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Criticism

Reviewers have criticized a scene where the fictional oil man Tommy Norris falsely claims that the amount of steel, oil, and concrete needed to construct a wind turbine produces such a high carbon footprint that it will not offset the costs over the course of its lifespan (said to be twenty years). This dialog led many conservatives to repost the clip on social media. Life cycle analyses of wind energy show that far more carbon is offset by wind energy than is produced during wind turbine construction. Joshua Rhodes, an energy researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, estimates that a wind turbine offsets the carbon spent to make it within one year.

The program has also been criticized, at least in the first season, for presenting female characters as caricatures and negative stereotypes of women. A reviewer for Texas Monthly writes "With all the low-cut tops, high-cut shorts, and dumb-blonde dialogue, I felt like I was watching a racy reboot of a T & A show." When reviewing the first two episodes of the first season, the reviewer from National Public Radio noted that the talents of Demi Moore and Ali Larter were being underutilized and in those scenes, they were "playing caricatures and male fantasies". A writer from Rolling Stone noted that "The show gives an unsolicited glimpse of what The Dukes of Hazzard would have looked like if it had been on late-night Cinemax. Thornton’s Tommy has an ex-wife and a daughter who are seemingly characters plucked from dubious scenarios on PornHub." In her review for Entertainment Weekly, the reviewer wrote "the women of Landman exist solely in the context of how they are perceived by Tommy and his cowboy cohorts — put simply, they are around to distract, annoy, titillate, entreat, or yell at the men." A writer for The New Yorker commented "The screenwriting plays fast and loose with sexist stereotypes; Tommy’s ex-wife, Angela (played by Ali Larter), with whom he rekindles a relationship, is a kind of red-state Manic Pixie Dream MILF, flaunting her cleavage, giving road head, and acting crazy when she’s getting her period." While reviewing Sheridan's writing style, a critic for Vulture wrote, "But what’s tough to digest is how so much of that simplicity is tied to the whole misogyny thing — and it is misogyny, no doubt about it. In addition to being some weird expression of daddy-daughter shit that Sheridan is clearly obsessed with, Ainsley is such a difficult character to defend as a creation: an excessively sexualized teenage daughter, played by an obviously older woman, who’s perpetually scantily clad around older men. It’s just icky."

In contrast, actress Ali Larter defended Sheridan's controversial writing style claiming that he writes "women in their prime, that were still allowed to be alive." Larter also defended her portrayal of Angela, "stating that Angela is able to express that side of herself, and that the character is a full rainbow." Actress Michelle Randolph also defended Sheridan and her own portrayal of Ainsley.

On June 23, 2025, Paulynne, Inc., which owns and controls all of famed broadcaster Paul Harvey's intellectual property, sued Paramount Global in New York federal court. The company sued Paramount for using a 90-second audio clip from The Rest of the Story in Landman without permission. Paramount used a segment about rising gas prices from Harvey's 2009 "Gas Crisis" episode in the opening of Landman's Season 1 finale. The lawsuit accused Paramount of failing to obtain permission to use the clip as well as editing the clip to change Harvey's viewpoint with regard to government fossil-fuel policies and his interest in alternative fuels.

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