Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 375: The Landman Cometh (w/ special guest Kate Aronoff)

Episode Date: January 9, 2025

This week we're joined by writer Kate Aronoff to discuss the new Taylor Sheridan show Landman, in all its glory. We get into the strange, uncanniness of the show, its racism and sexism, its similarities to other Taylor Sheridan shows, and the myths it tells about the oil industry and thus about America. Read Kate's article about Landman here: https://newrepublic.com/article/189696/landman-paramount-plus-oilmen-myths Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Okay, welcome, Trillbilly family. We are joined this week by Kate Aronoff. Did I say your last name right, Kate? You did. You got it right. We've gathered here today to discuss a topic that I'm very eager to discuss, and I think America is very eager to discuss. And that is the Taylor Sheridan show, Landman,

which has one episode left But Kate when I was talking to you earlier today, you were like should we wait till next week until the finale or what? and I was like well, I Don't think I need to see the finale because I think I know at this point basically what's gonna happen But I also felt like the fires in LA kind of provide a very useful way of diving in to the mythologies of This show and also you had just published a piece in the New Republic about the show so several things have aligned is what I'm saying, yeah, I am I

watched a bunch of landman in a row to write that piece after not engaging either with landmen or any Taylor Sheridan properties. Yeah. And then in preparation for this, I spent most of yesterday writing a piece on the insurance industry in California. And then as my wind down while I was making dinner caught up on the most recent episode And I think my brain turned to mush by the end. I don't think I had thoughts or feelings just blank space between the ears

particularly a particularly bad episode Which ends with the very pregnant pregnant poignant image of a suburbanite just like wasting a coyote in a field and like the landman is looking at the coyote and he's like having this like what does it all mean man like you know we're out here in the wilderness we're drilling oil it's up is it you I think are more well versed than me in the Taylor Sheridan universe is this how they all work is there is are they all this stupid okay you won't go back to the beginning I'll take you back to sons of anarchy which while not

explicitly a Taylor Sheridan property kind of where he cut his teeth as an actor and a writer. Basically Yellowstone, which is his marquee product, is just Sons of Anarchy with cowboys. Like the same tropes, almost really the same storyline. There's like the hot son that inexplicably gets his family and in harm's way all the time even though He's trying to protect them of course You know and of course then there's you know all sorts of racial tensions Yeah, I mean this show also has a hot son Who?

Mean well okay on Taylor spectrums. He went a little scragglier this time Yeah, he did on the top hot side But less hot. He's an okay. He's an okay son. Yeah, but it is still the same trope Where you have a wayward son a prodigal son almost? Who is like slumming it for a little bit because like okay? What are the things about this show that I find fascinating and we can peel into the Plot we can you know we can dive into the plot we can peel it apart whatever

But one of the things that's fascinating about the show is that halfway through the season They do a complete like rug pull on you. We're like the first five episodes You're like oh this guy's a land man for a company. But then all of a sudden halfway through it's like, wait, he's actually the general manager? Like he actually runs the company? Like my friend, one of my best friends from high school works for an oil and gas company. And I was taught, he visited me over the Christmas break

and we were talking about this. And I was like, would there ever be a situation where you would have a blowout at a pump jack and a landman would be the first one to come fix it? And he was like, no, not at all. It's like that would never happen. But- Also, Philip Thurton's job, Norris' job does not exist.

Right? That's my understanding is that this like, there are landmen who do really specific things like get leasing rights and look up sort of property details. Yeah. But he is like a Olivia Pope like fixer who like maybe is an operations manager or something. But that job is just seems totally fake for my understanding. 100%. So Terrence and I, Terrence and I, but you know, we worked on bat surveys

on like a lot of like oil and gas projects or that's kind of where we met. And the land agents that we would come across were usually these people that obviously worked for the company, but would try to kind of schmooze people out of like, like property owners, out of like giving them certain easements or like You know sometimes property right whatever it is you know and like that was their whole kind of like

You know didn't get that vibe parents like that was their thing and they would like show us where we could survey and where we couldn't But they didn't know whole lot of like a very seems Yeah, they didn't know a whole lot about the technical aspect of the industry. There's something, I mean, okay, we might as well just dive into the plot, the very beginning scenes, because it kinda says a lot about the show and how it's structured.

It sets up a lot of, before we recorded this, I sat down and I just tried to, I poured out my recollection of the entire season so far just in like it's right of like, you know, wow combined into a service Braver than any troop patrolling the southern border on behalf of John Hams oil company Truly But like okay So like the show opens up the very first scene is Tommy Norris

played by Billy Bob Thornton. He is hooded, he's been kidnapped by a cartel. And as the scene progresses, it's obvious that Tommy is trying to get the mineral rights from this cartel. Makes no sense why a cartel would own land in West Texas and That's cartel LLC needs to sign over Well, I like like essentially in that scene like it is revealed The cartel does have like a PO box to where they like making forward papers to so, you know, that was nice

Yeah, they're going they're going straight. the cartels the main cartel guys name is Jimmy Like that's the and then he's dressed kind of like a Miami nightclub owner Everything about it is very very strange and this is I Haven't seen socario, but this is pretty consistent with how he writes Mexican characters right and that he doesn't and just sort of throws like a slew of tropes at the audience and expects them to believe them.

Okay. Yeah, the same people that were harvesting tomatoes, corn, and beans in this very proud civilization for thousands of years before all of us are just reduced to like, you know, the criminal element. That really is like, you know. Well, I'm sure we'll talk about this later, but also just completely expendable. I mean, yeah, as the rest of this first episode

sort of goes on to show. I'm not sure there is a single Mexican male in this show who is not marked for death immediately upon arriving on the scene like the show's message is that if you are a Mexican male you will die at some point like yes an early death and a violent one the last time I had kovat I've made the mistake of sitting down to watch so cario to say I like to cut the first cario that's pretty good scarario II opens up with an Islamic terrorist

laying their prayer rug out and then sent Al-Aqbar and setting off a suicide bomb right on the southern border. They were sneaking up, this coyotes were sneaking the terrorists right across the border in Sheridan's world, you know. My God. snake and the terrorists are out across the border in Sheridan's world, you know. My God.

Well, so this is, okay, so right off the bat, like, all right, I grew up in southeastern New Mexico, born in West Texas, like I've got a familiarity with the world depicted in the show, went to Midland Odessa many times. I mean, I feel like I can confidently say this There is no scenario where you would be drilling oil and a cartel would roll up On you and then you would have to get out your guns and they would get out their guns

But that is a scene that happens in the show I I couldn't follow that plot line at all though I have tried very hard and I cannot follow that plot line at all. Do you all know what's going on there? It makes no sense. I mean it feels so also just there I feel like there is One of the wildest things about watching the show is there's all of this just like bog standard reactionary political content and that as a piece of media it's insane and because there's all of this just like bog standard reactionary political content and then as a piece of media it's insane. I mean because there's like the Billy Bob Thornton, John Hamm corporate drama and then

there's a cartel plot line which is sort of hamfisted into that and then there's whatever Allie Larder is doing as hot bitch wife. And then there's hot, stupid slut daughter, right. And hot bitch lawyer. Right. Like every woman character is in their own sort of separate plot line. And then there's Mexicans who are dealing drugs or sad or dead. And then Billy Balthort and John Hammond, like to just keep track of all those things in your head is just a really difficult task. And I am mystified. I mean, I cannot understand how this show is so popular,

which is, you know, part of probably my own failing as a coastal elite, but it is a remarkable product. It's crazy. Well, when you start thinking about the magnitude of his shows, like Yellowstone has, at its peak, had 12 million unique viewers. And a show like White Lotus, which we consider like a very popular show in its own right,

had like a little over a million by comparison. Yeah, in succession, right? A similar. Yeah, yeah. Like a totally different universe of viewerships. I have a friend who's a TV writer. I'm sorry, go ahead. I mean, I was going to say that I will say that one of the things that drives me crazy about this show is that the characters are not terribly drawn. Like, I think that you could have a decent show here But he puts so much plot into it that he's constantly like

There's so much plot into it that it doesn't allow for character development at all if you just remove the cartel plot You would free up a lot of the show to actually explore some of the themes that I think it wants to explore to actually explore some of the themes that I think it wants to explore. But for some reason that cartel plot, which in the first episode like manifests as like a drug deal gone wrong on like land that imtex this fictional oil company owned by John Hamm that Tommy Norris, you know, Billy Bob Thornton works for, there's like a drug deal gone wrong where like a plane lands on a fucking road on a on a legal oil lease and But then like that sets into the motion like the action of the series But I like I said nine episodes in I still have no idea really what that is even about like it's unclear And I will say I have identified three

plot like engines of this season Like what I have a what have I've termed like three basic tensions that like kind of drive this season like the first is Like I said this drug deal and it has to deal with Tommy, right? Like it has to deal with like Tommy and Monty who's played by John Hamm. It has to deal with their like Coming to terms with like, spending their entire career in this oil, in this specific industry, in this region. Which again, like I said, that's an interesting theme that I would like to see someone explore.

But um, the second is the Wayward Son plot. The prodigal son, Cooper, who um, has his own like, trial by fire. We can get into it. The third main driver of tension in this season is Billy Bob Thornton having a daughter that is just way too hot. That is literally 90% of this show. It's like.

Yes, exactly. They keep coming back to the well every single episode without fail. Ten minutes of just the audience being asked to stare at his daughter's ass or his wife's ass. And yeah, it's totally sort of like tacked on. And I think I have a pretty high tolerance for massaging TV and don't consider myself to stand on any circumstance around the kinds of things I'll enjoy right on that front, but it's amazing. I was like I didn't I really didn't think we were still doing this. This is Wild it's fine. I have I have a friend that's a TV writer

And he was digging into it while like kept trying to you know Right out the wildfires and all that stuff and he was like kind of giving me the blow-by-blow and I asked him I was like Sicario's a great movie, Hill or Howe Water is a great movie, I know Taylor Sheridan is like an elite level writer okay but how does the same guy that wrote those two great movies come up with this schlock and what he said to me was like well Taylor Sheridan like is stood on schlock and what he said to me was like well Taylor Sheridan like is stood on the mountaintop and he said well I can be David Chase or Vince Gilligan or you know any of these like great showrunners

or I can just own the state of Montana and well he's made his choice you know it's like you know the the latte bed is so hacked from that the first episode you know I mean it's just like dude It's just like how does the guy that wrote Socorro come up with something like that? He's like, well, we should really dig into the consumptive politics of the show Yes from latte like the things that were asked to believe are exotic or lattes Bolognese Most recent episode there's a 10 minute extended bit about paella paella

He kept talking about paella I wanted to like This is a hack a bit. I realized this but like I cannot help it It's almost like it's intentional there are so many things that are lynching About this show for example there are three characters whose first names start with the letter a There is an obsession with black coffee. This is like you know also in Yellowstone He's obsessed with black coffee as like a masculine signifier. Oh yes there is Multiple scenes where the content of the scene what is happening in it is so disjointed in Dissonant and out of sync with the music being played over it most specifically the paella scene like the argument that

follows the paella scene is like the argument that follows the paella scene is would like literally be like almost a quasi-abusive argument where like a husband is like no, you're gonna live this way, like you're gonna do this for me, but it's like got this like Friday Night Lights like twinkly somber music over it, and it's just like there are so many points that are uncanny in a way that like, it's just, it's a fascinating document, as you said, Kate.

Just so bizarre. Yeah, and that entire conversation where I guess the takeaway is supposed to be that, and we're jumping around a bit here and, you know, I wanna, like, we can get back to central narrative at some point insofar as it's possible in talking about this show. But this is supposed to be Billy Bob Thornton

realizing that family is important and the end result of that is him saying, how dare you make me paella? I will never eat paella. I need fried chicken and you have to put up with that and then they make up. That's a great point Kate because John hams presence in this show

I think is very fascinating you pointed this out in your piece in the New Republic Both John ham and Billy Bob Thornton actually there as actors They're very good at playing characters who are like tortured by like the demands of Society around them in the sense that like they they feel like they should love and like they wrestle with these feelings of like um of loneliness and You know being workaholics and devoting too much of their life to like substance abuse or work and not investing in their families And like a show like Mad Men Takes done, you know, Don Draper's arc and like, this is what he gave to the ad industry.

It's bad. This show shows this is what they gave to the oil and gas industry, but that's alright. It's totally fine and valid, and that's just a, it's a shocking admission to make, honestly, as a, I mean that's my thing with it. It's constantly breaking the fourth wall, right? It's like doing so in a way that's like not subtle in any ways and that's kind of what frustrates me. What's so much about it? But no almost looking at the camera and so much of it so much of the structure of the stow is just setting either Billy Balford and or John Hamm up to have some argument in which they emerge victorious

Against God knows what, against a doctor who's telling him to not cut off his own pinky. I mean, that's my favorite one. But they always are right, right? And there's no sort of point at which they like are forced to have some crisis of confidence, maybe except for Dunham having a heart attack because he had to pay more money out to the families of the people he killed. I love in that same vein how every transition

or every scene it cuts from, there's Billy Bob Thornton dispensing some sort of hard-earned, rough-hewn, hillbilly wisdom in the form of like some like little one liner or, you know, so like that it's like, and it's, it's so, it's like every transition there is that, you know what I mean? The writing is so he speaks in aphorisms. I mean, that's, that's most of his dial is just some aphorism that, that usually doesn't make any sense

Well, so okay, so the plot like in the first episode you just you see the land man do two deals The first is with a cartel the second is with Surprisingly enough. This is what I found kind of shocking with a John Dutton type rancher He basically tells John Dutton is the main character in Yellowstone he's basically tells this rancher like me and Tom are watching this together. We were almost kind of like Astounded like he tells his rancher like the oil and gas industry is the only thing that allows you to just keep your 2,000 head of cattle fucking eating grass all day like Ranching doesn't make any money like the only thing that you can make money on is selling your mineral rights

He basically like just sons this this Rancher in the most like condescending and insulting way and here's and he's like here's two million dollars An archetype who were made to believe in Yellowstone is like the epitome of like the badass you know exactly It's it's strange like his own myth his own mythological figures are kind of like running into each other in a way But like so you know the first the first few episodes like just to kind of recap here Cooper is There's here's another here's another thing with twin Peaks you have a character named Cooper Yeah Twin Peaks you have a character named Cooper Yeah, yeah

Which is really funny at like I'm in this like really just because I just finished Twin Peaks for the first time and went straight into this day, and it's like They're really unsettling headspace to be in let me tell you I would love a director on director David Lynch meets Taylor Sheridan and just to have them go at it. That would be so good. So yeah, so here's the plot in the first few episodes, right? The land man's daughter Ainsley comes to visit him. She's been living with his ex-wife, Angela.

She brings with him her boyfriend at the time like a you know, big football player Billy Bob Thornton is like really pissed that like this big football player is like, you know having sex with his daughter In the meantime it's a lesser degree committed to the University of Alabama According to his daughter a hard school to get into right His son Cooper comes home from tech drops out of Texas Tech Comes home to the oil patch because he wants to work in the oil industry and you know dad gets him a job at Imtex at his company in like the first or second day on the job everybody on his crew dies

second day on the job, everybody on his crew dies. A pump jack explodes and everybody dies except Cooper. All Mexican, by the way. All Mexican, by the way. Of course, of course. And the way that that scene, the way that whole thing is structured, you know, as I was watching this show, it became more obvious that like,

who this show is for is white people obviously but rich white people there's a product placement for Bentley at one point that's like a straight-up Bentley commercial so obviously this show is for people who can afford to buy Bentleys I think that's an important thing to keep in mind but like Mexican culture throughout this is exoticized and like you were introduced to it through a variety of ways one of which is Cooper who is the wayward son and he's like slumming it everybody on his crew gets killed He goes to the funeral meets

Ariana another character whose name starts with a she's the widow of one of the workers who gets killed and she's got a baby already and and she's got a baby already and You know a lot of other guys on the crew see this they're not happy with it those guys are also Mexican they like try to fight Cooper Cooper fucks him up then they actually do you know fight him? I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit, but But then there is a there is the whole storyline with Angela who his ex-wife She comes back. She wants to get back with the land man

She wants like restart her marriage and like again all of this stuff is In my opinion. I thought it was working towards this. Oh, maybe perhaps overarching thematic question of like maybe perhaps overarching thematic question of like What do you do when you give your entire life and career and physical? You know health and mental health and everything to an industry that is not only literally Extractive in the sense that it's just sucking more out of the earth, but you know is also just like spiritually extractive And I thought it was working towards that

specifically like the pivot point in this season is the fifth episode where Someone dies the funniest death I think I've ever seen a death that would probably never happen on an actual oil Drill drill rig but like this guy's like stomping on this pipe oil drill drill rig but like this guy's like stomping on this pipe the pipe like collapses and kills him or whatever and Like I thought that the whole point and while he's dying He's like can I talk to my wife and he's and he asked the land man He's like, what do I tell her and the land man's like tell her you love her and he like has this moment He's like damn, maybe I love Angela Maybe I love my wife and like you think that like this is gonna be the moment where he kind of starts interrogating these things

But I said this on an earlier episode This show is the perfect like diagrammatic expression of how ideology works Because in this episode the land man does come up against this realization that like oh wait, let me maybe there are more important things in life than like giving my entire life towards oil industry or whatever. And, but instead of doing that, it just veers hard off course into this bizarre terrain of, like I said,

cartels and then a strange storyline where Ainsley and Angela go work at an old folks home and wanna take them to a strip club. I mean, it's a very bizarre thing. I mean, the second half of the season is kind of utterly incomprehensible. Yeah, and in that first half, I mean, Billy Bob Thornton's life is pain.

He cuts off his own pinky, as we've established. Yeah, yeah. Just continues to make terrible decisions that is not actually that good at his job, like right, the body count he amasses is higher than the entire movie of there will be blood, right? Like more people die in 2024, then at like the birth of the oil industry. Yeah. And he his whole sort of narrative about himself is that he is so good at his job. He's so confident he sees all because he is the constant go between between John Ham, the executive and the workers.

And he is this all seeing position. But he keeps just screwing up in these sort of fantastical ways where there are just explosions almost every episode. Literally little fires to put out every episode. All right. What's the one thing he says like when he visits his son in the hospital after he's like cut his pinky off or whatever and his, you know, he's like trying to like go to his son into going back to school or doing something else with his life or whatever, after like what he had just experienced.

And and he was like, well, what have you done so much with your something something with your life and he was like oh I'm a divorced alcoholic with five hundred thousand dollars in debt now I'm one of the lucky ones so I kind of by his own admission he kind of sucks at his job and that in that little by I love the scene where they're like in this restaurant and someone brings up the oil bust in the 90s. And they're like, daddy doesn't like to talk about the bust. This is like, all right.

I mean. Jeremy Irons in margin college. Because the bust took his wife. The bust did take his wife. Took his marriage. bus took his wife. The bus did take his wife. Took his marriage. It took his marriage. Okay, there's a few things I wanted to talk about. And I gave a very rough overview of the plot

and I left a lot out, right? Like Ainsley, like I said, a central tension of this season is Ainsley being too hot and therefore she's trying to find love and she's trying to have sex and like the landman fucking hates that and that's another theme with this season is that like not only is the landman and I guess the audience encouraged to

Ogle at a teenager the actress playing her is not a teenager, but it's still it is You know, you're encouraged to live sort of like sexualize and fetishize a teenage girl. It is also just true for young people in general. Like the handsome quarterback in the second half of the season who has the hilarious name of like Ryder Sampson or something like that. He is also like- That screams Texas quarterback in fairness.

Yeah. It's like, I feel like he's also sexualized this this show I feel like fetishize is youth in a way that I've just never really Because that's that is about and again. That's a theme in the show. It's about like these guys grappling with aging right? No country for old men that type type of deal But it's like kind of too dumb to stick the landing and so what it winds up with is just you know kind of a an overriding obsession with with youth but um But like I kind of wanted to talk about some of the mythologies in the show

Okay, so like and you pointed this out in your your article Kate but like there are a few things that I kind of wanted to like talk about that the show encourages us to to think and to believe The first one that I think that we encounter Comes by way of the renewable energy wind turbines So you have a scene where this lawyer who is sent to the oil patch To I I don't even know what she's there to do to be honest

I've really tried to figure that out too. Like I guess it has to do with the cartel Drug deal gone wrong and then she like motherfuck some law other lawyers, but I don't know what that's Don't know she's defending them in that suit, I think, about the explosion. I think so, but I don't even know who they represent. Maybe, I don't think they represent the cartel. It's bizarre. And they make a big deal about her not being an oil and gas lawyer.

That she's a chain of casualty lawyer. Exactly. But there is this scene, and this scene establishes what I'm going to term like I don't know We need to come up with the name for it perhaps here But it is a Taylor Sheridan ism and so what it happens is the lawyer is with the land man and they're investigating The scene of this crime the lawyer turns and in the distance. There's a wind turbine and the lawyer goes. What's that? it's like in multiple characters do this throughout the season there is a scene where Ainsley and her mother are driving and they pass a nursing home and Ainsley goes what's that it's like anybody in Sheridan's universe anybody that's

mildly lib coatedcoated is treated like they fell off the turnip truck last night. We pointed this out, this is a long running bit with us. In Yellowstone, John Dutton is handed a glass of wine and literally goes, what is this crap? Like, not genuinely, like, I mean, not ironically. The oldest drink known to man. Yeah, been around a minute, yeah. What is this crap?

Multiple scenes where characters literally, it's like they don't, they, this is another Lynchian thing. Like, they don't know the world they inhabit. It's almost a kind of Gnostic world. They're like, what is this? Like where, you know, what is this thing? But then later on, they'll have extraordinary moments

of insight, like Ainsley knows the ins and outs of IRS tax code, and Cooper knows the ins and outs of like oil and gas petroleum law. And it's like, how do you guys, you're so stupid in this regard but who didn't know the word for survey's a in the first episode yeah that's right he's like what is what is this crap yeah it's spent at least two years at Texas Tech and didn't know what beer was. It's incredible. I mean the nursing home thing too. I have forgotten about the wind turbine

that she's not supposed to know what a wind turbine is which is even better. In the same scene she doesn't know what a wind turbine is and doesn't know what a rattlesnake is. A rattlesnake comes up onto her and she's like what what is that? And she's like, it's a snake. Like it's probably imprinted on your brain biologically. You should know what a snake is. Yeah, yeah. And the sort of like tonal just chaos of the show is that she says, what is that?

And then he goes on this five minute diatribe about how wind turbines actually use a lot of energy and are wasteful and you know, etc etc. And then there's this like comic beat where she goes okay and then gets spooked by a rattle stake and then he has to come cut off its head with a with a shovel. Which really sums up so much about about how the show operates or he you know has to tell this woman Who is thinks she's smart about how the world really is and then come to her aid in some very physical practical way Absolutely, I mean the sexism of the show is If we haven't already made explicit like the sexism of the show is insane

I mean, I was already unreal unreal If we haven't already made explicit, the sexism of the show is insane. I mean, I was already kind of- Unreal. Unreal. I was already kind of acculturated to it because of Yellowstone, but this kind of takes it to a whole- It's almost camp. Like, if in other hands, like this treatment, I don't want to call it camp

because that word gets overused and certainly isn't appropriate for the show. But it is just on this level where it's almost like, I'm not really offended. I'm just sort of amazed at what you're like made to watch, which is there's a scene where Allie Larder tells her daughter, you know, the only thing I want in life is for men to buy me things and I have sex with them so they buy me things. Uh-huh. It's like, okay great, next scene. That's just, that's, that's the whole thing. You're not even hyperbole, that's literally the dialogue in that scene. Um, it's astounding.

And the, the, okay, so the wind turbine scene is hilarious because she goes, what is that? And then five minutes later she's defending wind energy. Like, she didn't know what it was five minutes ago, but suddenly, like, because the series is a, because the show is a series of people like in a gnostic almost gnostic way wandering into this like kind of like voided Ghastly apparition like wasteland and being like where am I? What is this?

Chariton has to break the fourth wall constantly and like tell you the way you're supposed to think and feel and the claim made in that way you're supposed to think and feel. And the claim made in that scene, I've wrote down, I've made a list here of some insane claims made in the show. The claim made in that scene is that it would take more. Can I wipe? It would take more than 20 years to offset

the carbon footprint of making a wind turbine thanks to all the concrete and diesel involved in turbine products and shipping. Is that true, Kate? No, no, it's not. And I mean, I don't want to divert too much more, but that was the scene that was sort of going around climate Twitter and blue sky, which really neglects the sort of broader things that show.

But there were just like very sort of like straightforward debunkings of almost everything he says in that in that scene. Yeah, that that one was making the rounds because right wingers were like, libs need to see this and they need to know this is the way it's what it's like. Like, well, we the only land agent I think that we had regular contact with when we were working on the bat surveys turns Like gave us like an almost identical spiel if you remember that about like the role of plastics in our daily life

And it's like I remember looking at you like thinking like this person has drank the Kool-Aid to such an unimaginable And that's even really that was 15 years ago and there's stuff like that. I think that this show does Or I don't know this show doesn't really do it Justice but or even even even hints at this but like in my experience the people that work at oil and gas industries like the Workers themselves are pretty non-ideological like their views are all over the place Like I've talked to a lot of people who work at oil You work at oil companies who watch this show and they're just like No, it's not really the way it goes. I mean

but the most ideological people at an oil and gas company is the land man and the Managers that managerial layer in the middle the people like Tommy Norris Even John Hamm's character to a certain extent isn't that ideological. He has this whole rant about, I don't even care what climate activists do. I drill oil, I make money, that's what I do. And it's kind of an interesting thing where, so I don't know, it's an interesting- Yeah, I think it is.

As you said earlier, I think there are just things in this show that would be really interesting and I think does get some sort of basics of the kind of political economy of oil, right? There isn't that much oil media. There will be blood, but in terms of big mainstream product which focus on this industry, there's really not that much and so it feels like a real kind of missed opportunity. But that part exactly where the sort of upper middle management types are so diluted, both about kind of

their own role within the company, and like what they do. I mean, and I think Jon Hamm gets into this a little bit in that, like, scene where he tells off the shareholder who's concerned about climate change or something. Billy Malthorton is the bigger, Norris is the bigger sort of mouthpiece for this kind of stuff. But they do believe this stuff, right? They do believe, you know, these things about, you know, green investment being all a product of, Saudis and Russia trying to manipulate the price of oil.

And that wind turbines are so bad for the environment and that we're only serving demand. I think that there is some level in which they kind of do, you know, talk like this. And I, you know, have not spent time in the oil fields, but have gone to oil and gas industry conferences with the sort of like, John Ham types. And it is just straightforward ideology. I mean, it's not as if they're like going into some room and getting, you know, among themselves and saying, oh, we're really pulling a fast one on these guys. You know, they think we're doing one thing and we're actually doing another. It's like what they say in public is kind of like what they believe in a big way. And so there's not some like layer of conspiracy in beyond the sort of like basic conspiracy that they are corporations

who exist to drill oil and gas, but not sort of like pooling, you know, anything very complicated on the public or on climate activists. They are kind of stupid and believe their own nonsense. Do you think that's the case? Like, did you come away with that sense, Kate, like talking to some of those folks, like what it's like,

you surely can't believe this, but really they do, or they've like sort of contorted themselves into the most ridiculous position despite all the evidence to the contrary. Like are they true believers, I guess, is what I'm asking, you know? Yeah, and I, you know, I can't claim that I'm like in the most sort of like inner sanctums

of the oil industry or anything like that, thank God. But, but there is just a real difference between you know what like a Darren Woods, the CEO of ExxonMobil will say, and it really stands out when someone like Scott Sheffield, who was a longtime CEO of Pioneer, comes out and says, no, we're not going to drill for $200 a barrel oil, because it won't make this money. And, you know, goes on and says, we're bad at returning value to shareholders, and we have to focus on that. There are these moments of honesty

which sort of peek through and are accurate and make for great quotes. But a lot of especially when it comes to how they think about the energy transition or renewables or any of that, there's a brass tax layer to it where there's just not money to be made in it, and so they're not going to do it, which makes sense. And then there's this other sort of broader ideological justification of seeing themselves as providing this essential service and thinking of themselves as troops for energy.

I think multiple times in this show, I counted three times, every time it was a man telling it to a woman, which is very fascinating, every single time a man was telling a woman that we have no alternative to oil and gas and we will never have an alternative to it, that nothing will even come close to it and so we just have to keep drilling. Like that's just the, it's kind of has like a realist politic to it that is very pessimistic, very cynical, and like I said, it has this weird gender component to it as well.

And I don't know, that's another claim that this show makes multiple times. Another claim, I wrote it down here, yeah, you mentioned it a second ago, Kate, Saudi Arabia and Russia are the biggest backers of green initiatives? I mean, I don't doubt that Saudi Arabia is looking into probably some,

I don't doubt that either of these nations are doing that, but I wouldn't say that they're the biggest backers. It's also a claim that's impossible to verify. What is a green initiative is not an investment category or a product. Saudi Arabia, are you talking about Aramco, other sort of corporate entities within the Saudi government? sort of corporate entities within the Saudi government, Russia, again, are you talking about state-owned oil company or sort of other Russian private or semi-quasi state-backed companies? Like, you can't actually verify that claim in any way. And you know, just it doesn't, you can't get to the point of fact-tricking it. That's a great point.

And again, sort of like the wind turbine thing, it's like these are said so confidently and like I said, there's probably no coincidence that it's like a man telling a woman this. Like the way that it's presented every time is as if it's fact and you also have to put the woman in her place because she like you know asked what a winter so strange one of the weirdest

Examples of a man telling a woman that occurred in a scene in this show that gave me a full-on panic attack Which was when Ainsley and her new? quarterback boyfriend go swim in a retention pond next to a gas well, which is like not something anyone would ever do. Look, I have partied in the oil patch many times next to pump jacks, next to batteries, next to storage wells.

I have never swam in any kind of standing water and ever what nobody would nobody would do that Yeah, can you can you clarify what is in that water and and what it's what it's for It's probably a lot of like a slurry pond almost It's kind of like a slurry pine. It's probably like a lot of brine like salty water various fracking fluids It's probably like a lot of brine like salty water various fracking fluids It probably smells like shit in between Hobbes and Carlsbad on Highway 285 which this should this fucking show

Got the rights from that podcast boomtown Which they talk about on that podcast, The Highway of Death. But there is a massive frac mountain, just a mountain of fracking waste, and the smell coming off that thing, you can smell it from miles away. That's what that pond is probably smelling. Famously exempted from, fluid that is famously exempted

from any Clean Water Act rules. Really? Yeah, 2005, Energy Policy Act. They write, I think that's right, they write fracking fluid out of the Clean Water Act. Yeah. Well, that's kind of interesting because you kind of have that even like

in Eastern Kentucky in coal country, like people saying, the best water I ever had was coming right off that mine, old mine up there. And buddy, there's fish in that pond that's this bit like as some sort of sign of health and not like you know Sometimes fish can live in pretty gnarly circumstances Some great gene pools happening. Yeah in some ways It's probably safer to swim in a retention pond on a mountain

Because you are getting some flow through at least yeah you're not getting any fucking float that that's just a hole they dug in the ground and filled it with fucking brine and like fracking fluid and stuff and the fact that the scene is like a romantic scene where he's taking Ainsley there to basically get it in but it then is also giving her a lecture about how the pandemic was planned It was a planned emic and we have no alternative to oil and gas It was very

But I guess I haven't I haven't seen that scene yet. Is it that's the quarterback boyfriend that's done that? Uh-huh rider Sam man. I can't I can't like Sort of set up. Am I am I wrong about this? He sort of set up, am I wrong about this, Harren? He's sort of set up as like, this is beyond the pale, right? This is the stuff that even Billy Bob Thornton wouldn't believe. Sort, yeah, sort of. He kind of is.

It's hard to understand what his character is even there for because They actually start trying to exploit him to do like sex work basically and then like it's presented like In the classic in the in like there's a scene in Yellowstone Which has disturbed me ever since I saw it where Beth Dutton sexually assaults a store owner and then the audience is encouraged to a store owner and then the audience is encouraged to Support her in sexually assaulting this character You're also kind of so supposed to support this character being sexually assaulted by

Ainsley and Angela because they're forcing him into basically being a stripper or sex worker. It's so weird It's it's played is really cute that she is trying to use her 17 year old boyfriend to go to strip and get naked in front of the residence of a nursing home. Yeah, that's what I mean. It's almost lynchy and it's so uncanny because it's played, the tone of it is so dissonant with the content of it. It's like, do they realize? Like, I don't know, I guess they don't realize, but. Deeply strange. I mean, the entire sort of nursing home plot line

just keeps going. Also, the residents of the nursing home are like 55. One of all of those actors. This country's hard on people, Kay. One of all of those actors hard on people can They found some like yeah some extras from I don't know an ARP ad or something one of them is Matt Saracens mom from Friday Night Lights this that's something this show does or not mom grandma That's something this show does that drives me fucking crazy it almost tries to copy and paste from Friday night lights the theme song I Expected the themes when we started this show expected the theme song to be like the Adam Friedland show theme song like bam I don't bam bam, but it was like totally like serious and somber Like it's it's like the Friday night lights explosions in the Like, oh, you know, we're all just like,

you know, inhabiting this like troubled, complicated place. Right, it's strange. And all the interstitial stuff is very Friday Night Lights too, where there's these like wide sort of drone shots of a highway somewhere in West Texas with like, you know trucks on it

Okay, here's another claim I have here that we've already covered this but I'm I wrote it down Cartels are all over the West Texas oil fields and that they even literally own land that an oil company would purchase mineral In a strange Sons of Anarchy type scene, Tom, actually the cartels come to a drilling rig and one of the characters in this show is a black man named Boss and Billy Bob Thornton tells Boss he's like go get your gangster friends and go drill that oil so like the cartels can't get it. And so like you have a standoff with like black gangster dudes and Mexican cartel guys and it like, it feels straight out of Sons of Anarchy.

It feels like, almost like Mexican drug cartels have supplanted the Italian mafia as the sort of like, you know, underworld fascination du jour, you know what I mean? Absolutely. Like, they know that shit sells because it's so present in the American psyche because of the Trump era, obviously,

and everything that is pumped in our heads about the border and everything else. You know, it feels like, they really ramp that up in every one of these shows you know what I mean and then also too I mean you know the Italian mafia not being that far outside of the Tulsa king if you know you're still a purist and you know you need that you know so he's got all the bases covered in terms of like whatever your you know criminal world interest in. Right there is this tension in a lot of his shows between his sons of anarchy impulse to wanna glorify

organized crime and informal economy, and then his Yellowstone land man impulse to want to glorify formal economy, you know what I mean, or Rockefeller bootstraps, you know what I mean, rags to riches type guys. It's very strange Some other incredible claims in land man

Here's one that you mentioned in your piece Kate the banks have stopped financing fossil fuel companies because they've all gone woke Is is that is that true is that true? Is that true? No. Of course it's not true. No, next question. Yeah, no, it's not true at all. I mean, it is in the genre of things these guys kind of believe. But also it's in the context of Jon Hamm pushing through a pretty terrible deal that on the face of it, I'm forgetting all

the details, but it's something like 300 Wells for $3 billion, maybe, which would maybe barely break even at this point if the show is set sort of contemporaneously. And it just like is, again, in the vein of these people being kind of bad at their jobs Like it's unclear why John Hamm is helping this this man finances sort of upstart drilling operation Well, it's it kind of lends itself to the underdog thing and I think this might bridge This might be the bridge between Taylor Sheridan's like informal economy organized crime thing and like formal economy like captains of industry thing like they always have to be underdogs and be beset by like these larger societal forces that they have to fight against and In that sense, I think and I mentioned this on a previous episode, but in that sense this

show much like Yellowstone is But in that sense this show much like Yellowstone is Settler ideology like the entire thing is structured to show you that the biggest threats to the white claim on North America are Native Americans in Yellowstone Mexicans in land man, and I think that that's interesting I don't know if he's doing this intentionally, Sheridan. I think he's doing it purely unintentionally, but in the process, he's revealing a few things about settler ideology that I think is still at play, especially when it comes to these extractive industries.

Yeah, and there is such an interesting nub of an idea here, even in the show being called Land Man, right, which is this title, but also this very important sort of function of the fracking industry, which said it's mostly land arbitrage. And there's some sort of furrow away scenes in the most recent episode that's come out to date with Cooper sort of saying, I'm going to parcel all this land together. Right. And this will make a profitable sort of entity for investment. And then John Hamm at some point, or Billy about Thornton is describing how John Hamm came to be the CEO of the company and says, well, he bought all these tracts of land that

were worthless and then he sold them and he bought them back, which is just kind of how fracking happened. It was like mostly people buying up land and, you know, selling the rights. It's like the drilling is actually a little bit like secondary consideration for the at least the sort of like early stages of the shale boom. And you know, it's so sort of preoccupied with just a massing territory, which seems I haven't seen Yellowstone, but seems like such a, you know, sort of foundational preoccupation of that show, too, and I guess of Sheridan's. That's a great point.

Actually, this perfectly segues into my next claim that Jerry Jones is a good person. This show makes the claim that Jerry Jones is a good person and Furthermore they have him give a teary-eyed speech about how family is important to him like this motherfucker Does it he fucking hit then he's isn't he like fighting paternity claims with like one of his kids like I fucking hate Cowboys he's using Sheridan's popularity to rehabilitate his image like you know there's pictures famously floating around a Jerry Jones From the integration of Central High School in Little Rock where he kind of was not on the right side of that But Jerry Jones monologue you're exactly right Tom. He's basically using

rehabilitate His image, but his monologue is about how he made his first million dollars And it's very much like how John Ham's character did it and how Cooper says he's gonna do it Basically like parceling together these land claims and then just drilling like five You know wells on them and he's like that's the money I started the Dallas Cowboys with and he like goes into this fucking ham-fisted monologue about how important family is and like I Just like I just fucking hate Jerry

That's a really Personal history with Jerry Jones and and yeah, I'm less of a sports fan, but yeah, I'm understanding is that he sucks And also didn't he inherit sort of a family insurance business or something like that? Doesn't he just come from kind of a wealthy family? Yeah. Sort of like Cooper in this show. It's like a very bizarre mythological thing

where it's like, and this happens in Yellowstone with the character Casey. Like they have to like go through this trial by fire where they like, in Yellowstone with the character Casey like they have to like go through this trial by fire where they like in Yellowstone Casey lives on the rez in this one Cooper, you know lives with a Mexican falls in love with her Kind of because he killed the guy's wife a little bit I mean, it's like they have to go through this like trial by fire through a

Minority racial cast in class in America And then they like, by that, like they've earned their, you know, rags to riches thing, even though they were handed fucking millions of dollars at the beginning, I don't know. Very strange. Yeah, it's, yeah, we can talk more about the Cooper plot line, but what a,

like the sort of stupidest hero's journey a person could go on is I killed your husband. And I'm taking my breath. Very biblical. Oh, that's so true. It's the stupidest hero's journey ever. And like, that's the thing. Well, OK. And he doesn't suffer at all.

I mean, he gets beat up, I guess. Right. That's that's his suffering as he gets beat up and then he got beat up by the hospital ones He got beat up by a jealous Mexican guy who? Tommy you know needs to like after that happens Tommy's like you fuck with the wrong hillbilly And he's like I'm gonna show you send you back to the pin and all this but like Cooper's storyline is perfectly encapsulated by this scene and I played it on a previous episode, but it is a scene where Billy Bob Thornton is talking to Ainsley and

She's like why is Cooper back in the patch? What a loser or whatever and and Billy Bob Thornton's like listen darling. There's two types of people in the patch there's dreamers and losers and it kind of was like giving the It's basically trying to like shape Cooper his story and basically saying that he's a dreamer he wants to run an oil company one day and and By the end of the season, we see Cooper, he has established himself as the only good

and honest land man in the patch, right? He's not gonna work on an oil rig anymore, he's gonna be a land man. Right, classically when you show up to a guy's house and he's selling wood and a 22 year old guy comes up to you and says, I wanna offer you money, you take him into your house and make him coffee? It's a two minute transaction.

It's- They- I mean, I know it's TV but like, there's no sort of like brass tacks being discussed. It's funny. It's just the handshake agreements a real man used to make, you know what I mean? Yeah. Exactly. It's funny. It's just that's just the handshake agreements a real man used to make you know. Yeah exactly It's funny. It's like every scene. He's got his face is dirty That's also the that's also the case with Casey in Yellowstone. It's like every scene you see him in his face is dirty It's like oh like Jackson sons of anarchy same thing yes

Yeah, I really I really appreciate the lack of subtlety in this show. Like in the same episode, this most recent one, when Billy Bob Thornton is made VP or CEO, he isn't a blazer because he's coming up in the world and he's dressing up and he doesn't look like shit anymore. And similarly, when Cooper goes to transact this land deal, he's wearing a button-up shirt. And I was just like, it's so, it just like hits you over the head with what you were supposed to take away

emotionally and otherwise from this plot. It's true, but Cooper's also still wearing boots, which the man says, those are workers boots. So he's like. Normal thing for people to say to another human being. Yeah, yeah. Classic kind of interaction real people have all the time. It's a normal thing for people to say to another human being Classic kind of interaction real people have all the time It is it's it is a strange show and I guess we can start wrapping this up But it is a strange show in the sense that some of the things that it depicts are kind of like true to life

For example, like yes partying next to oil, you know pump jacks is like something that you just do when you live there and You know the kind of like basic culture in the sense of like everything In your immediate environment Kind of drills home no pun intended the fact that you live in an oil in an extractive region and that like Basically, you'll be considered lucky if you can get out of it without winding up You know basically doing what your father did or grandfather did or whatever and like me and Tom have talked about this too

like the fact that like the entire organizational structure of all the institutions of a community like education and everything they're all basically like geared towards educating you just to make sure that you're a good worker in the oil industry, right like This show doesn't really dive that deep into it, but there are hints at it. There are hints at some like actual truths but then it throws in enough like mythology that it's like truths, but then it throws in enough like mythology that it's like It makes it abundantly clear. Like I said, there's a scene and I think in the fifth or sixth episode where

Angela goes to her ex-husband's Compound or whatever or soon-to-be ex-husband and gets her Bentley back and the way that this shot scene is shot is like zooms In on the Bentley logo. It's like product placement. It's like, that's the moment I realized, I was like, oh wait, yeah, the show is for people who buy Bentleys. Like that's, it reinforces their ideology about, about this stuff. Also, Michelob Ultra, which is, must have a deal to be in at least a minute of every episode. Well, Yellowstone's the same way.

Yeah, with, I think with Mick Ultra, then maybe Jack Daniels or some kind of whiskey. But it's like, ah, that's all they drink. You know what I mean? It becomes clear. Another thing that I took, like I just kind of take away from the whole shared and universe writ large is that like, it is, I told Terrence this, it's like, I remember watching the first season of Yellowstone and I was like, okay, this is like a good show. And then it sort of became this meandering mess famously, even like the diehards that really love it

would still say that. And then I started noticing something strange. It's like on the back of a Honda CRV, I would see Dutton ranch stickers. So I'm watching this in real time thinking like, okay, like the essential tension is gonna be between like these like white ranchers and the Native Americans that are living on the res.

In the end, truly to God, the rioting is going to pull you in the direction against the settler colonialists and toward the plight of Native Americans. Then I started seeing Dutton Ranch stickers on Honda CRVs in Lake St. Kentucky and I was like, oh wait, that's not where this is going at all. You know what I mean? And it's the same thing with land man, you know, even I don't even ask my art to like even put its finger on the scale towards one or the other. It's like just even some character development would be fucking nice, right? It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally, totally.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like in the thing is No, go ahead. Go ahead. Okay well, I just say that the me more is in this show and today a phenomenally talented actress and today has mostly just been in a pool and like said three words I hope she's being paid well, but But yeah, there's no I mean really like talent, right? Like Billy Balthort is so good, John Han can be so good. And it's all, Ellie Larder even is great. And is doing her thing kind of well in some respect, I guess. But so much talent and just wasted, yeah.

Well that's the thing about his other, we were mentioning this before we hopped on, he's got this new show lioness That has like Nicole Kidman in it like a lot of these big talented actors sign up for these shows They must get paid a lot of fucking money I mean, there's obviously if Bentley's putting product placement in the show like there's a lot of money coming into these shows But the way he recycles scenes from his other shows is what drives me crazy Like Tom is right like the first season of Yellowstone

is fine, like it's a little annoying, like, you know, I don't know, like, if you can really tell which way it's going by that point, but the second season, and I've mentioned this before, it's almost like they had a conversation between the first and second seasons of Yellowstone, because right out the gate, one of the first scenes in the second season of Yellowstone is a coffee mocha frappa

lac bocino joke where, you know what I mean, like coffee's too complex now, we've lost the old ways. It's like the way he just recycles this, at least twice in Landman, but then across other shows too, it's like, dog, like he's just mellowing it in for billions of dollars. Yeah, and that's sort of the kernel of all the humor in the show, is just like, look at these idiots who are drinking frappuccinos or something. Or even, you know, there's like a Bud Light joke at some point that's kind of casted off. And like, it's, yeah, it's weird, because my understanding is this show is trying to be lighter than Yellowstone and less of this like sweeping historical epic and a bit more of a, not a sitcom, but you know, a prime time drama that's a little smaller and more modest in its

scope. But yeah, I mean, it really doesn't. I don't know, it doesn't land for me. I know I'm not the target audience, but it like is just a deeply strange and yeah, as you said, like very lynching product. But I mean, until you were saying, Tom, it like never lands sort of like clearly in any one place. And I know we talked about this at the beginning, but yeah, like I wrote the piece for TNR,

I think maybe after the fourth or fifth episode, at which point it still seemed possible maybe there's this brewing tension between Billy Bob Thornton and John Hamm. They're set up to be these sort of like brothers who found themselves on opposite sides of this divide and maybe John Hammill betray him in some way, you know, like that would be sort of an interesting resolution to the way this is, you know, the series has been going so far, but instead maybe John Ham is dead. It's a great Jerry Jones in to be like dad, be like, all right, boys, like this is what the real what life's really about.

It's like Jerry Jesus I was wondering like all those little shots of Taylor Sheridan and Jerry Jones's box at the Dallas Cowboys games this year Now I know why well Another thing in you know, we again we can start rap We should wrap it up at this point But like something that I would like to see somebody dig into and I'm sure somebody's already written about this. But like the political economy of TV shows and Hollywood in general right now contributes to this.

I'm from New Mexico and the state of New Mexico gives so many tax breaks for shows to be filmed there. And I know this is probably also true for Montana because I think they shot Yellowstone in Montana. And they shot Landstone in Montana and they shot Landman in Texas. But a lot of these shows or a lot of states are trying to like stimulate their local economies by offering, you know, shooting rights and other things for a lot of Hollywood products. So a lot of these shows are like not being shot

on sound stages in LA anymore, they're being shot like on location in states like Texas or New Mexico or Georgia or whatever. And so that, I think that creates this environment that lends itself to more products like Taylor Sheridan thing. Where like the whole thing is geared towards like authenticity, right?

It's like, is what real Americans want, is what they are about, this is where they live, this is how they feel. At multiple times in Land Man, you have people in the show who aren't actors, and this is another thing that Yellowstone also does, where they'll bring in someone who's not an actor, obviously, and they're giving you some rough-hewn wisdom

about the way, Jerry Jones is an example, but there's also... There's a few oil and gas guys who are at conferences. Or the bar or something, yeah. What drives me nuts about it, and Kate, you kinda mentioned this to some degree, it's like, with like... I don't know, with like, mention this to some degree. I think this is like kind of runs through all of Sheridan's products. I think Terrence maybe had told me this, that

Taylor Sheridan was like the son of a West Texas cardiologist. Cardiologist. Yeah. So all of his shows are bent towards like he's positioned himself as sort of the rural splanner of Hollywood. Right. But it's from the petty booge perspective, somebody that was like around like these archetypes and these like this culture and stuff, but was kind of on the outside of it because of their class position, because. And I'm not like bagging on anybody's parents for doctors or anything like that,

I'm just saying that like, that is a very different experience than had he been like the son of oil rig workers, you know, or whatever. But like, that distinction is blurred because he's the closest thing that like, you know, people in Hollywood have to like, oh, the real rural experience.

And so, and like to his credit Like a lot of his like sort of landscapes and a lot of his characters like have like very I think You know, I'm not from West Texas, but like if he were to do a show and like Appalachian coal country I think he would probably like get kind of close but there would be something that would be slightly askew based upon his like sort of Class status, I think. And I've seen a lot of that stuff happen in my life, just with friends that I know in the Trump era who have adopted this sort of veneer of, I'm like a rough hewn, like gun

toting, like southerner, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, bro, I knew you when like, you're like the son of like a deeply closeted hairdresser and like you loved the Backstreet Boys when we were in middle school. Like get the fuck out of here. You know what I mean? Like that's fine. That's fine.

You know what I mean? Like you don't have to like sort of like adopt this like sort of posture that's become sort of like, you know, I call it sort of like this ready-made southernism of like culture where it's like, I gotta love college football and Duke's mayonnaise and like drink beer out of a Yeti cooler and all this shit. And it's like, man, there's like, it just drives me. I don't know.

Well, the tell is who he focuses on too. I mean, the tell is that he's so interested in these middle manager types who are in reality closer to his own class background, not to do sort of like authenticity class politics or whatever, but like, he isn't, you know, a rig hand, right? He would sort of like tell the story of, you know, the guy who's like three down from the CEO, like he that is who he is. And like, yeah, and it just like it leans into it in such a crazy way where you know, he claims to speak the truth for West Texas or, you know, whatever it is the show that he's making at the time is

based. My personal thought is and I can't prove this and I'll never be able to prove this. My personal thought is that Sheridan, I stunned Terence this yesterday, Sheridan got some money off Sicario, Heller High Water and probably the first season of Yellowstone after it became this master success and he got into the horse business like he has like this like huge horse ranch in Texas and I think what it is is it's more of a case like he probably was a little more lib wouldn't you say Terrence like kind of in his earlier work and then as he sort of surrounded himself with like

You know the rodeo culture and sort of more conservative like Texas, California like Horse thing I get he is kind of adjusted his views accordingly Who else has done the exact same thing or soon to be Vice President JD Vance. As soon as you I get the temptation like as somebody who's from like a provincial area like you get accepted into these circles and you want to try to like sound like the people because you have a inferiority inferiority complex because like you're a dumb hick. So you want to sound like them you want to sound smart and you say the things that you think they want to hear but then after you start getting a measure of success and Fame or whatever then you want to like be like, oh wait

No, I actually know the way people really think How the way thing really work and you can position yourself as like the real explainer of how that shit really works from like a conservative Point of view So of a piece and all these guys who move to rural areas and buy up big tracts of land and drive around on them in like, Rand 350s and pretend that they're from the people after having made a bunch of money in tech or whatever. Sheridan bought the largest ranch in the northern hemisphere, the Four Sixes Ranch in Texas. It's like fucking

Incredibly it's massive And a lot of four sixes merch is all over land man, which is hilarious If you look close enough, you'll see four sixes shit everywhere Yeah, I keep waiting to see M. Tech's merch in the in the wild somewhere probably not in Brooklyn where I live Well, it's only a matter of time I mean you can buy a Dutton ranch cast iron skillets, you know All that shit is that's so weird. It might be harder for it's It might be harder for land man to become me personally. I can't watch Yellowstone I fucking hate it like I can't do it I can't watch Yellowstone. I fucking hate it. Like I can't do it

But I can watch land man and primarily it's because I love Billy Bob Thornton I love Allie Larder like I love a lot of these like actors Whereas like Yellowstone like I've never really had a huge affinity for Kevin Costner I mean, he's been in movies I like but like Beth Dutton stresses me out every time she's on screen like Is Jimmy Jefferson White who's a great guy? He's you know there's some It's not it was some good characters, but yeah overall. It's like a little Sombra Yellowstone is just too somber and like whoa man Like you know land man actually like has some comedy, and it's weird Yeah, it goes down easy once you kind of settle into the bizarre

pacing of it and yeah, I think the sort of like Lynchian element of it keeps me coming back and then it is just so strange. It's such a strange show It's so strange. I think that's probably a good place to end it on like we've we've pretty thoroughly like you know Dissected it deconstructed this fascinating cultural document I think that like Something that you mentioned a second ago Tom

It's it's probable that yes earlier in his career Sheridan was more lib and then has become more conservative But I also think the environment has changed a lot like the environment of hell or high water or sicario Like was more quote-unquote liberal and I feel like we are entering a very realist pessimistic cynical conservative era Not to say that the era we left was by any means like progressive because obviously we saw how the progressives failed to do anything But I think that like they had imbued their project with a kind of like hopefulness or or at the very least with a kind of like Optimism a pop optimism if you will but like this I think kind of shows that like yeah We're getting we're recording this the day after like half of LA is burning

But just like the responses I've seen to that People retreating into like completely nonsensical conspiracy theories about it or just accepting the realism of like oh well This is just gonna happen more and more like, I think that is not a good sign of where we're heading, and I think that Landman kind of like spells out the sort of cynicism of that and the resignation to circumstances.

So I don't, I mean, I don't know. Go ahead, Katie. Yeah, I would agree. I think part of the strangeness of watching this show is just that there is a sort of like almost Bush era moralism to it, where there's this commitment to tradition that's not full MAGA, right? It's like not so like it's anti woke. It's, you know, thinks climate activists are stupid, but it's not quite, you know, totally Trumpian, but feels like a real sort of, yeah, cynical reflection of just like

a really, you know, thoroughly reactionary politics that, you know, is troubling on a deep level. And I keep watching. Can't look away. That's right. Well, if anything, we recorded this before the finale I told you Kate like I don't I don't think anything is gonna be like Revealed that would be like totally like mind-blowing But um, I don't know if so, maybe we'll have to have you back on we can like deconstruct the whole thing

Yes, is there is it getting renewed for a second season have you'll heard is it like I can't imagine how they would do a second season shit It's good. I can't imagine how They would continue it and I can't imagine that they wouldn't renew it. I mean, it's so popular, right? That's I think you're right. Apparently they haven't They have not they haven't confirmed yet. so I don't know I guess we'll see Well, but yeah, I think that like even then I think that like your article in the New Republic does a really good job of Teasing out like yeah, basically that the it's just self mythologizing by like Titans of industry

and So I encourage everybody to go read that and check it out Do you have anything else you want to plug Kate before before we sign off? No, no, I'm not land man. But yeah, read the New Republic I guess Well, thank you all for listening to us Hopefully you have gotten something out of this in my obsession with this bizarre show if you would like to support us Please go to patreon the link will be in the show notes We are dropping an episode every Monday over at the patreon so please go sign up for that and

Yeah in the meantime. I hope you all have a good weekend. Yeah, thanks, Kay. This is great. Thanks again, Kay. Yeah, thanks so much for having me and letting me process this bizarre show. Any time, of course. That's what we're here for. So I'm gonna be a man, I'm gonna be a man I'm gonna be a man, I'm sorry. you