"The Crumbs of Hope" aired on January 12, 2025, and at 80 minutes it is the longest episode of Season 1. Stephen Kay directed it, from a script by Taylor Sheridan. It opens in a hospital waiting room, where Monty's will makes Tommy president of M-Tex, and it ends the morning after Tommy has been taken by Jimenez and released by Gallino, with a bruised face he tells Angela came from a car wreck. In between, Tommy pulls Rebecca and Nathan into a $160-million-plus drilling deal, and Cooper gets a landowner's signature.
The will and the farm-out
Tommy meets Cami and the family lawyer, Alan, in the waiting room. A dietician found Monty on the floor unresponsive, and he was already in surgery when they arrived. Alan has "some things we should discuss if those prayers aren't answered." Monty's will says that on his death or incapacitation Tommy is to be made president and "facilitate the sale of the company," with the proceeds split between a foundation Cami will run and a trust Tommy will serve as executor. Tommy would rather wait. "Monty's fighting for his life. We can look at that later if he loses, but right now, let's focus on the win." Alan's answer is that "whether he lives or dies, he is incapacitated," and there is a $167 million farm-out waiting to be executed. Tommy accepts both jobs, on one condition, "I want a board with both of you on it," and they add someone from Goldman, who manages Monty's money.
The farm-out is the real decision, and Alan lays it out. The lease holder is over-leveraged and cannot raise the capital, and the field is rich. Best case is "$1.2, $1.4 billion dollars in 48 months." Worst case is another COVID or an OPEC price war that drops oil below $60 and "puts us out of business in a year." The alternative is what Monty would do, which is to sell the paper for 800 million in six months and go find the next one. Cami will not have it. "You know, all he wanted is to be remembered. That's it. Not for the money but for what we do with the money." Tommy has argued the other way. "Let's sell this thing now. Your kids' kids will never have to work." Cami asks "And then what?" and Tommy snaps back with "sell the fucking plane." Then he softens. "I don't know what to tell you, Cami. I'm sorry." He adds "That's what's killing him, trying to be immortal. You want it to kill you, too?" A loan for the capital would run 12 to 14% and need a personal guarantee, "the house and the ranch and the place in Aspen," and "There's way more oil men who went bankrupt than became billionaires." Then the doctor arrives with the diagnosis. Monty suffered a ruptured aortic aneurysm, and he is on an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine while his heart recovers. The best option is a transplant. "If he can make it two weeks, I feel pretty good about our chances." Cami says the last thing she said to him, after 28 years of marriage, was that he needed a shave.
Tommy tells her he doesn't believe in faith and hope, but "Monty is the luckiest man I've ever known in my life. He wins when everybody, and I mean everybody, loses." Cami's answer decides the episode. "Close the farm-out. And we roll the dice one last time."
Rebecca and Nathan
Tommy handles his two problem colleagues by telling each of them why he needs them. Rebecca goes first. She says that the employee who is convinced she wants him fired would like to meet alone, and Tommy answers that he is convinced because she told him, and told his boss, and told everyone else who would listen. He wants to meet in the oil fields, because she needs "at least a basic understanding of what you're renegotiating." She asks why he doesn't do it himself. "It's not my fucking job, it's yours." She reminds him Monty already has a buffer, and Tommy says "Monty's not the president anymore. I am." "If you don't think that firing you is at the top of my to-do list, then I haven't made a strong enough impression. But he sees something in you. Now's your chance to let me see it, too." She asks why he doesn't fire her and use Nate. "Because Nate is a very good lawyer, and nothing will fuck up a great deal like a good lawyer. I need a fucking closer. I need a killer, somebody they don't see coming, and you're certainly that." Rebecca says she is licensed to carry concealed in this state. Tommy says "you don't need a license to carry concealed in this state. That's why we all wave at each other when we're driving."
Nathan is harder. Tommy tells him he is running things "for now, till it gets sold," and that the trust wants to sweeten the package by moving forward with the Wolfcamp farm-out. The Sage Creek workovers go ahead too. Nathan does the arithmetic. "That's 300 million in capital. You need a 55% strike in both to make the nut." Then he asks "So we're just gonna bankrupt his children with his last deal?" Tommy's answer is that Rebecca will keep the lead. "She can swing the numbers, but she can't paper it." He needs the two of them at the table in the morning, and when Nathan asks why the rush, the answer is that "probate court pauses all future operations for a year or longer." Tommy admits he doesn't think it's right either, but "that's what Cami asked me to do, so that means that's what Monty told her to do, so that's what we do." Nathan says "You're asking me to swallow a lot of pride, Tommy." "I need it, Nate." "All right. You got it." The title comes up earlier in the same call. Nathan asks what chances the doctors give Monty, and Tommy answers "Well, the crumbs of hope they drop are getting smaller."
Tommy explains the business
Tommy takes the new team into the field to walk through it. The deal covers about 400 wells. "We're gonna have to drill horizontal and we're gonna have to frack it." A deal like this is called a farm-out. It costs between $11 and $18 million per well, and M-Tex has agreed to the first nine, "That's $162 million dollars." If the first four hit, they owe nine more, and if four more of those hit, 27. Tommy's point is the interest rate. "It's a pretty good deal when it's two percent interest. But at 12%, we're bankrupt in a month if it turns out the first nine are dry holes." Each strike has to pay for itself and for the next one, "So we got to get ahead of the bank." Nathan will take Rebecca through the numbers and Dale through the science. "By tomorrow you'll be a damn expert." Rebecca asks why they need new pumps. Tommy corrects her. "You mean 'wells.'"
Dale explains fracking, and Rebecca asks if it's the technology that is causing earthquakes in Oklahoma. He answers "There were earthquakes in Oklahoma before fracking, ma'am." The line needs some context. The U.S. Geological Survey attributes Oklahoma's surge in earthquakes since 2009 to the injection of wastewater from oil and gas production into disposal wells, and says it is mostly unrelated to hydraulic fracturing itself.
Rebecca takes Tommy aside. She doesn't think anyone should be doing this, and says she has "a very hard time advocating for something I believe is wrong." Tommy's reply starts with "Says the lawyer." It grows into a speech. "Good and bad don't factor into this, Rebecca. Our great-grandparents built a world that runs on this shit right here. Until it starts running on something else, we got to feed it, or the world stops." She can throw away her phone and trade the Mercedes for a bicycle or a horse, "but you'll be the only one and it won't make a damn bit of difference. Plus I hear the moral high ground gets real windy at night."
Cooper and the checkerboard
Cooper's next lease call is on a rancher named Swensen. Swensen used to run 300 wheat steers on his pasture, and with the cost of feed and fertilizer and drought after drought, he is down to 228. A solar company will pay him $800 an acre, which is $200,000 a year. He has 54 wells on the property and only six produce, "none of 'em pump more than ten or 12 barrels a day." Cooper tells him that the minerals are worth something once they are put together. "This is 377 on 11,000 acres. Put together 50 acres at a time. Seven largest are in the same situation as you. Four of 'em have already committed." The royalty would be 25%, not the 18% Swensen gets now. "Now, you can wreck that wheat field, hope to make 200 a year, or we can rework these wells, and I can pay you that a month." Swensen asks how much of the 25 Cooper takes. "Not a dime. You're signing the lease to me, I'm selling it to them." Swensen signs, and Cooper suggests a swimming pool for the family. "A swimming pool? In Garza County?" "Wouldn't that be something?"
At home, Ariana is crying in the bathroom, and Cooper waits for her to come out. Later they look through photographs of her marriage to Luis. Cooper asks "This is too soon, isn't it?" He says "I'm not trying to replace him, Ariana." Her answer is "Yes, you are, and I'm letting you. I'm letting you fill that place in my heart." She says she has to move him out of that place in order to let Cooper in, "which means saying goodbye." The photographs include a boat on the Brazos, which Luis bought before the crash of 2020 and sold after it, and the wedding was in San Antonio.
Angela's field trip, and Tommy's news
The strip-club outing goes ahead. Ryder is nervous, and the dancer Jasmine tells him a shot of vodka will loosen him up, but "It's 11 in the morning. I have football practice." Ainsley talks him through it. "Remember, whatever you do for them, I do for you." Once he is on stage he says "This is the stupidest thing I've ever done in my life." Ethel, the resident who has been unimpressed all along, gets the last word. "It was great. It was fucking great." Another resident calls it "the most immoral and irresponsible thing I've ever witnessed in my life," and is told "You need to grow a pair and get out more." Angela and Ainsley call Tommy afterward to say the residents loved it. That is the call in which he tells them "Monty's not gonna make it." Angela asks what it means for his job. "Well, sweetheart, men die, oil companies don't die. My job ain't going anywhere."
Jimenez and Gallino
Jimenez had told Tommy to call when he got home from Fort Worth, and Tommy hasn't. "You were supposed to call me." "It's been one of those days." Jimenez says there is something he wants to show him, and Tommy insists on following in his own truck, but he is jumped anyway. At the site Jimenez gives him his view of the business. "We make more money than you. Than all of you. You sell your product for three dollars a gallon. A gallon of our product sells for thousands, and we can't make enough." Tommy points out that the tank there has a sensor that triggers two alarms, one to the fire department and one to headquarters. "Helicopters will get here first. And when they put it out, which will take about a day, fucking Railroad Commission and OSHA will be crawling over this fucking place like fucking ants." He asks whether Jimenez ran this by his boss. "En este lado del río, I'm the fucking boss." Tommy says "If you're trying to send a message, message received." "That's not the message. That's the warning. You're the message."
What follows is a long scene in which Tommy, hooded, is at Jimenez's mercy. Jimenez says the technique was taught to Mexican police by American special forces, and tells him "You had your chance to negotiate. That's not why you're here. You're here so the one who replaces you takes the chance when he has it." Tommy is doused with gasoline and dares him to light it. Then there is a gunfight and Gallino walks in. "Knock, knock." He has Tommy cut loose and does not mention Jimenez again except to say "Jimenez, he did not understand what I understand. Which is that we must coexist."
Tommy, hurt and still bargaining, gives the speech he has been building toward. "Nobody can escalate this higher than we can." If he has to, he will "go sit with every CEO of every oil company in the Permian Basin and we build the DEA a fucking city. For free. It ain't nothing for us to throw ten or 20 billion dollars at a problem." The industry has "ex-presidents on our boards," and "Hell, Chevron named a fucking oil tanker after Condoleezza Rice." That last part is real. Chevron did name a tanker for Rice, who sat on its board from 1991 to 2001, and renamed it after she became national security adviser. Tommy finishes with "We're the last bear you want to poke, bud, because we have unlimited funds and unlimited connections."
Gallino answers in the same key. "We have the same senators, my friend, the same presidents, and we have the same enemies." "The world is a better place if we are friends." Tommy's line is "We ain't ever gonna be friends," and Gallino's is "Oh, yeah, we're gonna be friends." The terms Tommy states are simpler. "You need to avoid us like the goddamn plague and we'll do the same. And if our paths ever do cross, then everybody's gonna be real friendly and everybody's gonna be real forgiving." When word comes that the police are on their way, the two leave by the back. Gallino hands Tommy his cigarettes and keeps his lighter. "I'd give you my lighter, but belonged to my father."
Morning
Tommy gets out, and calls someone. "I'm gonna send you a pin. Come pick me up." The friend who arrives wants him to see a doctor about his leg. "Oh, I'm not going to the fucking hospital." Asked how he is doing, mentally, Tommy says "I think I'm gonna start drinking again." He goes home and sleeps on the couch. Angela asks about his face, and he says it was a car wreck. "Bullshit. You would've called me if you had a car wreck." He can't tell her what happened, and asks her to trust him. "One thing I can tell you is that my whole life passed before my eyes," he says, "and all I saw was you." He says he will make her breakfast, blueberry pancakes, and Angela cries. Ainsley and Ryder come downstairs. "Morning, sir." Tommy says "I don't have the fucking energy for this."
The final line is "You better run, buddy. They kill coyotes around here."
The farm-out math, step by step
Tommy spends a scene in a field explaining the deal to Rebecca, and the numbers are consistent enough to work through. Doing that is the fastest way to see why the finale is tense.
The instrument is the same one Monty used in episode 7. M-Tex is the farmee here: it does not own the acreage, it earns into it by drilling. The lease holder "is over-leveraged and can't raise the capital," which is the condition that makes a farm-out available in the first place. The commitment is staged. Nine wells at $11 million to $18 million each comes to the $162 million Tommy cites. Hit on the first four and the next nine are owed. Hit on four of those and it becomes 27. That is what a drill-to-earn obligation does: success does not release you, it enlarges you.
Then the cost of money. "It's a pretty good deal when it's two percent interest. But at 12%, we're bankrupt in a month if it turns out the first nine are dry holes." Alan has already priced the loan at 12 to 14 percent with a personal guarantee against the house, the ranch and the place in Aspen. At those rates the interest clock runs faster than a well can pay itself back, which is why Tommy's instruction is that "each strike has to pay for itself and then it has to pay for the next one. So we got to get ahead of the bank." Nathan states the requirement plainly for both this deal and the Sage Creek workovers: "that's 300 million in capital. You need a 55% strike in both to make the nut."
Set the two futures side by side and the choice is stark. Alan's best case is "$1.2, $1.4 billion dollars in 48 months." His worst case is another COVID or an OPEC supply war that drops oil under $60 and "puts us out of business in a year." Monty's own move would have been to take the certain money, "sell the paper for 800 million in six months and go find the next one." Tommy argues for that, Cami refuses, and the sentence that decides it is hers: "Close the farm-out. And we roll the dice one last time." Everything Season 2 inherits comes out of that line. Our guides to how oil deals get financed and lease and farm-out agreements go through the structures.
One number does move around, and it is not a continuity error so much as how people talk about deals. Alan calls it "a $167 million dollar farm-out" in the hospital. Tommy calls it a "$170 million dollar farm-out lease" on the phone to Rebecca. Out in the field he prices only the first nine wells, at "$162 million dollars." The first two are the whole obligation rounded two different ways. The third is the cheque that has to clear this year.
Last details
- The family lawyer who reads Monty's will is Alan Thomas, played by Jim Meskimen, and the rancher Cooper signs is Ed Swensen, played by Robert Lewis Stephenson. Andy Garcia's character is credited as Dan "Gallino" Morrell.
- The farm-out number moves between scenes. It is "a $167 million dollar farm-out" in the hospital, "a $170 million dollar farm-out lease" on the phone with Rebecca, and "$162 million dollars" for the first nine wells when Tommy walks through it in the field.
- The National Guard cover-up is handled in one phone call. The van and the tire tracks are already gone. Ivey says his men are "auto mechanics and insurance salesmen," and Tommy tells him "I would suggest that everybody get amnesia real fucking fast."
- Cooper's pitch to Swensen picks up where the Hardin scene in "WolfCamp" left off. The 25% royalty Cooper told Hardin to ask for is now the rate he quotes.
- The captions name "Girls, Girls, Girls" by Mötley Crüe, Koe Wetzel's "9 Lives (Black Cat)", Tanner Usrey's "Destiny" and "El Gato Negro" by Alex Arellano.
Where Season 2 begins
Season 1 ends with Monty in critical condition and waiting on a transplant, Tommy running M-Tex with a farm-out he cannot walk away from, and an arrangement with Gallino that both sides say they will keep. Season 2, episode 1 is where it picks up.