Commentary: Red-state TV’s ‘Landman’ offers a solution to our culture wars: Be human, see human

Although the nation’s cultural Cold Wars rage on unabated, I noticed a brief and pleasant January thaw on television recently. The unlikely source? Taylor Sheridan’s show on Paramount+ called “Landman.”

Sheridan is famous for shows about rugged individualists carving out heroic (and often antiestablishment) lives in either cattle country (“Yellowstone”) or on the many venues faced by the American military (“Lioness”). Some have dubbed 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 gruff, 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 blond daughter Ainsley (Michelle Randolph) goes off to college cheer camp at Texas Christian University 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.

Ainsley objects and retreats. Her protective mother gets her the penthouse at a nearby luxury hotel with a pool as an alternative accommodation.

The warring sides reacted in predictable fashion on social media.

The conservative Daily Mail’s headline screamed “MAGA goes wild for new scene in Landman.”

A right-wing social media influencer, in a post 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 user wrote on the social media platform X, 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 a--hat.”

Sheridan, however, had a surprise in store for everyone.

In the final episode of the second session of “Landman,” 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, 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 difficult 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 humans and seeing others as humans, too.

And then the golden rule (which is still admired in blue 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.

Note to readers • Michael Patrick O’Brien is a writer and an attorney living in Salt Lake City who frequently represents The Salt Lake Tribune in legal matters. He is the author of “Monastery Mornings: My Unusual Boyhood Among the Saints and Monks.” His new holiday novel, tentatively titled “The Merry Matchmaker Monks of Shamrock Valley,” will be published in time for Christmas. He blogs at theboymonk.com.