No one comes to a Taylor Sheridan joint for nuanced female characters. The prolific writer-producer-director-actor traffics in broad (pun intended) tropes: the sexy drunken viper (Yellowstoneby Beth Dutton); the sexy-stoic badass (Lioness‘Agent Joe); the sexy strict matriarch (Cara Dutton from 1923), and so on.

Mostly, Sheridan – who is credited as the sole writer of almost every episode of the shows mentioned above – compensates for his clichéd female characters with just enough agency to drive some of the story, earn a few laughs, and occasionally even evolve as humans.

The ladies of Husbandman (premiering November 17) are not so lucky. The new Paramount+ drama — based on the Boomtown podcast and co-created by Sheridan and Christian Wallace – follows beleaguered oil company fixer Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton) as he bounces from crisis to crisis in the dusty terrain of West Texas. From the crews on the rigs to the suits in the C-suites, the oil industry is male-dominated, so it makes sense that HusbandmanThe film’s female characters are mainly on the periphery. What is poignant is that the women of Husbandman exist solely in the context of how they are perceived by Tommy and his cohorts – simply put, they are there to distract, annoy, arouse, beg, or yell at the men.

“The oil and gas industry makes $3 billion a day in pure profit,” Tommy says in the series premiere. “Generates over $4.3 trillion per year in revenue.” With such staggering amounts of money at stake, Tommy spends his waking hours walking a legal and ethical tightrope to solve problems for his employer, M*Tex, an independent oil company owned by Monty Miller (Jon Hamm). Whether it’s brokering a land lease deal with a Mexican drug cartel or negotiating settlements for women whose husbands were murdered on the rig, Tommy has one goal: to keep the oil and money flowing.

Considering how dangerous the drilling work can be, Tommy is not happy when his son Cooper (Jacob Lofland), who aspires to one day become an oil baron, drops out of college to join a team of M*Tex robbers. And he’s just as grumpy when his daughter, a bubbly, blonde 17-year-old named Ainsely (Michelle Randolph), crashes into his rental house — which he shares with M*Tex lawyer Nate (Colm Feore) and petroleum engineer Dale (James Jordan ) — for spring break. Although Tommy’s ex-wife, Angela (Ail Larter), has remarried, she delights in blowing up Tommy’s phone, and her approach to co-parenting vacillates between sultry seduction and shrewish screaming.

Very much Yellowstone, Husbandman provides a compelling portrayal of the chaos of the Wild West and the business/political subterfuge required to keep a vital American industry alive. M*Tex and its competitors operate under a kind of shadow code, strategically skirting laws because following them – such as filing a police report when a drug cartel “borrows” one of the company’s planes – could send oil prices plummeting and could cause an economic crisis.

“Every company has a version of Tommy. You can’t function without one,” says Monty, when his cautious lawyer (Kristoffer Polaha) suggests he should blame Tommy for a deadly explosion at one of his drilling sites. Tommy may not seem all that formidable – he smokes two packs a day and his decrepit body looks like it’s being held together with duct tape and spackle – but the man is ruthless at solving problems. After being injured in an on-site accident, Tommy chooses to cut off the severed tip of his little finger with a pocket knife rather than wait for proper medical treatment. “I’m not doing twelve surgeries for a year,” he tells the shocked ER doctor (Jake Olson).

Thornton knows how to make that kind of exaggerated machismo extremely entertaining. In the field, Tommy confronts his opponents with wry annoyance and stubborn defiance; at home, he uses a smooth Southern baritone and an old-fashioned charm to appease the pouting women in his life. It’s worth noting that none of the men are present Husbandmanincluding Tommy, are portrayed as saints. They are broken, sexist, sloppy, selfish, greedy, patronizing, ignorant and more. But Tommy and his male colleagues are three-dimensional disasters; women, on the other hand, are completely defined by their gender.

When Angela isn’t getting drunk on margaritas all day or twerking in Tommy’s living room (“I’m just trying to keep the peach plump,” she jokes), she’s mounting her ex-husband, whom she hopes to win back. Why? Hard to say. By his own admission, Tommy is “a divorced alcoholic with $500,000 in debt,” and his marriage to Angela was an utter failure. Maybe she just feels insecure because she “doesn’t have a cougar anymore” – which is real dialogue for Ali Larter to say. (Despite what’s on the page, the actress brings a poignant undercurrent of sadness to Angela’s sexy facade.) Ainsley, meanwhile, is devastated when her boyfriend (Drake Rodger) moves on to another cheerleader: “How could he?” She’s a fucking brunette!”

There’s one woman in the M*Tex boys’ club: Rebecca Falcone (Kayla Wallace), a hard-working young lawyer who keeps her pretty face in a “don’t mess with me” frown. After a somewhat inauspicious first outing with Tommy – in which he explains the oil industry to her and then, I kid you not, saves her from a rattlesnake – Rebecca proves her mettle in the boardroom and dismantles the sexist, alpha male’s arguments. opposing counsel during a witness statement. “Do you think they hired me because I’m pretty?” she snaps. “I charge $900 an hour, asshole.”

It’s the kind you-go-girl triumph that only a man could script. Sheridan, who is credited as the sole writer of the first five episodes of Husbandmanmay think that Rebecca’s character serves as a counterbalance to the show’s overt sexism, but he’s just indulging in another gross stereotype: the sexy, man-hating ball-buster.

Readers, we haven’t even gotten to Demi Moore yet. The extremely famous actress, who plays Monty’s elegant wife Cami, is prominently featured in advertisements for Husbandman. However, she doesn’t appear much in the first half of the season. (Paramount+ has made five of the drama’s 10 episodes available for review.) When she appears on screen, Cami doesn’t make much of an impression: She’s swimming laps in her backyard pool; she urges Monty to take his blood pressure medication; she cheers on her daughter (Dani Raen) during an athletics competition. In one episode, Cami wordlessly makes a smoothie in the background and then disappears. I’m not an optimist by nature, but I choose to believe that Monty’s wife will have a hint of relevance in the final five episodes, because the alternative – Sheridan casting an A-list actress as window dressing – is simply too depressing.

Lest Mr. Sheridan think I’m too much of a scold, let me clarify: I’m not angry, sir, just disappointed. Husbandman‘s pilot is fantastic, and I praised it as such. The underlying themes – including the world’s dependence on an industry that could destroy the planet – couldn’t be more timely and provocative. But as the episodes progressed and Sheridan continued to double, triple and quadruple his tired views on women, it became difficult to maintain that same level of enthusiasm.

In another discouraging exchange, Tommy scoffs when Rebecca suggests that a sex worker at the local restaurant might not have had any other options for work. “She had a choice,” he sneers. “And she took a shortcut, which is always the longest way.” Aside from the harsh moralizing and surprising lack of empathy, Tommy does have a point. Shortcuts – both in life and in scriptwriting – often lead to sub-par results. Grade: C-

The first two episodes of Husbandman premieres Sunday, November 17 on Paramount+.