Landman

Taylor Sheridan has built an empire making television for the people coastal media forgot. Landman is that empire's newest flagship, and it's the most specifically industrial show he's ever made.

Billy Bob Thornton plays Tommy Norris, a petroleum landman turned VP of operations at M-Tex Oil, a mid-size independent drilling company in the Permian Basin. A landman, if you don't know the term, is the person who negotiates mineral rights, resolves title disputes, and handles the legal and contractual groundwork that makes drilling possible. Tommy is also M-Tex's fixer, moral compass, wisecracker, and surrogate parent to every roughneck on the payroll. He's not the boss. He's the person the boss calls when something is on fire, literally or otherwise.

The show is built on Thornton's performance, and that's a solid foundation. He gives Tommy the kind of worn-in intelligence that comes from decades of living hard and paying attention. Every line reading feels like a man who's heard every possible version of this conversation before. His one-liners are already legendary among Sheridan fans. 'You're not a rancher; you're an oilman who spends the money we give you on cattle,' he tells a landowner in the first episode. That kind of efficiency is everywhere.

The show's real subject is the American energy economy, presented without apology or hedging. Oil is good. Oil built Texas, funds families, heats homes, and powers civilization. The Permian Basin workers doing this work are portrayed with the same dignity Sheridan reserves for the Dutton ranch hands in Yellowstone: people who do hard things, know things city people don't, and deserve respect for both. This is not common in prestige television. Most oil-industry drama is environmental horror. Landman takes the opposite position and earns it with specificity.

The family drama surrounding Tommy is where the show gets more complicated. His ex-wife Angela (Ali Larter, doing solid work) is rebuilding a life. His son Cooper (Jacob Lofland) dropped out of Texas Tech to work on the rigs, and the father-son tension over that choice drives several of the best episodes. His daughter Ainsley (Michelle Randolph) navigates high school, boys, and a father who's everywhere and nowhere at once. These storylines have the organic messiness of a real family rather than the engineered crises of network drama.

Sheridan's critics, and there are some on the right worth taking seriously, point out that his female characters are often ornamental. The Guardian's review specifically called out the show's 'repellent attitude toward women.' I don't fully share that read, but I understand it. Demi Moore's Cami Miller is a more complex character than she initially appears, and her arc through the season is genuinely surprising. But the male characters do get the more interesting material, and that's a fair critique.

The cartel subplot, involving Andy Garcia's Gallino and the drug violence bleeding into Permian Basin roughneck culture, is gripping and historically grounded. The actual Permian Basin has real cartel presence. Sheridan doesn't invent this. The decision to show how oil money and cartel money occupy adjacent ecosystems is one of the show's most honest choices.

One brief scene in which Ainsley meets a potential non-binary roommate at TCU registration generated significant conservative commentary. The character (Paigyn Meester, played by Bobbi Salvor Menuez) is a minor presence, handled without advocacy. Sheridan doesn't make a speech. The character exists, Ainsley reacts awkwardly, and the show moves on. Conservative viewers who treated this as a red flag misread the show's overall posture.

Landman is not Yellowstone. It is smaller in scale, more procedural, and less operatically violent. But it shares Yellowstone's fundamental conviction: that working people in the American interior have a story worth telling, and that story does not require coastal approval to be valid. The second season, which premiered November 2025, added Sam Elliott as Tommy's father and deepened the cartel material. It is good television by any metric.

For VirtueVigil's audience, this is essential viewing. There is no other show on any streaming platform that portrays American fossil fuel workers as heroes of civilization rather than climate criminals. That alone makes it worth your subscription dollar.

Formula: Weighted Score = Severity × Authenticity Multiplier × Centrality Multiplier

🔴 Woke Tropes

Trope	Severity	Authenticity	Centrality	Score
Non-Binary Character Inclusion	3	1	0.5	1.5
Competent Female Professional	2	1	1	2
Diverse Oil Crew as Cultural Background	1	1.4	0.5	0.7
Female Corporate Takeover Arc	2	1.4	0.5	1.4
TOTAL WOKE				5.6

🟢 Traditional Tropes

Trope	Severity	Authenticity	Centrality	Score
Unapologetic Pro-Energy Worldview	5	0.7	1.8	6.3
Masculine Competence Archetype	5	0.7	1.8	6.3
Working Class Dignity	4	0.7	1	2.8
Father-Son Accountability	4	0.7	1	2.8
Rural Culture Without Condescension	3	0.7	1	2.1
TOTAL TRADITIONAL				20.3

Score Margin: +15 TRAD