Landman

I just watched the first two episodes of Landman, the new Taylor Sheridan series that just dropped.
Sheridan wrote and directed these first two episodes, suggesting he is "all in" on this new series, at least for now. (By contrast, I was surprised to see that he didn't write any episodes of the latest season of Mayor of Kingstown. I don't know whether he's losing interest in Mayor of Kingstown or if he is just so frantically busy on all his other series that he had to delegate some writing.)
Billy Bob Thornton stars in Landman as a man called Tommy Norris. I'll describe him a fixer or a trouble-shooter because he spends his days dealing with problems/crises at the various holdings of an oil company called M-Tex around Midland, Texas. He reports directly to the boss of the company, played by Jon Hamm. In the very first scene, we meet Thornton's character with a bag over his head because he's been kidnapped by a drug cartel and is awaiting the arrival of a top lieutenant who is upset about the oil company wanting to look for oil on their land. Thornton finesses the cartel guy into agreeing to allow oil exploration in exchange for looking the other way on their drug activity. His next challenge is a huge transport truck that crashes into a small plane that is offloading drugs into a van on the road. And that's just the early part of the day.
We learn that Norris is divorced; his ex is played by Ali Larter and she's quite a bitch. Norris also has a 17 year old daughter who seems fairly spoiled and who has romantic challenges. His other child is a son who has just dropped out of college just months before graduating so that he too can work in the oil patch. He wants to learn the oil business from the ground up and we see him on is very first day assigned to a crew that is supposed to show him the ropes but makes a point of hazing him extensively.
I don't want to reveal too many plot details so I'll end by saying I enjoyed these two episodes and am looking forward to watching the remaining 8 episodes in this first season. I think the lead character is interesting and the remaining characters and circumstances should give them several good plot lines to develop.
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Rhino