home for good. “There is no miracle involving my mother, other than her managing to die of old age,” he says in conclusion.
To contrast this hurtful memory, T.L. tells another one about Dottie as woman filled with life, wonder, and freedom, eventually outrun by demons.
We believe both of them.
Billy Bob Thornton and Sam Elliott show everyone how it’s done
Although “Landman” boasts a cast of many talented actors (including a criminally underused Demi Moore), Thornton and Elliott are on a whole other level in the restaurant scene. Their monologues are a masterclass. We’d wondered why Elliott was brought in for Season 2, in which his his immense talent was confined to the briefest of scenes. But Sherican & Co. clearly had an elaborate and worthy dramatic arc for the character, and Episode 4 finally showed us a flash of what the rest of the season could look like. We’re all in.
Every scene Elliott and Thornton share, every line they exchange, and every piercing look they shoot at one another commands attention. That moment about the late woman who affected their lives in vastly different ways impeccably captures their fractured yet unbreakable connection as father and son. The two characters’ views and mindsets are deeply opposed, yet they’ll have to learn to put aside their differences if they aim to repair their long-neglected relationship.
And the Norris men’s patching of age-old wrongs does, indeed, seem like the course “Landman” has chosen: Given that the episode ends with Tommy inviting T.L. to live with them and be part of his family’s life again, it’s fair to assume the rest of the season will put more emphasis on the two’s aching past and rediscovered bond. We can’t wait to watch.