"All Roads Lead to a Hole" aired on December 22, 2024, and runs 46 minutes. Michael Friedman directed it, his second and last Season 1 credit, from a script by Taylor Sheridan. Tommy's cartel problem gets worse. Cooper moves into Ariana's house. Monty commits $300 million of his own money to a drilling deal, and Angela and Ainsley spend the week finding their footing in a town neither of them likes. The episode ends at Ariana's door with Rebecca and Nathan holding a piece of paper.
Cooper moves in with Ariana
Cooper leaves the hospital, and Tommy's first suggestion is that he come home. He has heard the alternative and says, "I've seen some terrible ideas in my day." Cooper's answer is a question: "And where would that be, Dad? Where's home for me?" He goes to Ariana's, where she says, "It's the least I can do. And it will be nice to have some company." Tommy has a warning for her. "You might get more company than you want, honey. There's a big bull's-eye on this boy." "I know. I put it there." There is one bed in the house, and she gives it to him. "Other room has a crib in it. You might be skinny, but you ain't fitting in that." She sleeps on the couch. Her instruction for his recovery is short: "The one thing you're gonna do while you're here is eat."
Later in the episode Cooper says it isn't fair, him in the bed and her on the couch, and offers to sleep on top of the covers. "I'll be a gentleman. I think I've proved that." "You've more than proved it." She tells him, "I haven't had a hug since the funeral."
Monty's $300 million
Monty's part of the episode is a negotiation. A man named Blanton, whom Monty calls Danny, wants him to finance a drilling program, and gives him the numbers. "Phase one would be 54." For the whole field they are thinking 250 or 300 wells. "We drilled six exploratory wells, hit on four. All four producing over 200 barrels." When Monty asks what Blanton needs him for, the answer is the banks, which won't touch "fossil fuels anymore." Blanton starts at 60-40 in Monty's favor and later goes to 65. Monty says he has "130 wells to work over, and another 50,000 acres surveyed and ready to go," and makes him work for it.
Monty calls Tommy about the deal. He is not going to a bank. "The stars aligned. We're pushing the chips toward the middle." Tommy points out the size of the bet: "You're pushing 300 million chips in the middle, Monty." "Well, they're my chips, aren't they, Tommy?" His terms are 100% until he recoups, then 70% for 12 months, then 65% "in perpetuity." He tells the other side to take it or take their business to TPG or Fortress, and Blanton gives in. "All right, you got yourself a deal." Monty says he will have a contract on his desk by the end of the week. Tommy's problems with it are practical. The field is in the Val Verde Basin, and it is "so covered up with smugglers, you leave a truck there overnight, the son of a bitch is gone the next morning." He will need to fence the site and hire security, which raises the cost per hole by about 750, and he will have to bring on another eight crews. "Your split sucks," he tells Monty. "Well, I'll work on the split."
Boss, the gangsters and the big man
Monty wants the work-over crews started, and Tommy tells Boss to use the crews from the south side of the camp. Boss knows what that means. "You mean the gangsters." "That's exactly what I mean." Boss says the job is dangerous enough without being shot at. Tommy's answer is "Better to have a gun and not have to use it, Boss." When Monty's call comes in, Tommy says "Speak of the devil," and Boss corrects him: "That ain't the devil, that's Satan." If he's Satan, Tommy says, "you know what that makes us." Boss has to ask. "Demons."
At the site the cartel's men show up and tell the crew they can't drill until the money is paid back. "The big man said you don't drill till we're paid back." He asks whether they think their boss is the big man, and warns them, "But you're getting close to meeting him." Tommy's men answer with guns of their own, and the cartel men leave. Dale says half the crew sells drugs for the other side, and Tommy tells him to take it one day at a time. Boss is less patient. "You got to get me some real help out here, Tommy." Tommy says he is working on it.
Angela finds her calling
Angela's week has two settings. At the gym she takes her daughter through a class and announces her philosophy: "My only job is to make my man happy." Later, at the Patch, she calls Tommy to come and entertain her, and he arrives to find her running a pool table. He introduces her to a man named Bonner as his ex-wife. "I'm his current wife. We've reconciled." They argue about nursing homes, because she has decided to start volunteering at one. Tommy tells her not to get attached, since "Every one of 'em's gonna die. Soon. That's why they're there." She tells him they are there because their children don't care about them. Then the argument turns into a joke about which of them will end up in the wheelchair.
The nursing home is the best material in the episode. Angela and Ainsley meet a 91-year-old resident named Bob and ask what a day looks like. Breakfast at 6:30, a nap, lunch at noon, another nap, supper, Jeopardy! at seven, and bedtime at eight. "Any activities?" "What kind of activities you see me doing in this goddamn wheelchair?" Angela leaves and comes back with a gallon of Tito's, margarita mix, a 12-pack of ranch waters and a fill-in-the-blank card game, and the residents have a party with "Spirit in the Sky" playing. A staff member, Margaret, asks who she is and says the residents can't drink and are on medication. Angela's answer is that they are adults. "What's the worst that could happen? They could die. That's what they were sent here to do, and until that happens, they are still adults, and they can make their own decisions." Margaret sends them to their afternoon nap, and later she changes her mind. "Hey, whatever you did, keep doing it. That's the first time I've seen Ethel smile. See you at 11." Ainsley says what the scene has been building toward. "Mama?" she says. "I think you found your calling."
Ainsley, Ryder and Tommy
Ainsley goes to the patch party Shelby invited her to in episode 5. Shelby points out the quarterback, Ryder Sampson: "All State. Full ride to Tech." Ainsley introduces herself to him and explains her plan. Her husband is going to play in the NFL, so she is majoring in philanthropy, since a foundation "is the best way to do that" for sheltering income. "Are you gonna play in the NFL?" "You bet your ass I am."
The next scene is Tommy and Angela in bed in the middle of the night, with Ainsley not home. Angela has a GPS tracker on Ainsley's phone, and Tommy makes her hand over her own to use it. "Does she know you have a GPS locator on her?" "Of course she doesn't know." The location hasn't moved in 45 minutes. It is "Motionless in the desert." Her passcode is "Sixty-four, seventy-six," which she says are the years they were born, and Tommy points out that he was born in '63. They find her in the bed of Ryder's truck. Tommy pulls Ryder off her and roughs him up, and Ainsley warns him to be careful because "He's on scholarship." He says no man alive is allowed to lie on top of his daughter. "I was on top before you got here," she says. Ryder, in trouble, tells him "she's pretty hard to say no to," and Tommy says he still wants to kill him.
In the truck he lectures her, and she tells him that "The age of consent in Texas is 17. So grounding me violates my constitutional rights." Tommy answers that fathers and daughters need to live by a code. "So you tell me you're a virgin until the day you die, and if you ever have kids, tell me you're artificially inseminated." He will pay for college and the car if she does it. "But, please, give me the illusion." "So you want me to lie?" "With your whole heart." Then he tells her that her mother has a tracker on her phone. "I know. I should've moved around more."
The paper at Ariana's door
The last scene is Rebecca and Nathan on Ariana's step. Nathan tells her it is not coercion. "We are trying to help you and your son. I think it's worth pointing out if you refuse, we will be forced to withhold payment to the other families." Ariana says the other families signed. Rebecca says, "They signed an agreement that we have yet to sign. Because we are waiting on you." Cooper comes out of the house and asks what she is being asked to sign. Rebecca says it is a private matter, and Ariana answers, "I'd like him to see it." Rebecca asks his name. "Cooper Norris?" "Yes, ma'am." "We've been looking everywhere for you."
What Monty actually bought
Tommy names the deal structure on the phone and then the show moves on, so here is what the words mean. "Diamond wants to do a farm-out on a drill to earn."
In a farm-out, the party holding the lease, the farmor, keeps the paper but cannot afford to develop it. Somebody else, the farmee, agrees to pay for the drilling and earns an interest in the acreage by getting wells down. Drill to earn is the plain-English version of the same idea: you do not buy the acreage, you earn into it, one hole at a time. Danny Blanton's problem is stated outright. The banks he has tried, Lone Star and Plains Capital, "want full recourse, nine percent minimum," and the broader market "won't kick over any paper" on fossil fuels any more. Monty is expensive money, but he is money that does not need a bank. Our guide to private capital in oil and gas covers why that gap opened and who filled it.
Monty's terms are worth reading as terms rather than as bluster. "I get 100% until I recoup. 70% for 12 months after that, 65% in perpetuity." The first clause is the one that matters: he takes every dollar of revenue until his money is back, so his capital is returned before Blanton sees anything. Then he keeps a majority share forever. When Blanton calls him a sucker's counterpart, Monty answers with the leverage: "what you are is an over-leveraged LLC without enough credit to pull the loan." Blanton's own numbers are what makes it worth doing. "We drilled six exploratory wells, hit on four. All four producing over 200 barrels." Four out of six is a good hit rate, and it is the number Monty is really buying.
The place is real and it is a strange choice, which the episode understands. The Val Verde Basin runs across southwest Texas, through Crockett, Terrell and Val Verde counties, and it is best known as a tight-gas province. The Canyon and Ozona sandstones there are low-permeability rock that has to be fracked to produce at all. It is also right up against the border, which is exactly Tommy's objection: "so covered up with smugglers, you leave a truck there overnight, the son of a bitch is gone the next morning." His fix is money. Perimeter fencing and security take "the price up per hole about 750," and he needs another eight crews.
Hold on to all of it, because the finale reuses it. The farm-out Tommy inherits in episode 10 is the same instrument at a larger size, and his objection here, "Your split sucks," becomes the thing he has to explain to Rebecca in a field four episodes later.
Background details
- The man Monty negotiates with is Danny Blanton, played by Vincent Duvall, and the company behind him is Diamond. His deal is the one Tommy inherits in the finale.
- The nursing home is Western Skies. The residents Angela meets here, Bob, Ethel, Mabel and Beverly, recur through episodes 8 and 10, and Ethel gets the last word on the whole storyline in the finale.
- Angela's reason for a life of leisure: "Then he will buy me the things that make me happy and take me to the places that make me happy. And I will reward him with sex."
- The captions name several songs: "Hillbilly Hippie" and "Keep Up with Jones" by Lainey Wilson, "Spirit in the Sky" by Norman Greenbaum, and "She's No Good" and "Moment of Truth" by The Red Clay Strays.
- Ainsley to Ryder: "Most schools have a policy against cheerleaders dating football players, and I have a policy against dating boys who don't play football."
- Ariana's babysitter is Lucia, who tells her in Spanish that the baby took two bottles and is asleep.
Going into the last three
Rebecca and Nathan know where Cooper is, and they want him. Episode 8 is next.