Landman Recap: Monty's Big Secret Starts To Unravel

Monty Miller, what secrets were you hiding?

That's the question at hand at the top of this week's "Landman," which finds Tommy, Cami & Co. delving into the MTex tycoon's files... and finding some potentially shady stuff. Meanwhile, Cooper realizes exactly how unprepared he is for managing an oil business of his own — and by the end of the hour, we learn that he has no idea with whom he's doing business (but we, and Tommy, surely do).

Read on for the highlights of Episode 2, "Sins of the Father."

Cooper's well hits oil, which spurts out of the ground in a gushing black fountain that coats all of the crew. "I'm no geologist, but I'd say it's a pretty good place to drill," one of the guys tells Cooper, who is elated. Ariana is decidedly less elated when he gets home, given that she's been calling for hours and getting nothing but her boyfriend's voicemail. "I need you to answer when I call," she tells him. "The last time someone didn't answer was because they were already gone. You have to give me that."

She notices that he's crying; he confesses that he's scared that every well hit — which is rare — because he has no clue how to proceed. She refocuses him by suggesting he strip and hose off in the backyard. She brings him dish soap and helps him bag his destroyed clothes and boots, then she sits and drops a bomb: "I don't think we should do this anymore." Crying, she says the panic she felt when she thought he was dead a) proves she loves him and b) isn't worth the pain. Plus, she doesn't want the same life he does: "Being rich isn't my dream. It's yours."

The next morning, Ariana wakes Cooper before she leaves for the day: "I think you should take all that money and buy your own house," she says, explicitly kicking him out.

Tommy is driving north to plan his mother's funeral, and arguing around with the radio announcer, when Angela calls via FaceTime to check in on her man's emotional wellbeing. And when he shuts that down quickly, she offers her next best solution: a glimpse of her naked body, which he also turns down. Cooper calls next asking for girl-and-business advice, so Tommy immediately turns around and picks up his son at Patch Café.

Cooper brings his dad to the well, which is where Tommy learns that his son now owns oil wells. "So what do I do now?" Cooper wonders. "Who paid for this?" a highly suspicious Tommy asks. He learns that Cooper hooked up with a company, Sonrisa, that financed the whole operation with zero collateral, and that he signed a contract without having a lawyer review it. "Son, why didn't you come to me?" an incredulous Tommy asks. "I'm coming to you now," Cooper shoots back. Tommy also can't believe that Cooper started drilling blind, with no geological surveys to back up his hunch. They get back in the car; Cooper drives while Tommy reads the contract. He's never heard of Sonrisa or the man listed as the company's agent, so he tasks Nate with doing some digging.

With that sorted, Tommy asks about Ariana. "Let me tell you something about women," Tommy starts, and given his thoughts on menstruation, I steel myself. But it's not bad. "When they do something irrational, like kick you out of the house, you've gotta sit 'em down and give 'em a god*amn good listening to." He points out that Ariana has recently gone through a huge loss, and she gets to decide how she wants to rebuild her life. He also backs up Ariana's fear of the money: "It ruins more families than it fixes," Tommy says.

Cami is out for a run, her security detail following in an SUV, when a man approaches her with a manilla envelope, As her guys force him to the ground, the poor dude calls out that he's just serving her with legal papers. In the phone huddle that immediately follows, Rebecca and Nate inform Cami and Tommy that apparently a gas well off the coat of Louisiana blew out, and MTex received a $420 million settlement from the insurance company with the understanding that a new well would be drilled. The insurance company paid the entire settlement in advance, which is not normal, and now no one knows where the money went. Once Cami is off the line, Tommy and the lawyers agree that Monty probably used that money to work over the oil fields; Rebecca will to talk to the other company's lawyers — though Nate thinks he should go instead. And Cami decides she's going to Monty's office in the interim. While there, she finds some troubling paperwork in his desk.

Rebecca meets with the insurance company's lawyers and does what she does best: annihilates them with a lot of smooth legal talk and a smile. Her main argument: The company should not have paid the claim out all at once, and directly to Monty, because that was a violation of their contract. Therefore, any subsequent violations/damages are inactionable. "If you want to take whacks at a dead man, in front of a jury, and his widow? I'm in. I'm ready," she says, leaning back in her chair. "I like that kind of party." They reach an agreement, and Rebecca goes to leave. Before she does, though, one of the opposing lawyers stops her: Monty was shady, he hints, and she should separate herself from MTex if she knows what's good for her career. Also? He's impressed, and wouldn't mind hiring her. "I'm happy where I am," she says. "I highly doubt that," he counters.

Angela and Ainsley lead the seniors at the retirement home in a chair aerobics session that seems like nothing more than an excuse for a post-class boozefest. Everyone is swilling gin and coconut juice when representatives from the state eldercare agency show up. "You're what, the f**king old people police?" Angela scoffs. And when the male agent puts his hands on Angela when she refuses to sit down, she drops him like a new album. Then Ainsley "accidentally" trips the female agent.

Meanwhile, Tommy and Cooper go to the funeral home, where they pick out a coffin for Dorothy. They're interrupted by a FaceTime from Sheriff Joeberg, who shows him Angela and Ainsley, handcuffed and sitting on the curb outside the old folks' home. Joeberg is highly entertained as Tommy demands to know whether the agents have the authority to detain the ladies (they don't), then demands that the cop let them go. Highly irritated by [waves hands] everything, Tommy leaves the rest of the planning in the funeral director's hands, including the amount of flowers: "Enough to say I tried, not enough to say I miss her."

Tommy and Cooper then visit T.L.; it doesn't go well. "I bet you can't wait to get her in the ground, can you?" the older man asks. "We've avoided telling each other the truth for a long time. Let's not start now," Tommy replies. From the way T.L. talks about his wife, it sounds like she had some sort of substance abuse problem; he reminisces about what a bright light she was when they met. "Well, the sun had already set by the time I was born," Tommy says, adding that the funeral is Friday and then leaving. We also learn that Cooper never met his grandmother.

In the truck on the way home, Tommy breaks the silence by saying it was probably best he only ever saw Cooper on the weekends when he was growing up. "I wasn't raised to father a son," he says, explaining that T.L. did hard, physical labor and then came home and drank a lot; Dorothy was "coked-out" a lot, too. "Then [he'd] come in my room and try to beat his failures all out of me," he says. He adds that however Cooper raises Miguel, or any other son, "is how he's going to raise his son. And that cycle is almost impossible to break." Cooper quickly says that Tommy broke it. "I avoided it," Tommy says. But Cooper wants his message to be clear: "I love you, Dad. You did your best, and your best is good enough for me," he says, bringing Tommy to barely held-back tears. (Side note: What a nice little scene for Billy Bob Thornton and Jacob Lofland.)

By the end of the hour, Cooper is staying at his folks' place for the foreseeable future — much to Ainsley's extreme annoyance. And Nate has figured out who's behind Sonrisa: It's Gallino, AKA the Mexican kingpin that beat the bejesus out of Tommy at the end of the last season. "That's your new partner," he tells an oblivious Cooper, "and it's a real f**kin' problem, son."

Now it's your turn. What did you think of the episode? Let us know in the comments!