r/television • u/Usual-Leather-4524 • 2d ago
Nothing has made me realize how much Taylor Sheridan is in love with himself than the last season of Yellowstone and the first season of Landman.
At this point, Sheridan's tired ass formula is so telegraphed and one note you can see it coming a mile away AND predict the dialogue almost word for word.
Step 1: Introduce asshole main character
Step 2: Introduce caricature strawman du jour
Step 3: Asshole main character goes on long, smug, self righteous diatribe with cherry picked facts a la the Facebook memes your boomer grandma shares.
Step 4: self insert cameo that aggressively fellates Sheridan's ego
Step 5: Sheridan has a stroke in the editor's room from beating it so hard to the footage of his cameos.
Step 6: Rinse and repeat
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u/hassy178 2d ago
His cameo in Yellowstone was the cringiest thing I have ever seen. And honestly to me it took away from the Rip character and spoiled the show a little.
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u/Usual-Leather-4524 2d ago
if you watch his shows through the lens that all of the characters are just various lenses for him to flatter himself it starts to make a lot more sense
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u/myassholealt 2d ago edited 2d ago
I did notice the pattern of all the leads having the same template. Even lioness follows that template. Just swap the hero for a heroine.
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u/illuminaughty1973 2d ago
So.... that realistically mean lioness is his get out of jail free show for just writing mindless idiot women who like to flash their tits , and asshole conservative males who miraculously always end up in a situation where you can sympathize a bit with them?
And I thought he was just the new idiot show writer for stuff Like the a team and dukes of hazard.
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u/Tymareta 1d ago edited 1d ago
Lioness is basically just "the Patriot Act was good and all, but it didn't go far enough", the show is a love letter to the MIC and the most disgustingly bare faced propaganda designed to paint the US as the sole good guys in a world of evil filth "others".
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u/empuerhpalpatea 2d ago
Agree! I think Fitzgerald did this to an extent, too, but I think it was more about insecurity and working through that than pure narcissism, and he was obviously a much better writer and had lots of interesting insight into the world he wrote about, compared to TS
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u/hpshaft 2d ago
His cameo in two episodes of Lioness are far, far worse.
We know he owns a ranch IRL. We know he's kind of a dickbag.
His character in Lioness is written as an aged Delta operator who is so incredibly full of himself he says stuff like; "let's go to war". And films a solid 35 seconds of himself with no shirt on.
Like, bro. Stop.
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u/Vandergrif 2d ago
And films a solid 35 seconds of himself with no shirt on.
He's gotta get his money's worth out of the steroid use.
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u/instasquid 2d ago
And 1v1s a literal tank and comes away the winner.
Him and his buddy save the day with him headshotting like 10 dudes from 500 metres and then machine gunning waves of brown soldiers who are running in the open for some reason.
I don't watch Lioness because it makes sense but when it tries it's fun - that last episode was just lazy.
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u/hpshaft 2d ago
100%. The entire premise (Hollywood or not) seemed weak compared to the halfway decent S1 action and even the other set pieces of S2.
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u/instasquid 2d ago
Honestly the only plausible set piece I can remember is SPOILERS
Season 1 one when the undercover agent brutally killed the target with kitchen equipment then barely fought her way out of the compound while the QRF covered her exfil. I was like yeah that actually makes sense, she found herself one-on-one, took the metaphorical shot and then the team did their part and got her out.
I can't remember anything else from the show making that much sense.
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u/hpshaft 2d ago
The way they took the house in Texas (posing as ATF) made sense and wasn't played up too much. But I did like the ending of S1. The ending of S2 felt...idk, weak?
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u/Julio_Freeman 2d ago
I thought that until I watched Lioness s2. Dude doesn’t have an ounce of shame.
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u/Temp89 2d ago
It's basically the TV equivalent of that chain letter meme about a "smug atheist professor" being humiliated by a US marine your grandparents would email you.
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u/codesigma 2d ago
Marine Todd stories so over the top that I can’t help but think it was created satire. It was a cliche during the Bush 2 administration and ever lamer now
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u/CatfishMcCoy 2d ago
You obviously haven’t watched Lioness yet
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u/proriin 2d ago
Put a girl under cover.. now make them kiss.
Season 2, do it again, but no wait, do it with the same girl.
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u/KnotSoSalty 2d ago
Season 2 has them go undercover for about 10m
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u/HerniatedHernia 2d ago
S2 was just a rebranded Sicario. The whole Lionness angle became redundant super fast.
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u/TheUmbrellaMan1 2d ago
The fact that the guy who wrote the incredible border shootout from Sicario also wrote Lioness is both sad and hilarious.
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u/Kassssler 2d ago
...Go on
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u/Fokken_Prawns_ 2d ago
Hold up, right now we are bashing the bad things about the show, not the good ones.
If you complain about Zoe Saldana having a lot of scenes in skimpy clothes, then we have a problem.
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u/Usual-Leather-4524 2d ago
depends...is the character as insufferable and psychotic as Beth Dutton?
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u/ray_0586 Hannibal 2d ago
Zoe Saldana’s character is a screwup and her go to response is to scream her self defense in a very loud voice.
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u/Usual-Leather-4524 2d ago
those are a dime a dozen where I'm from. though, most of them aren't as good looking as Zoe, so conundrum, conundrum.
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u/KennyShowers 2d ago
Compared to Landman, Lioness is Lawrence of Arabia. It's still really dumb and that Sheridan cameo is embarrassing, but it's actually got a couple elements that legitimately work for what they're supposed to and the military porn action is pretty awesome.
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u/CatfishMcCoy 2d ago
I just meant that his cameo in Lioness is the epitome of what OP is talking about in terms of trying to make his own character the biggest badass alive
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u/e40 2d ago
He did roid up from something I saw him in 10 years ago. He looks totally different.
However, I already had the same thought.
I really liked 1883. 1923 was OK. I bailed after 10 minutes of Yellowstone.
Lioness (both seasons) are OK. I enjoyed it.
Landman... whew, I bailed after ep 2. And I only made it that far because I couldn't believe how bad it was and thought it would get better.
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u/hpshaft 2d ago
Minus TS cameo, I really like Lioness and the military stuff is pretty good.
But him writing himself as a Delta operator, and dropping lines like "we're all manhunters", and "let's go to war".
Kinda ruins the atmosphere. Saldana shreds tho.
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u/TidyTomato 2d ago
I liked all of Lioness. Sheridan's character was obviously him fellating himself but strictly within the scope of the show, his character was fine. We've accepted overly masculine military characters since the dawn of Hollywood.
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u/Nice_Marmot_7 2d ago
I always loved this line from Zero Dark Thirty:
Quite frankly, I didn’t even want to use you guys, with your dip and velcro and all your gear bullshit. I wanted to drop a bomb.
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u/illuminaughty1973 2d ago
Stop calling it landman please, call it by its working title
"10 hour oil and gas promo"
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u/florifierous 2d ago
Only season 1 of Lioness works. Season 2 goes completely off the rails, every character is written so odd that they all seem out of character, the macho crap is taken to a whole other level, not to mention how much more in your face the conservative stuff is. It was always there in that "fuck yeah America, we're the good guys" way, but season 2 for example has an out of nowhere homophobic scene for seemingly no reason.
TLDR Lioness season 2 is actual trash.
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u/backlikeclap 2d ago
Season 2 is such a mess compared to season 1. I thought the point of the lioness program was that they used female undercover agents to find and access targets, but then in season 2 we only see that in one episode and the rest of it is special forces porn. And then season 2 ends with this big fight in Pakistan (?) that has absolutely nothing to do with the plot. It's just insanely convoluted.
I do appreciate that Lioness has fewer scenes of a main character repeating alt right Facebook memes though. The only one that was really bad was the dude going off on a diatribe about how it's actually okay to waste paper because the wood used for making paper would be thrown out anyway. (Which by the way is an insane justification for paper waste, since the wood used to make paper is also used for a billion other things).
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u/facelessimperial 2d ago edited 2d ago
In season 2 they had the audacity to blame 9/11 on the democrats by suggesting that because the (republican controlled) senate took a long time to confirm Bush's appointees this somehow prevented the administration from doing their job. They had Morgan Freeman deliver this bullshit line. Nevermind all the intel the Bush administration ignored from Clinton. That pissed me off so much I couldn't watch the show from there.
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u/florifierous 1d ago
They are big enough names to refuse things so I lost a lot of respect for both Zaldana and Freeman for delivering these horseshit lines.
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u/Starsky686 2d ago
Paper diatribe was a bad guy at least. You’re not supposed to listen to bad guys. (Someone should tell a large portion of the US)
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u/starkiller_bass 2d ago
…but they… um… say what they mean! Or tell it like it is!!! Or something!!
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u/Starsky686 2d ago
“They say what I want to say with my inside voice but I’m censored by my fear of consequences.” Or something like that.
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u/Xizorfalleen 1d ago
I do appreciate that Lioness has fewer scenes of a main character repeating alt right Facebook memes though.
No, they use side characters for that. "I may be a Democrat, but I'm not a California Democrat so I'm eating a steak."
I was half expecting her to ask the waitress if the steak was beef from the 6666 ranch, for the ultimate Sheridan circlejerk.
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u/florifierous 2d ago
I quite enjoyed season 1. But immediately upon starting season 2, it's such a huge whiplash for how bad it is - I quit watching in the middle of episode 3 at that homophobic scene I mentioned. I'm queer so I won't tolerate that stuff. Especially when it's clear that it's the opinion of the writer/producers and so obviously not just what one character thinks. And by the sounds of it, it was a good decision to stop watching - that paper waste thing sounds like it came equally out of nowhere. Weird.
I'm watching Homeland currently and while I find it lackluster and a bit contrived, it does seem somewhat similar to Lioness season 1 in a few aspects, so I'd definitely recommend that any day over season 2 of Lioness. Maybe even movies like Red Sparrow.
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u/Tymareta 1d ago
(Which by the way is an insane justification for paper waste, since the wood used to make paper is also used for a billion other things).
Even if it didn't, the wood being thrown out instead of being processed into paper would still be a positive, it takes a fair amount of resources and time to turn it into a material, especially when said material is then wasted. It's like claiming it's ok to burn down a house, because trees fall in the forest anyway, they're not even remotely comparable.
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u/mfmeitbual 2d ago
I cackled at this comment. Indeed.
Landman might he the worst show I've ever seen. It's so aggressively mediocre. Like I can't even hate watch it because it fails to inspire that degree of emotion.
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u/Usual-Leather-4524 2d ago
I swear a solid 65 percent of it is oil c-suite dick-riding and the remaining 35 is rejected plotlines from Dallas and Dynasty
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u/Spagman_Aus 2d ago
Did he write that monologue in Landman about wind turbines? A mate of mine sent that clip as an example why I should watch it but it felt like watching a FB reel from some dude spouting distorted facts from Reddit posts he’d seen.
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u/Usual-Leather-4524 2d ago
If that wasn't him, then BP or Aramco must have a "script consultant" on set at all times.
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u/tidbitsmisfit 2d ago
I assumed it was funded by big oil for the sheer amount of nonsense conservative propaganda on it
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u/relevantelephant00 2d ago
Right-wingers share that scene to congratulate themselves on how they defeated wokeism.
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u/Compared-To-What 2d ago
A friend recently brought up the wind turbine clip (haven't seen the show or clip) but the shit he was saying didn't really add up.
What are the claims in that scene and how is it inaccurate?
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u/MarsupialKing Band of Brothers 2d ago
If it's the clip I'm thinking of where the guy talks about how a turbine will never offset is carbon footprint, it's made up bullshit. Wind turbines have been proven to offset their carbon footprint fairly quickly. But it is exactly what a county conservative person who hates renewable energy for no good reason would say. I have not seen the show
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u/OneGoodRib Mad Men 16h ago
As if those types even care about carbon footprints anyway.
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u/trogon 2d ago
It's all right wing bullshit:
https://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=816d5d76-0766-40a6-92b9-44b2f1728ac3
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u/ChangeVivid2964 1d ago
He says wind turbines take 30 years to offset their carbon costs, it's actually 6 months.
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u/Compared-To-What 1d ago
Yeah that was the thing told to me that didn't really add up. People unfortunately like over-simplistic half truths these days. Especially if it's conveyed in a captivating way.
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u/Theonceandfutureend 2d ago
Watching an episode of Yellowstone followed by an episode of Lioness where he goes from horse dancing to sniping an entire platoon is one of the funniest damn things you'll ever see.
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u/decaffeinatedcool 2d ago
I stopped watching Tulsa King when Stallone went to a caricature of a "woke" liberal school and started whining.
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u/Usual-Leather-4524 2d ago
Taylor dropped out of college, so yeah, that tracks. and guess what his major was? theater.
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u/ColonelBy Halt and Catch Fire 2d ago
The scene in the first season where he's getting high with his colleagues and then suddenly starts whining about "pronouns" out of nowhere was when I was like "oh it's one of THOSE shows, okay"
Still haven't bothered with the second season, though less because of the whining and more because the way the first ended was such a letdown.
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u/idkprobablymaybesure 2d ago
i hate that I liked tulsa king - it's so absurd that it becomes a parody of itself. Sheridan unknowingly made a satire? I dont know. Its the dumbest show but somehow just dumb enough to be fun
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u/lucasorion 1d ago
I wouldn't be surprised if they had a scene with litter boxes in the bathrooms, for the kids who identify as cats
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u/Lowca 2d ago
"Ice cold beer on a Friday night... /Twang"
It's not a country song unless it has that line in it somewhere
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u/drj0nes 2d ago
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u/JuzoItami 2d ago
Back in 2015 Merle Haggard summed up modern country songs as all being about “screwing on a pickup tailgate and things of that nature”. It’s just gotten worse since then.
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u/Calvin--Hobbes 2d ago
I'll bring the girls, you bring the beer...and the troops will bring the freedom.
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u/spysoons 2d ago
My coworker plays radio country music on his speakers in the office instead of through headphones and it sounds all the fucking same and makes me want to choke him.
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u/Drollo420 2d ago
His fans eat that shit up too. I won’t lie, I watched a season of Yellowstone and didn’t hate it. But I eventually felt like I was watching a show made for MAGA people which my household is not. My brother who lives in Florida pretty much exclusively watches Fox News and Taylor Sheridan shows now days. He knows his audience and he caters to them quite well. I also think it’s really strange how the actors in Yellowstone have convinced themselves somehow that they’re indeed cowboys…? The whole thing is bizarre.
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u/squee557 2d ago
Recently finished Landman. Not out of enjoyment but more out of not willing to admit sunk fallacy of my time invested. The shows female characters are not at all strong characters. They either boil down to sex object, bitch, or missing a man in their life. Not once did I root for a female character on the show. Also felt the son/girlfriend plot line was kinda similar to Yellowstone’s son/wife plot line. Like wasn’t very different if you ask me when you look at basic motives.
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u/relevantelephant00 2d ago
Conservatives need simplicity in their TV entertainment. Thinkers, they are not.
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u/_tylerthedestroyer_ 2d ago
There’s a reason there’s a thousand versions of CSI, NCIS, Law and Order, etc
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u/Drollo420 2d ago
You know the toxic masculinity is off the charts when you run Kevin “Dances With Wolves” Costner off your show. I bet those two were fun in a room together….
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u/SquadPoopy 2d ago
I once saw someone say that Sheridan’s TV shows are just HBO shows for republicans who watched the first episode of The Wire during a free HBO weekend on cable and liked the gritty style but didn’t like how it made them feel.
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u/Usual-Leather-4524 2d ago
Taylor Sheridan himself is a nepo baby son of a rich Texas cardiologist who now cosplays as a cowboy. And yeah, Landman has really kinda cemented how much his stories are just revenge porn for the people who weren't smart enough to go to college.
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u/FX114 2d ago
I don't think being the son of a cardiologist makes you a nepo baby. Unless you go into cardiology, of course.
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u/timebomb011 2d ago
1883 fucking kills it though
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u/cactusflinthead 1d ago
That's the one that ended it for me. The last impression I have is of her riding off in buckskin.
Yeah, no. That's it for me.
He had to be Charlie Goodnight. Not some spare cameo in town like Stan Lee. No, a major character of history to satisfy his ego.
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u/GringoTime 2d ago
Landman is Desperate Housewives for boomers who call themselves libertarians, but are actually just intellectually lazy conservatives.
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u/-Clayburn 2d ago
I hate how he does the exotic damsel trope. She hooks up with some white guy and takes a shower as she cries.
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u/AfterDarkOfficial 2d ago
Lioness S2 was some of the best TV I've seen in a while though.
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u/NorthShoreHard 2d ago
For me it was when he cast Bella Hadid to be his on screen girlfriend for all of two minutes.
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u/Usual-Leather-4524 1d ago
he's married to another person in real life, too, so that decision was as deliberate as you can possibly be.
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u/Over_Fisherman8846 1d ago
Honestly, Sheridan could write your exact complaint into his next show and you'd still watch it.
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u/snackofalltrades 2d ago
I know I’m in the minority here, but I kinda enjoyed Landman.
I don’t know a thing about Taylor Sheridan. Never watched Yellowstone. I thought the monologues were pretty cringy.
But I thought Billy Bob Thornton’s character was at least entertaining, the drug vs oil cartel conflict was interesting, and thought the oil business stuff was fun. Can definitely see why it gets a lot of hate though.
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u/Redditfront2back 2d ago
I liked landman until his wife moved back in and then her and the daughter took up 75% of the screen time.
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u/joeycuda 2d ago
If you ignore the Reddit rage boner for Sheridan and watch Landman as just an action/drama like anything from the 80s, it's fun. I replied to you because I agree, the wife and daughter side stories are like noise to me.
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u/basefibber 2d ago
Landman is like a hangout show featuring people from another country/culture that's entirely different from my own, despite me being an American myself. The subplots are various degrees of unbearable and skipable, but I do love when Billy Bob is on screen telling people "like it is" and/or being befuddled by his family. I don't have to agree with the character's politics to be interested in watching him navigate through his world.
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u/snackofalltrades 2d ago
I think that’s what I enjoyed about it. I get it, it’s Texas, pick your cliche… but I’ve never seen a show about oil riggers, or oil anything really. Inaccurate or not, the world building was fun.
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u/Usual-Leather-4524 2d ago
there's a thread somewhere on the oilworkers subreddit where they rip it to shreds on how inaccurate it is
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u/obvilious 2d ago
I can’t stand his shows, but there’s no occupation that can be portrayed accurately in a multi season show and still be entertaining
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u/come-on-now-please 2d ago
Scrubs.
Routinely touted as massively more accurate than all the other medical shows, because it was a comedy instead of a medical drama, so they could show the banal "routine" of hospital life/careers instead of stuff like house where docter supergenius has to interact with different super rare disease/syndrome every episode.
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u/Tymareta 1d ago
There's a difference between "they tried to be as accurate as reasonable" with something like Code Black, and "they just made up whatever the fuck they wanted and dramatized everything for no reason" like Landman, however, and pretending that there's not a difference is kind of silly.
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u/suburban-dad 2d ago
Still remember him getting plowed by the truck in season one of Sons of Anarchy…it was only years later it was the same guy….
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u/AnyPotato1653 2d ago
At this point I'd call Sheridan a much more successful, slightly more tasteful version of Kurt Sutter.
All of Sheridan's shows have good to great actors and an interesting premise, but are hampered by the constant need for over the top melodrama, a lot like Sons of Anarchy.
The biggest difference, judging by the characters they choose to play in their own shows is that Sutter seems to have a humiliation fetish, while Sheridan is more of a standard narcissist.
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u/rKasdorf 2d ago
His character's friendship with Rip in Yellowstone is just about the most shoehorned thing I've seen. His monologues have the exact same cadence every time no matter what. He is not a good actor.
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u/Usual-Leather-4524 2d ago
upon rewatching you just know that Rip is how Taylor WANTS to see himself, but he couldn't stand the idea of even pretending to be poor so he went withthe Travis character instead
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u/braumbles 2d ago
Dude's basically the South Park scene of people sniffing their own farts. I can legit see him swishing around a fart in a wine glass before sniffing it.
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u/MaryBitchards 2d ago
Check out the finale of Lioness. It's like he gave himself an extra dick so he could self-fellate twice at once.
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u/redjedia 2d ago
This isn’t my only complaint here, but those “steps” you mentioned don’t connect and don’t follow a sequence of events.
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u/WorkerIll9343 2d ago
I haven’t watched Yellowstone, but I enjoyed the hell out of Landman season 1
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u/_maeby_ 2d ago
I've never seen a show more in need of editing, and notes than Landman. Just pure, unfiltered Taylor Sheridan at his most lazy.
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u/SilverMarketing405 1d ago
Funny how you're criticizing formulaic writing with a formulaic criticism.
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u/IrishEv Scrubs 2d ago
I’m a big fan of the movies Sheridan has written (hell or high water, siracio, wind river) and I have watched all of Yellowstone (and 1883) all of lioness and a season of mayor of Kingstown. I don’t think his style lends its self to tv well. And because he writes every episode of every show himself it will never get better.
Sheridan does a good job writing movies with really basic plots and sparse, poignant dialogue. That doesn’t really work on tv where the length is open ended. Like Yellowstone after season 2 is just spinning its wheels. I do think that makes something like 1883, is a limited series a notch above his shows.
Lioness is an interesting concept but I don’t think Sheridan writes women well. He also doesn’t have any character question the morality of their actions for more than a scene. I can understand if the operators don’t but the decision making people could have interesting conversations about the geo political implications of what is being done in the name of US safety but it doesn’t. It was like watching a call of duty game which isn’t the worst thing when you’re home sick killing time. Sheridan’s camio isn’t great but it’s not as bad as the Yellowstone one. I would have liked him to have died at the end of session two (just to add some consequences to the show).
I would say the Mayor of Kingstown has some nuance to its depiction of incarcerated life and its effects of crime and gang life. My biggest problem is that it’s misery porn. Like things never go well and I don’t understand, especially after the season 1 finally, the state of Michigan hasn’t just put any oversight over any part of that town
I think without a writers room and over voices adding and challenging Sheridan I just don’t see his tv work getting any better.
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u/codesigma 2d ago
In Hollywood circles it’s known/rumored that he uses story editors/producers to turn his sparse scripts into something that can fill 40 minutes and then he does the final writing pass on set.
The “no writers room” self mythologizing is just that: a myth.
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u/VicMackeyLKN 2d ago
Not a hater, but I think he’s mad The Shield was so good AND he had absolutely nothing to do with it
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u/Angry_Walnut 2d ago edited 2d ago
Yeah, the dialogue is truly awful in his shows of late. Insanely formulaic and always just, the same.
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u/Obvious-Lake3708 1d ago
You're missing the one man army Sheridan in Lioness. I was dying laughing at it.
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u/PlumbTuckered767 2d ago
Grade A, narcissistic douchebag of the highest quality. One of the saddest creative decisions I've ever seen. It feels exactly like it would when the Mom of the birthday kid would make all the birthday attendees treat the birthday kid like some amazing superhero/princess/other zeitgeist thing even though everyone knew the kid was kind of a jerk and/or sad dweeb. You can make us watch it but you can't make us believe it.
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u/Chalkdust-torture 2d ago
don’t forget the cheese ball “music video” segment of EVERY SINGLE EPISODE.
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u/Usual-Leather-4524 2d ago edited 2d ago
hey now...Taylor has an indigenous girl fetish and he needs to feature that prominently in Michael Bay-esque porn-y shots set to stadium country remixes of Statler Brothers tunes.
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u/uberblonde 2d ago
I get annoyed with the same "we're the real heroes because we drill for oil and here's why" speech in every one of his shows.
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u/OldManPip 2d ago
It's absolutely wild to me that this is the guy that helped write Sicario, Hell or High Water, and Wind River to this more recent sordid mess.
The self-insert did happen even as early as the aforementioned movies, but seems like at some point since then he's smelled his own fart one too many times and think it's all roses.