He overcame an early family upheaval and elusive educational success to attend an Ivy League university. Unsatisfied, he left school and hitchhiked West, where he worked as a roughneck in the Wyoming ...

One area seems a bit too tragic to be true, however: the dangers of working an oilfield. By the ending of Landman episode 2, the show had already killed three roughnecks in a massive blowout.