Everybody's talking about the latest episode of Taylor Sheridan's hit Paramount+ series Landman, and for a most excellent reason. Yes, I quoted Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and to be quite frank, I'm not in the least embarrassed about it. Anyway, in the fifth episode of the second season, which aired this past Sunday, the show's main character, Tommy Norris — played by Billy Bob Thornton — suggests that his pops, T.L. — played by the man, the myth, the legend, Sam Elliott — check out The View.
You can probably guess where this is going. It's even better than you think. Tommy's dad asks what the show is about, which leads Tommy to give him the best summary of The View I've ever heard. Tommy delivers a thorough skewering, the likes of which television hasn’t seen in a long, long time. Clearly, Sheridan isn’t 100% on board with liberalism.
“A bunch of p****ed-off millionaires bitching about how much they hate millionaires and Trump and men and you and me and everybody else they got a bee up their a** about. It’s pretty funny,” he tells his father over the phone.
T.L. replies, “Don't sound funny.”
“Well it ain't joke funny, it's like ‘fart in church’ funny, you know what I mean?” Tommy explains. His dad doesn’t find that too humorous either, prompting Tommy to respond, “Well, it depends on your proximity to the fart.”
One reason this bit is getting so much attention is that Landman doesn’t typically address real-life pop culture. Adding to the humor, Thornton himself appeared on The View to promote the show when it premiered in 2024. You can practically hear co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar clucking like a couple of hens with rabies over the criticism, which only makes the moment that much more enjoyable.
As you can imagine, folks have had a good time with the scene on social media. One user responded, “The world is healing.” Another wrote, “Couldn't have said it better.” A third echoed my sentiments, saying, “Think he summed it up pretty well.”
For those unfamiliar with the series, Landman follows Tommy, a crisis manager in West Texas, as he navigates the dangerous world — both physically and mentally — of the oil and gas industry. Sheridan, the show's co-creator, became a household name largely thanks to his previous hit series, Yellowstone. Fans spent years trying to prove that Yellowstone pushed conservative values, but Sheridan himself pushed back on that claim.
“They refer to it as ‘the conservative show’ or ‘the Republican show’ or ‘the red-state Game of Thrones,’” Sheridan said in 2022. “And I just sit back laughing. I’m like, ‘Really?’ The show’s talking about the displacement of Native Americans, the way Native American women were treated, corporate greed, the gentrification of the West, and land-grabbing. That’s a red-state show?”
While he may not have set out to create a conservative-leaning series, plenty of viewers are finding those themes anyway. When a writer truly believes something or holds a particular view of the world, it comes through naturally. You don’t have to force it, which is exactly what most movies and series do these days. When creators focus on story and characters instead of pushing an agenda, people from all walks of life can connect to the work. Sheridan understands that.
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