Warning: This post contains spoilers for Landman season 2, episode 8.
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A fall in the swimming pool brings many emotions out of Sam Elliott in Landman.
The 81-year-old actor plays 82-year-old T.L., father to Tommy (Billy Bob Thornton), in the Taylor Sheridan series, and in the Jan. 4 episode, he enlisted his son’s help after he wound up unable to get himself out of the pool.
“With my knees and my hip, I can’t f—— stand right now,” T.L. explained as Tommy took off his boots, readying to help his formerly-estranged father.
The situation prompted a reflection from T.L., who had been living in a retirement home for years before Tommy’s ex-wife and current love interest Angela (Ali Larter) convinced him that T.L. should move in with them.
“There’s a guy back at the home — Alzheimer’s, bad case of it. Don’t even know how to put on his socks. F—– just stares at the wall all day, drooling all over himself,” T.L. told Tommy.
Emerson Miller/Paramount+
He then began to cry as he thought of the man, who he said “laughs” every “few minutes,” though there’s “no telling what he’s thinking.”
“It’s a curse my mind is sharp,” an emotional T.L. told his son. “I get to sit here and process all the ways my body is failing me. [I’m] dying before my failing f——eyes.”
Paramount+
The revelation seemed to worry Tommy, especially given the chipper attitude his father previously had about wanting to make the most of the rest of his days. “What happened to ‘I’m gonna enjoy whatever time I got left?'” Tommy asked.
“It fell in the f—— pool, son,” T.L. said.
Tommy suggested physical therapy as a possible solution, but T.L. told him, “You don’t understand. This skin suit is wore out.” He then got out of the pool, with his son’s help, and gave Tommy a hug — the first shared between the father and son.
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Elliott previously told PEOPLE that it’s an “emotional ride” in season 2 for T.L. and Tommy.
“This character I’m playing is a fractured man,” he said of T.L. “It’s gone on for him for years, since his wife turned inward, and he waited forever for her to come out of it, and she never really did. But consequently, [Tommy] paid for it, while [T.L.] checked out.”
T.L. reunited with Tommy after the death of his wife.
“We’re going to spend much of this season seeing T.L. early on — but then it becomes both of us, I think — healing that relationship that’s falling apart,” Elliott said.
New episodes of Landman premiere Sundays on Paramount+
