By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
Although they rage on unabated elsewhere, on television recently I noticed a brief and pleasant January thaw in the American Culture Cold Wars. The unlikely source? Taylor Sheridan’s show on Paramount+ called “Landman.”
Sheridan is famous for shows about rugged individualists carving out heroic (and often anti-establishment) lives in either cattle country (“Yellowstone”) or on the many venues faced by the American military (“Lioness”). Some have called it Red State TV.
True to that alleged form, “Landman” tells the story of oil executive/worker Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton) trying to make things work on the job and in the home. The tale is set in the rough and tumble Permian Basin fields of southwestern Texas.
In “Landman,” the coffee is always black, the beer abundant, the men tough, and the women beautiful (and often scantily clad). My wife Vicki and I watch it, often as a guilty pleasure.
In the penultimate episode of this second season, Tommy’s beautiful blonde daughter Ainsley (Michelle Randolph) goes off to college cheer camp at TCU and confronts a difficult situation. Her roommate Paigyn Meester (Bobbi Salvör Menuez) is nonbinary.
Their first few meetings do not go well.
Ainsley is shocked by Paigyn’s smelly ferret and unequivocal demands that no one eat meat or use inappropriate products (coconut oil) in the “safe space” of the dorm room. Ainsley also is confused by Paigyn’s insistence that Ainsley use the “they” pronoun for Paigyn despite the fact that “they” is only one person.
Ainsley objects and retreats. Her protective mother gets her the penthouse at a nearby luxury hotel with a pool as an alternative accommodation.
It’s tense. The warring sides reacted to the scene in predictable fashion on social media.
The conservative Daily Mail’s headline screamed “MAGA goes wild for new scene in Landman…”
One right-wing social media influencer, in a post on X viewed 2.6 million times, wrote: “Paramount’s Landman is going viral for having a pretty blonde actress politely school a liberal character on ‘they/them’ pronouns. Is wokeism beginning to lose control of Hollywood?”
“Now they’re trolling pronouns. LOVE IT!!” one X user wrote, while another happily suggested: “It’s because the show is made by Taylor Sheridan and features Billy Bob Thornton and Sam Elliott. The show has cowboy conservative in its blood.”
Yet another wrote: “She’s [Paigyn’s] even from Minneapolis… too perfect….This level of hyper-woke brain rot is so pervasive on the progressive Left…Sheridan was mocking these insufferable clowns…”
The “progressive Left” fired back, of course. Some on the left already thought Sheridan was the “showrunner darling of Trump’s America.” The roommate scene only added fuel to the fire.
Sheridan has been called the “bard of the woke reactionary.” Someone wrote on Threads: “Taylor Sheridan is a MAGA asshat.”
Sheridan, however, had a surprise in store for everyone.
In the final episode of “Landman” season 2 which aired on January 18, Paigyn saves Ainsley from injury during cheer camp, and Ainsley later defends Paigyn from anti-LGBTQ bullies. Ainsley moves back into the dorm and an unlikely friendship seems to be forming.
It’s a nice, and in many ways an unexpected, ending. Even without MAGA and pronoun confusion, who hasn’t had roommate challenges to overcome?
I’ve seen the same thing happen in workplaces. It’s easy to get tripped up by pronouns. Most people are pretty good…given a little time…at navigating these difficult situations in a kind and accommodating manner.
I still think, as a general rule, that Americans want to respect and appreciate their differences.
Sheridan has reminded us of something the Culture Wars often make us forget—conflict/dispute resolution begins with both sides acting like a human being and seeing the other person as a human being too.
And then the Golden Rule (which I think is still admired in both blue states and red states) can kick in…love your neighbor as yourself.
Like Ainsley and Paigyn in “Landman,” we all are roommates in this country. If we Americans can be human and see human, we’ll have a much better chance of living together in peace.
*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Paraclete Press published his book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, in August 2021. The League of Utah Writers chose it as the best non-fiction book of 2022. Mike’s new holiday novel, tentatively titled “The Merry Matchmaker Monks,” will be published in time for Christmas 2026.
