What To Know
- The Landman Season 2 premiere features chaotic and comedic moments, including Aynsley’s hilariously blunt college interview and a disastrous Norris family dinner that ends with Angela throwing plates at Tommy.
- Michelle Randolph talks about keeping a straight face during that interview.
- Ali Larter talks about Angela and Tommy growing as a couple.
[Warning: The following post contains spoilers for Landman Season 2 Episode 1, “Death and a Sunset.”]
Landman gets off to a lively start in Sunday’s Season 2 premiere, but by the end, there is a death at hand.
The episode begins with Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton), on a work trip, randomly lecturing a poor waitress on his doubts about the oft-stated adage about breakfast being the most important meal of the day. Someone in this show has to be a contrarian, and since Monty (Jon Hamm) isn’t around to speechify about how everyone’s misguided, that job now goes to Tommy. The now-widowed Cami (Demi Moore), meanwhile, takes up the mantle of trying to assuage the concerns of those bankers who might be spooked by her taking over for her late husband.
She gathers all of the bankers associated with M-Tex for a luncheon, and, after being bolstered by the rude comments of one of the young mistresses buzzing around all the money men, she delivers a warning shot to all of them: “The difference between me and Monty is, I’m meaner,” she says. “Test me and you’ll find out how much. Enjoy your lunch. I paid for it with your f**king money.” Is it enough to keep them from calling up notes and ruining the company? We’ll have to wait and find out.
The episode also shows Cooper (Jacob Lofland) following through on his own drilling expedition and striking liquid gold. He rushes to tell Ariana (Paulina Chávez) about the feat, but she’s more worried about getting her baby to sleep than seeing another of her men endangering himself in the field. Still, Cooper estimates he could be raking in as much as $10 million a year with the current gush rate, so he’s ecstatic all the same.
Then, we follow Aynsley (Michelle Randolph) and Angela (Ali Larter) to Fort Worth, where Aynsley is interviewing at TCU… and it goes hilariously off the rails. Though Aynsley is at her most polite and cheerful, the counselor is horrified when she reveals that the real reason she wants to go to TCU instead of Texas Tech is that she’ll be able to date football players at this school and she thinks it’s a disservice to humanity for a school to keep the hottest people apart. Though the counselor is adamant that she would gleefully deny her admission if not for her cheerleading priority status, Aynsley treats her with a warm smile and even promises to bring her a gift when she returns as a new student.
Of the hysterically awkward scene, Randolph said that she was able to keep a straight face and sunny disposition through all of the insults pretty easily. “Oh, I had so much fun on that with that scene. I mean, it challenged me in a lot of ways because it’s such a comedic scene and fitting that into the tone of the show. I was so in her headspace that I didn’t find it funny at the time, though. I was as sincere as she was in that scene,” the actress remembered.
The episode also introduces us to T.L. (Sam Elliott), who’s dedicated to watching the sunset as his one moment of peace, but is interrupted by the news that Dorothy has passed away back in Amarillo.
When the Norrises converge at the dinner table for Angela’s special white truffle cacio a pepe, Tommy ruins it by suggesting that her desire to buy a house in Fort Worth to be close to Aynsley at college is a product of her menstrual cycle. She immediately snaps and throws every plate on the table — save for those wisely scurried away by Dale (James Jordan) and Nathan (Colm Feore) before the wreckage begins — and confronts Tommy, who only gets out of a tongue-lashing by telling her her boobs look good. Yes, really.
Emerson Miller / Paramount+
When he then tells her they should “skip the crazy and go right to the sex,” she calls him out for speaking about her hormones. “Well, that’s a fresh perspective I had not considered,” he says, probably sarcastically.
Even if Tommy hadn’t made that sexist remark, though, Larter thinks that dinner was going to be a disaster anyway.
“I think she probably planned on doing it,” the actress said. “I mean, that’s why the scene, to me, is so interesting and complicated, because we see this oil and vinegar with this couple that he’s not hearing her, and he’s not seeing her worth and how hard she’s trying. And they play this game where, then he says something that makes her angry, and then she gets filled with rage, and then it explodes. But what we’re seeing differently, I think, with each of these scenes, they grow as a couple throughout the seasons, and by the end of it, you see these two characters sitting against the wall… At this point, they’re digging into, really, the meat of who they are: Are they going to make it if they don’t have these antics? What does real life look like for them and the Norris family if they get back together? So I think that it’s kind of a come-to-Jesus moment for this couple, really going, ‘Are we going to be able to make this relationship work if we don’t go into these high-octane moments?’”
Their conversation, and resulting kiss, is interrupted by a call, and though Angela’s furious by the distraction at first, she’s crestfallen to learn that Tommy’s just found out his mother died.
Landman, Sundays, Paramount+