Recap of Episode 5 of ‘Landman’: “Searching for Home”

Welcome back to being a couple, Tommy and Angela! Let’s see if they can find harmony amidst the arguments in their new living arrangement. When his phone goes off at the job site, Dale and Boss can’t help but chuckle. They’re attempting marriage once again?

“Let’s make a deal,” Angela proposes to Tommy. While he’s toiling in the dust and heat, she stands before him in lingerie. “Any night you spend making love to me, you answer my call the next morning, you jerk!”

Episode 5 of the show Landman revolves around the theme of creating a home. Angela decides to ditch the rented furniture in the corporate house shared by Tommy, Dale, and Nate, opting to redecorate it in a “West Texas-style” using $200k from her current husband Victor’s credit card. Meanwhile, Cooper arrives at Ariana’s door in response to her call from a previous episode, finding her buried in bills. Her late husband Elvio used to manage all their financial matters, leaving her feeling overwhelmed with the newfound responsibility. Cooper steps in, helping her sort through the paperwork and informing her about the money in the 401k set up by Elvio, rightfully belonging to her. Noticing her overgrown lawn, Cooper grabs a mower from the shed. Despite working tirelessly on an oil rig, he hasn’t slept yet. Nonetheless, he commits to assisting Ariana as she requested.

Tell that to Manuel. Of course he drives by in his El Camino while Cooper is cutting the grass. But when he comes at him with a gun, Ariana steps in. Did Manuel or Elvio’s other friends ever offer their help? What would they do if she lost the house? Would they change the baby if she asked? Manuel’s anger is short-sighted. It generates from a place of macho ignorance. “You just care if I fuck another man,” Ariana says as she kicks him off her lawn, and then she kisses a startled Cooper just to drive home her point. 

Latest crisis averted? Well, for now. Manuel will return later, with friends, to whale on Cooper in his trailer. Wow, so macho, dude. An utterly unfair fight, for reasons with less and less of a link to anything concerning his opinion of Ariana’s honor. But for her personally, Cooper remains a charming curiosity. He gets all awkward when she breastfeeds her son, and says he’s younger than her in life experience: no knowledge of marriage, babies, or even grief and loss. (“Your husband’s the first person I knew who died.”) But his help is stabilizing her homelife, and she’s grateful. Even her dog, Jefe, seems to be coming around to Cooper’s presence at Ariana’s house. Our prediction? Even with the Manuel problem, and the big shoe still to drop of M-TEX fashioning the bereavement settlement in its favor? Ariana and Cooper will make a home of their own.

Monty Miller’s life involves brief glimpses of his wife – Demi Moore’s only scene in this episode is for Cami to silently offer Monty a homemade green smoothie – and mountains of frustration over the state of his wells and the oil biz itself. At a shareholders’ meeting, he shuts down gripes about green energy initiatives, foreign investment, lobbyists, and college protestors throwing paint on statues. Big Oil has already been declared evil, so maintaining a profit-rich price per barrel should be their only priority. As a worked-up Monty checks his heart rate, a colleague leans over. He agrees that petroleum’s big payday party isn’t ending. But it will end. What oil fortune will their grandkids inherit? Rich guy problems: Monty’s got ‘em.

At the house in Midland, everyone’s seated for Angela’s declaration of a new tradition, a weekly family dinner. Which of course includes Dale and Nate, because this home also continues its main function as an M-TEX facility. Cooper’s also there, fresh from Ariana’s, who advised him never to miss such a meal, because you never know when disaster will strike. And as Angela serves her bolognese, and her opening blessing wavers into an anecdote about her butcher, the whole thing shimmers with constructed bliss right up until it doesn’t. 

It’s hard to make a home simply out of hope. As the dinner descends into an interconnected series of thorny silences, Angela can’t maintain the veneer of domesticity she has projected onto the proceedings. It’s the first time in ten years Mom and Dad have eaten with Daughter and Son – who apparently can’t stand each other – and the comedic presence of Dale and Nate notwithstanding, the whole thing cannot be sustained. 

One bolognese can’t fix a decade of adversity and animosity, no matter how much Angela wishes to will a Norris fam homelife into existence. Worse, she realizes two things about herself. That they might have missed their chance to be a cohesive family. And with a high schooler and a 22-year-old, she’s not getting any younger. Angela cries in the kitchen as Tommy tries to console her. “I’m aging out of cougar, for fuck’s sake!” 

Tommy’s next task is to travel to Fort Worth for a meeting with Monty. The cartel guys have returned to the Patch, with threats on threats on threats, and action will need to be taken. After an early morning heart-to-heart – a final chance to cancel their second chance – they decide to both head to Fort Worth, so she can officially end things with her wealthy husband Victor. But another problem pops off as they’re traveling, and after a detour to an M-TEX jobsite, the precarious nature of making a home is made further evident. As Tommy consults with the site manager, who’s standing atop a shifting stack of mismatched drill pipes, the whole thing collapses. To move the material off his crushed midsection would only make him bleed out. Emergency services will not arrive in time. And all Tommy can do is solemnly agree to the dying man’s request for a phone, so he can call his wife to say goodbye. In a moment like this, something like home feels very, very far away.

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.