everything was perfect until Taylor Sheridan brought his circus characters

Now that the cold begins in Spanish lands, we want to see a series where heat is a constant. So fuel will be needed, and SkyShowtime has just what we need with the new installment of Landman: a raw dealwhich starts today on the platform after debuting last Sunday on Paramount+.

The oil drama created by Taylor Sheridan (yellow stone) and Christian Wallace It left us in suspense in its first season, and we already somewhat knew the outcome from the trailers that prepared us for the 2nd season.

A delivery that has errors to be ironed out as its plot progresses. The first season was a ratings success, but few ignored certain narrative problems that Sheridan’s series needed to resolve to be more complete. Will he have achieved this?

That’s what we’ll start to discover today at HobbyCine, as we bring you our analysis of the first episode of Landman: a raw deal 2nd seasonwhich is now available at SkyShowtime.

The challenges at the top

The premise of this second season is inevitably based on the death of Morty Millerthe character of Jon Hamm in the 1st season of Landman: a raw dealowner of M-tex and boss and best friend of Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton).

Morty’s departure from the equation leaves Tommy in a position of greater power over the company, sharing responsibilities with Cami (Demi Moore), his widow, who many of the company’s investors consider unsuitable to acquire M-Tex.

On the other hand, we have the “solo” adventure of Cooper Norris (Jacob Lofland), who started his independent prospecting project in season 1 and now it’s time to find out if it was a leap into the void.

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And, well, they are Angela (Ali Larter) and Ainsley (Michelle Randolph), to whom I will dedicate a specific section because they will once again be the discordant note, I can tell you that.

For these plots, Landman: a raw deal will unite others, especially through new additions such as Sam Elliottwho plays TLTommy’s father.

The series offers us a first episode of 49 minutesaverage and likely sets the pattern that the other nine episodes of Season 2 will follow. Remember they will arrive on SkyShowtime every Friday.

When everything flows and the pieces fit together: wonderful

Demi Moore will have more weight this season. This is a promise that was made to us in the final phase of the first, when the character gained notoriety after spending almost the entire edition being little more than an extra. Taylor Sheridan delivers on that promise.

And it’s the best thing that could happen Landman: a raw deal. Moore imbues the character with much more than the solemnity of the widow. She brings the courageous spirit to face a male-dominated world in which women, almost inevitably, are seen as “trophies”.

To the star of The substance She only needs two scenes to show that she’s here to play in the big leagues and that it’s no simple task. Moore and Thornton work like a Swiss watch on screenhighlighting a chemistry and charisma that we would already like for other characters.

Tommy Norris has a lot of his moments”transcendental“those moments in the form of a deep speech, whether or not you agree with what he says, that give narrative weight to the character. And given how little we see of his father, TL, I have to say I’m looking forward to seeing Elliott and Thornton together throughout the season.

The main plot barely has an introduction in this episode, serving as a facade for Cami and Tommy. We found a little more progress in Cooper’s work. Despite being a secondary story, that of Tommy and Angela’s eldest son is a plot that continues to fit well into the series as a whole.

Cooper is a character with whom the public easily identifies: an entrepreneur who suffers the hardest setbacks and, despite everything, struggles to persevere. Everything good and bad that happens to him, we feel more intensely because of the empathy it generates.

On the other hand, we can guess that Andy García will have more than just a cameo this season. His presence in the credits suggests that Gallino will be much more prominent this season as the head of the cartel.

And then there are them…

I complain so much about Ali Larter and Michelle Randolph’s characters that it will seem like I have them in my head, but I don’t: it just seems to me that Angela and Ainsley are a narrative waste due to the way they are developed and their excessive presence.

While characters like Cami Ariana (Paulina Chávez) or Rebecca Falcone (Kayla Wallace), who we’ll see later in the season, supports Landman: a raw deal, Angela and Ainsley create domestic chaos that, to this day, remains completely inconsequential.

Since the season started early in the United States, I’ve been reading some reviews that said Sheridan had corrected Larter and Randolph’s unflattering view of the characters and that “his plot has improved a lot since the beginning.” Where does it improve? More than a third of the episode is consumed by them aimlessly.

I like it when a series has comic relief, of course, but I don’t like it when a drama has shrill characters who are a collection of clichés. Again, if Angela and Ainsley were little more than secondary with a few brief scenes per episode, there would be no problem, as I said in season 1, but the time they are given compared to what they contribute to the story (nothing), is atrocious.

Then everything was going well until they arrived on the scenedoing what they always do, being as hateful as ever and displaying the only thing that seems to matter about these characters: physicality and sexuality. To get something positive from them, Their foolishness leads to some cynical comments from Tommy..

Furthermore, extrapolate their history in the series and you will discover that, without them, or by reducing their presence, Landman has lost nothing. What’s more, the series has a scene with “some Angela and Ainsley” at the beginning of the episode: that’s the acceptable tolerance level for this type of character, giving them more spoilers at the pace.

I’ll give you, for example, another series by Taylor Sheridan, Mayor of Kingstown: It has its good and bad things, like everything, but each scene included in the series contributes something to the overall plot and its ramifications. This doesn’t happen with Angela and Ainsley.

And let’s remember that Landman: Crude Business is an oil drama, not a hormone-boosting teen series.

Good base for the season

To summarize the final verdict, excluding Angela and Ainsley’s meddling, Landman: a raw deal begins its second season with solvencylaying the groundwork for most of its plots so the series can move forward.

There are a lot of things we can’t fully judge in this episode, and some that haven’t been incorporated yet and we’ll have to wait a little longer.

Interpretive weight is what gives value Landman: a raw dealand also what makes their shrill part such an irritating contrast (again, I’m not saying they do it wrong, but that their characters don’t contribute).

We’ll have to see how the corporate chess game progresses and what happens when those pieces that aren’t already on the board in Landman: Raw Business Season 2 come into play in Taylor Sheridan’s series for SkyShowtime.