Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Landman’ Season 2 on Paramount+, where Billy Bob Thornton and Demi Moore’s oil executives face new challenges

The second season of Taylor Sheridan’s Landman on Paramount+ starts out shortly after the death of Job Hamm’s character of Monty Miller, which shifts a lot of things in the life of Tommy Norris, played by Billy Bob Thornton. For one, he’s now the president of the company. For two, Monty’s wife Cami, played by Demi Moore, will have an active ownership role instead of just being a co-signer on a contract. But there are other changes in Tommy’s life that might throw him for even more of a loop.

LANDMAN SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: Nighttime views of oil refineries around Fort Worth, TX. Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton) is sitting in the outdoor terrace of a hotel restaurant, smoking a cigarette.

The Gist:  Tommy is in Fort Worth for two reasons. One is that, after the death of M-Tex owner Monty Miller (Jon Hamm), Tommy has been named president and Miller’s wife Cami (Demi Miller) has taken a more active role as the owner of the corporation. She’s hosting a luncheon with fellow oil executives, customers and contractors to introduce herself. The other reason is that his wife Angela (Ali Larter) and daughter Ainsley (Michelle Randolph) are at TCU so Ainsley can do an admissions interview.

During the luncheon, Tommy fields demands to renegotiate mineral rights and land use contracts, with the idea that Cami Miller has no idea what she’s doing and won’t be as ruthless as Monty was. Tommy fiercely defends his best friend’s wife, and also tells the people who are getting twitchy about M-Tex’s future that with him running things, it won’t skip a beat.

For her part, Cami makes sure she lets everyone at the luncheon know that she’s not going to be messed with. “The only difference between me and Monty is that I’m meaner,” she says.

In the meantime, Tommy and Angela’s son Cooper (Jacob Lofland) is managing a new oil field that will make him a lot of money, which he will need for Ariana (Paulina Chávez) and her baby.

Ainsley completely flubs the interview, but it’s a formality to her getting in TCU, given she’s coming in with the cheerleading squad. The Norris family flies back to Midland on a M-Tex private jet, with Angela already talking about buying property in Fort Worth to be closer to her daughter. Tommy already is bristling at how Angela wants a lifestyle upgrade, given his new position with M-Tex, but things come to a head when she makes dinner at home and brings a $2800 white truffle to the table.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Before the first season of Landman, we said it’s Yellowstone with oil, and we maintain that. It also makes sense because it was created by Taylor Sheridan and Christian Wallace.

Our Take: What we liked about Landman in its first season is still there, and what we didn’t like has been modified, making for an overall stronger show in its second season.

What we liked was Billy Bob Thornton, of course. There are few things that his weary-but-funny acting style can’t make appealing to watch, and seeing him as Tommy still trying to wheel and deal even though he’s now essentially in charge of M-Tex is entertaining as hell. But it’s even funnier when Tommy and Angela go at it, with Tommy noting how much money she spends when she’s in “the current arc of your cycle,” and Angela essentially pushing back by throwing plates around their dining room.

In fact, having Angela back in the fold takes care of one of the issues we had with the show in the first season, where both Angela and Ainsley were treated as more as sex objects than anything else. This season, Ainsley’s airheadedness is mined more for laughs, as we see during her interview at TCU, and with Angela and Tommy back together, she can take advantage of how powerless Tommy is when he’s in the presence of the women in his life.

That also applies to Cami, a role that’s well suited to Moore. It seems like she’ll be far more involved in this season than she was in the first, given Cami’s prominent new role at M-Tex, and the way she shows how powerful she can be is that she’s going to take advantage of being underestimated by everyone around her, from the male-dominant oil industry to the young gold diggers who accompany those men to functions like her luncheon. One man she can count on is Tommy, who warns her that he’s going to get the good deals and she’s going to get pitched the crappy ones, simply because she’s not Monty.

What we are looking forward to seeing his how the down-to-brass-tacks Tommy deals with not being the landman he once was, and having the pressure of everything involving being in the C-suite of M-Tex come down on his head. He’ll also be dealing with his father, T.L. (Sam Elliott), who is a bit adrift after the death of his wife, and cartel head Gallino (Andy Garcia), who owns land where M-Tex is drilling. With all of that on his plate, we expect to see even more sardonic observations from Tommy this season.

Performance Worth Watching: Billy Bob Thornton is even more sardonic in Season 2, which is a great thing. But we’re also looking forward to seeing how he and Sam Elliott share scenes as father and son (and, yes, we know they’re only 10 years apart in age).

Sex And Skin: None in the first episode, though we can’t imagine there won’t at least be references during the season.

Parting Shot: Tommy tells Angela that his mother died.

Sleeper Star: We’re not quite sure where Jacob Lofland’s character Cooper is going. But it seems like he’s settling down with Ariana and is about to cash in on an oil well he seems to own.

Most Pilot-y Line: During her TCU interview, Ainsley tells the chagrined interviewer that she’s cheering for TCU and not Texas Tech because TCU doesn’t have a policy banning cheerleaders from dating football players. Her theory is that it’s wrong to stand in the way of the perfect babies they could make.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The second season of Landman is stronger than the first, mainly because the women on the show are in a stronger position than they were last season, giving Thornton’s Tommy all he can handle.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.