Season 2, Episode 2 — Sins of the Father

The oil that drenches Cooper Norris in the opening sequence is not a baptism, it is a stain. Black, viscous, impossible to wash off, it marks him as something between lucky and damned. The shot is iconic: a young man standing in the spray of his own success, arms raised like a preacher at revival, while the camera holds just long enough for us to wonder whether he is celebrating or surrendering.

If Episode 1 was about the arrival of the past, Episode 2 is about the present catching up with choices made in desperation. Cooper struck oil at every site, every well. The kind of success that should feel like deliverance but instead plays like the setup to a heist where the thieves realize too late that the money is marked. Because it is. Every dollar carries the fingerprints of Gallino, the cartel operative from Season 1 who has returned not as a villain but as a business partner operating under the alias Dan Morrell.

The Devil You Know, Rebranded

Gallino's transformation into Dan Morrell is Sheridan at his most cynical and precise. The cartel does not announce itself with violence or theatrics, it incorporates. It files paperwork. It operates through Sonrisa Energy, a shell company so legitimate-looking that even the Norris family lawyers do not blink until too late. This is the show's insight into how power works in extraction economies: the worst actors do not break rules, they hire people who know how to write them.

The genius of the reveal is in its withholding. We learn about Gallino's involvement through forensic accounting, through Cami's spreadsheets and late-night contract reads. Sheridan films these scenes like action sequences with tight shots on numbers, cuts between documents and faces, a score suggesting not danger but inevitability.

Cooper's Faustian Arithmetic

Cooper Norris is not stupid, but he is young. In Landman, youth is a liability measured in contracts signed too fast. The episode gives us narrative echoes of the moment Cooper needed capital and Gallino offered it. What Sheridan understands is that Cooper's mistake was not greed but hope. He believed he could drill his way out of being Tommy Norris's son, that success would rewrite the family ledger.

The oil bath scene now plays as tragic irony. He is not being anointed, he is being marked. The oil is evidence of a deal that will haunt him longer than any dry hole. Sheridan films it beautifully because we need to believe in Cooper's joy for five more seconds before the floor pulls out.

Monty Miller's Posthumous Secrets

The dead keep secrets better than the living, but in oil, death is just a change in accounting. Monty Miller continues to exert narrative gravity through discovery of his offshore arrangements. Cami finds herself auditing a man who cannot explain his choices and defending deals she did not make.

Sheridan's treatment of Monty's legacy is nuanced. The offshore accounts, hidden partnerships, handshake deals that never made official filings are presented not as crimes but as the cost of staying competitive where everyone else cuts the same corners.

The Lawsuit as Leverage

M-TEX's lawsuit is presented not as truth-seeking but as negotiation tactic. Insurance companies deny claims because denial is profitable and settlement is a discount. Cami does not plead innocence, she prepares for war. Her lawyer builds a defense strong enough that M-TEX's cost-benefit analysis shifts.

Cooper and Ariana: Success as Solvent

Cooper and Ariana's romance begins to corrode under pressure of Cooper's success. Striking oil should have been vindication. Instead, it introduces new strains. Ariana knows Cooper's sudden wealth came too fast. The episode seeds doubt through questions asked and not answered, conversations ended too abruptly.

Success can be as destabilizing as failure. Cooper now has money but also secrets. He can provide for Ariana but cannot be honest with her. This is Landman's pessimistic thesis: the things we do to survive prevent us from living.

Visual Language: Oil as Evidence

Sheridan's visual strategy builds around oil as marking substance. Cooper drenched in crude. Rigs filmed at angles emphasizing industrial menace over romantic mythos. The color grading shifts to less amber, more shadow. The Permian is lit like a crime scene.

Tommy's Knowingness

Tommy Norris does not appear as much as he hovers. Billy Bob Thornton's performance is built on weight of unsaid things. He knows, or suspects, or has decided that knowing would require acting in ways he is not ready for. He watches Cooper like watching a fuse burn toward dynamite, aware of what is coming but uncertain when.

The Title's Double Meaning

Sins of the Father operates on multiple registers. Cooper is paying for Tommy's failures, for a father who would not fund his ambitions. But the episode also suggests Cooper is committing the same sin Tommy did, compromising with power structures he does not fully understand in an industry that rewards compromise and punishes principle.

Stray Observations

• Sonrisa Energy's logo is designed clean, corporate, utterly anodyne. It looks more legitimate than actual oil companies.
• Cooper's truck is cleaner than any previous appearance. New money shows first in small vanities.
• T.L. watching Cooper from the window is filmed like a Western, the old gunslinger studying the young one.
• The insurance company office is shot in cooler tones, as if institutions operate at different temperature than people.

Verdict

Sins of the Father is Landman at its most ruthlessly clear-eyed. It presents success as trap, family legacy as liability, moral choice as luxury that oil money cannot afford. Sheridan's writing is economical and his direction patient, allowing scenes to breathe past the point where other shows would cut for momentum.

The episode's power lies in refusal to provide easy outs. Cooper cannot undo his deal. Cami cannot resurrect Monty. Tommy cannot protect his son without confronting how his decisions created conditions for Cooper's desperation. These are not problems to solve but realities to navigate, and the episode earns its darkness by never pretending navigation is escape.