Landman Season 2 just made Billy Bob Thornton’s oil drama an even better replacement for Yellowstone, one of the most popular shows of

all time, which Kevin Costner led as John Dutton. Both series were created by Academy Award-winning screenwriter Taylor Sheridan, who won the Oscar in 2017 for Best Original Screenplay for his film Hell or High Water.

 

 

In Landman Season 2, Sheridan has settled into a replacement for one of Yellowstone’s most essential parts. Landman has gradually shown more of the oil workers, really expanding their stories, which comes to a head in Episode 7 when everyone gathers at Boss’ (Mustafa Speaks) house for a party celebrating 20 years of employment working with M-Tex Oil.

At the party in “Forever Is an Instant,” no one from the Norris family tree is in attendance. While Tommy was supposed to come and is mentioned, the story exists outside of Tommy’s life, giving the engineers and rig workers more of their own footing in the narrative. It’s similar to the role that the Yellowstone Ranch cowboys played.

In Yellowstone, cowboys like Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser), Lloyd Pierce (Forrie J. Smith), Jimmy (Jefferson White), Ryan (Ian Bohen), Colby (Demin Richards), and Teeter (Jennifer Landon) were essential to the story. They were some of Yellowstone’s best characters, closer to the operations than John Dutton was, representing a different facet of life and culture on the ranch.

By incorporating more rig workers’ stories, Landman is equipping itself with an essential aspect of its predecessor. Especially since the gas leak in Landman Season 2, Episode 3, viewers have seen more of Dale Bradley (James Jordan), Boss, Ben “BR” Reynolds (Caleb Martin), and a new Comanche rig worker named Russ “King” Fisher (Dougie Hall).

Landman Season 2 has also incorporated the story of Jerrell Teague (Elijah Collins), an oil field worker who has lost his vision after he and the rest of the crew encounter a deadly hydrogen sulfide gas leak at an abandoned well site. When he woke up, Jerrell couldn’t see, and whether he would recover remains in question.

Therefore, just like the cowboys in Yellowstone, the rig workers are getting more overarching stories. It helps to paint what life is like within the industry, separate from the detailed picture that audiences already have of what life looks like for M-Tex Oil’s president and landman, Tommy Norris. All that said, Landman should take a note from Yellowstone Season 5.

While the cowboys were an essential element of life on the ranch and the show couldn’t have possibly reached the same success without them, a fairly common consensus in Yellowstone Season 5, Part 2, was that the final segment spent too much time on the cowboys and not enough time concluding the Dutton family’s story, which is the series’ heartbeat.