Landman Finale Recap: Meet the New Boss — Plus, Grade It!
OK so Monty didn’t die at the end of last week’s Landman like I thought he might’ve. But I was just a little premature: He definitely does kick it this week, leading to Tommy getting a title change and a near-death experience before the end of the hour. And that’s before the Artist Formerly Known as Terry Benedict shows up!
Read on for the highlights of the Season 1 finale, “The Crumbs of Hope.” And when you’re done, make sure to check out our post-episode chat with Billy Bob Thornton and Ali Larter in the video at the top of this post. Plus, go here to see what series co-creator Christian Wallace had to say about Cami — and Demi Moore — in a potential Season 2.
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THE HEART OF THE MATTER | As the episode opens, Monty is in surgery after a hospital staffer found him, unresponsive, on the floor of his room. Cami and their daughters are there, as is Tommy.
Monty needs a heart transplant, but at the moment, surgeons are just trying to stabilize him. In the meantime, he’s incapacitated, which means that — per Monty’s will — Tommy is president of MTex, as well as the head of Monty’s estate and his family trust. Tommy reluctantly accepts the promotion, but he demands that Alan and Cami sit on the borad of directors, as well as someone from Goldman Sachs, which manages Monty’s money. Once that’s sorted, they talk about how Tommy’s first order of business is to see the company through the pending deal Monty was brokering, a high risk/high reward enterprise that could either make them billions or tank the company.
Tommy is in favor of cutting bait and moving on. Even without the huge pile of cash that the deal could bring in, “Your kids’ kids will never have to work,” he assures Cami, but she’s not comforted. Monty wants to be remembered for what he and his family do with the money they make, she says. Tommy gently counters that that drive is what’s killing Monty, and does Cami want it to kill her, too? Just then, Monty’s surgeon approaches with rough news: Monty’s aorta ruptured, he’s being kept alive by an external device, and he needs a heart transplant, like, yesterday.
FIELD STRIP | Elsewhere, all the seniors from the nursing home — except Ethel — are enjoying their strip-club visit. Ethel is irked that the dancers are all female… until a very nervous Ryder comes out on stage wearing nothing but his jock strap. Add in the stack of bills Angela gives the residents to tuck into g-strings, and the field trip is a hit! Later, Ryder swings by the house for his reward: a lingerie-clad Ainsley dances for him to Tanner Usrey’s “Destiny” for all of two seconds before he jumps on top of her.
Afterward, she gets teary as she notes that she’s never had someone spend the night, and she begs him to stay. Though he’s worried that Tommy will beat the snot out of him if he finds out, “I’ll take my chances,” he says.
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AN UNEXPECTED DETOUR | After giving Rebecca the update on Monty — and on his own promotion — Tommy plans to meet with her to talk about closing the deal. Dale and Nathan join them. He explains the deal, which, by the way, sort of involves the same land Cooper has been scooping up. Tommy doesn’t have any patience for her misgivings about advocating for fracking, which is part of the process. “Plus,” he adds, “I hear the moral high ground gets real windy at night.”
On the way back from the meeting, he’s surrounded by cartel vehicles. Jimenez, the boss, has him beat-up and loaded into one of the cars. They tie his hands and bring him out to a patch where they make him watch as they blow up two nearby wells and a tank. “Congratulations, dude,” Tommy says, noting how federal agencies are going to be all over the area soon. “You just shut yourself down.” He deduces that Jimenez didn’t clear the explosions with his superior, which angers the cartel boss. He hits Tommy, telling him that the oil wells were a warning, but that what they’re going to do to Tommy will convey the message they want to send.
MEET GALLINO | Next thing we know, Tommy is tied up with a bag over his head, much the way he was when we met him in the series’ premiere. Jimenez has him in a room underneath a bar, and he starts by beating Tommy with a hammer, dousing him in gasoline and pounding a nail into his thigh.
After the bar closes, Jimenez prepares to kill Tommy with a knife. But just then, gunfire breaks out outside the room; someone cuts down all of Jimenez’s men, and Jimenez, before stepping into the room where Tommy is being held. “Knock, knock,” Tommy’s liberator (who’s played by Andy Garcia!) says, taking the hood off his head. He has his goons cut Tommy free, and they smoke cigarettes while they chat.
The man is Gallino, Jimenez’s boss, and he seems to want the same thing Tommy does. “How do we get back to where it was, so we can coexist?” he wonders. Tommy susses out that, because MTex can escalate things much higher than the cartel can, the power is on his side. So his suggestion? “Stay out of our f—king way,” or he’ll collaborate with other oil-company CEOs to bring the Drug Enforcement Agency into the area in full force. “We’re the last bear you want to poke, bud, because we have unlimited funds and unlimited connections.”
But Gallino is unconcerned. “There is nothing that you have that I don’t have,” he says — including the same enemies. Then he ushers Tommy out — via a secret exit that leads to a garage — just before the police arrive. The cartel head talks about how they own drillable land in Texas. Then he gifts Tommy the remainder of his pack of cigarettes and leave, telling him to have a friend come pick him up.
Dale comes to grab him, worrying over Tommy’s state, both physical and mental. Tommy’s response: “I think I’m gonna start drinking again.”
‘ALL I SAW WAS YOU’ | Not long after that, Monty dies. It’s unclear if Tommy knows that this has happened by the time Angela comes downstairs in the morning and finds him on the couch. She wants to know what happened to him; he says he was in a car accident, which she knows is a lie. He’s very serious when he says there will be parts of his job that he can’t talk about, but also this: “One thing I can tell you: My whole life passed before my eyes, and all I saw was you.” She tears up and retreats to the kitchen to make him blueberry pancakes.
A minute or two later, Ainsley and Ryder come down from her bedroom. “I don’t have the f—king energy for this,” Tommy mutters to himself, giving the teens side-eye as he gingerly limps outside for a smoke. While he’s there, another coyote sniffs around the body of the one Tommy’s neighbor shot in the previous episode. “You’d better run, buddy,” Tommy tells the animal, “they kill coyotes around here.”
TOO SOON? | Ariana moves Elvio’s things out of her bedroom and gets caught up in looking at photos from their wedding. When she hears Cooper’s truck in the driveway, though, she quickly hops into the shower so Cooper won’t hear her sobbing. But he sees the album in the living room and knows she’s had a tough day. “This is too soon, isn’t it?” he wonders. “Yeah,” she replies. But she doesn’t want Cooper to leave. She explains that she needs to say goodbye to Elvio “in my heart” before they can really begin having a new relationship, but she doesn’t know how to start. Then Cooper picks up some photos and asks her about them, which eases things a bit. “You two were a beautiful couple,” he observes. “Thank you for this,” she tells him, and he promises to go through every single image with her if she wants. She kisses him, grateful.
Now it’s your turn. Grade the finale, and Season 1 as a whole, via the polls below.
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