Warning: spoilers for Landman season 2 episode 2 ahead.
As if Tommy’s (Billy Bob Thornton) life couldn’t get any worse in Landman, season 2 began. The season premiere of the Paramount+ show fired on all cylinders, with Cami (Demi Moore) officially taking over as M-Tex’s owner after the death of husband Monty (Jon Hamm).
Cooper (Jacob Lofland) has unexpectedly come into a lot of money. Having taken a loan out to buy an oil rig, his powers of guesstimation have literally struck slippery gold. All of his chosen spots to dig have “hit” – in layman’s terms, that means they’re producing an amount of oil that will make him millions.
There’s just two problems standing in his way: Cooper has unknowingly taken his loan out with Tommy’s nemesis Galino (Andy Garcia), and his girlfriend Ariana (Paulina Chávez) has broken up with him because of it.
‘I barely fought the tears back’ when Cooper told Tommy he loved him, says Billy Bob Thornton
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On his way to visit his estranged father T.L. (Sam Elliot) and the funeral home dealing with his mother’s death, Tommy makes a detour to Cooper after his son calls for help. The two then journey to T.L. together, and have a major heart-to-heart in the truck.
Tommy seeing T.L. again after such a long time rattles him, telling Cooper how difficult it is to break the cycle of abuse as a parent. “The type of parent you have is the son you raise,” Tommy tells Cooper as a warning for helping raise Ariana’s young baby.
In response Cooper tells his dad that he loves him, adding “you tried your best, and that’s good enough for me.” Tommy subtly tries to fight the tears, and as it turns out, those tears were completely genuine.
“It means so much in that moment,” Thornton tells me. “Jacob and I didn’t really talk it over. In general, on this set, that’s the way it is. We let things happen naturally. In the script, it actually said that I try to hold back the tears. I’m like, Usually in stage directions, you go, ‘Well, I’m not doing that’. Unless I feel it, I don’t do it.
“But I barely fought them back enough to where I didn’t become a blubbering idiot, and so it was a very easy thing to follow through with. Jacob grew up an hour and a half from where I did in Arkansas, and the kid and I have a lot of similarities in our upbringing. On the show, I really feel like he’s a son to me.”
Watching the scene, it really shows. I choked up on the other side of the small screen, and I truly think it marks a turning point in Cooper and Tommy’s relationship. They’re going to have to face Galino together, but I hope Tommy begins to take Cooper’s intuition, nous and natural aptitude for the work more seriously.
If nothing else, I hope they love each other more openly, just like this.
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