Dry, Southwestern Vistas Be Damned: 'Landman' S2 Jumps the Shark
My TV viewing has been strained lately. I can't quite put a finger on why, but the idea of sitting down to make it through genuinely good shows feels a bit like homework.
Not sure where that's coming from or, better yet, what to do about it when it crops up (because this isn't the first time I've been compelled to watch something by the feeling of "You ought to be making progress in this" rather than "I can't wait to see what happens next.")
Taylor Sheridan's Landman has been somewhat of an exception to that general statement. For a couple of different reasons.
First and foremost, it's not actually a "genuinely good show." The first season of it was more compelling than it was good. But the underlying workplace drama of what it takes to navigate the myriad complications of Texas oil drilling and the companies it fuels did make me want to see where the characters would end up. I knew, even then, it wasn't anywhere near the heights of Prestige TV.
Despite the clearly diminishing returns on this show, it's been one of the few that I've watched lately. I just finished the second season, and I absolutely hated it.
I'm not going to belabor the details of the season to justify this last-few-episodes-specific post, so if you're interested in a nuanced, completist review, I'd commend you to the fine folks at Vulture.
This is just a rant against a show that's officially jumped the shark, that's gone from being problematic yet strangely compelling to remaining problematic but losing all semblance of considered storytelling.
My central gripe: There is only one storyline — M-TEX and Tommy and what's to become of this mid-tier player in the oil game. Everything else is purely constructed to give Sheridan a platform to pontificate on various issues of the day or to do a sort of finger-wagging moralizing that's rooted in some kind of generic bootstrap-y, self-reliance that Marlboro Men everywhere can get behind.
My gripe lives mostly in the fact that the everything else is given so much more screen time. It's just limping along, episode to episode, creaking under the strain of "My god, how will I fill this hour of the show?"
Andy Greenwald of The Watch, whose viewership of the show is strained at best, likens Sheridan to those long-armed inflatables in front of car dealerships: Always casting about, never still, fixating on something for the briefest of instances until it's on to the next.
It's so true, and it's so noticeable. Each sub-plot just feel like these pat little scenes that don't serve any larger storytelling purpose; it's just a glimpse into one writer's mind. They're so pat that even normal editing between various storylines suddenly feel like abrupt non sequiturs.
These two episodes of The Watch wrestle through the same feelings I felt: overwhelming exasperation at the degrees of stupidity displayed in the show's plotting yet watching it all the same.
A line that Chris Ryan made in the coverage of S2, ep. 9 struck me:
"We have watched lots of TV over the last couple of years. There has been plenty that you would probably say is better than Landman that you give up on midway through. And somehow, for some reason, you keep coming back for more, coming back to the trough every week, drilling away to see if you strike oil."
The dynamic between Ryan and Greenwald is entertaining, as Ryan is more unapologetically taken by Sheridan's schtick. But even he isn't defending the dreck that S2 devolved into. He does, however, recognize the black hole-like gravitational pull that brings viewers back, regardless of what their common sense tells them.
I'm one of them. In a stage of dramatic pickiness, I'm forgoing more enjoyable viewing pleasures for this thing I don't even like anymore. It's some combination of low expectations and its ability to just barely clear them, all without requiring too much input to engage. I'm definitely part of the problem; I don't deny it.
But the show is seventeen kinds of problematic, and I'm not sure its creators would be so self-aware.
Comments