Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Joe Pickett’ On Paramount+, About A Wyoming Game Warden Fighting His Violent Past

Joe Pickett debuted on Spectrum Originals in December to good ratings; since it’s a Paramount show, the folks at Paramount+ knew it would appeal to the viewers that tune into both Yellowstone and its prequel 1883. But this show isn’t just quite what viewers of those other shows might expect. It’s better.

JOE PICKETT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A teenage boy runs through the woods, a man yelling “Come back here!” Then a man wakes up from what looks like a bad dream.”

The Gist: On his first day as a game warden in the area of Saddlestring, Wyoming, Joe Pickett (Michael Dorman) has to deal with a dangerous poacher named Ote Keeley (Benjamin Hollingsworth). He’s desperate to provide for his family so he kills an elk out of season. Pickett is set to give him a ticket for it, which Keeley refuses to accept; the old game warden, Vern Dunnegan (David Alan Grier) would have let him get away with the kill. Ote gets into a struggle with Pickett and takes the game warden’s gun.

When Pickett gets the gun back, he flashes on the day he held a gun to his violent father’s head. But comes to his senses and lets Ote go, but still give him a ticket.

Back at home, he decides not to tell his wife Marybeth (Julianna Guill) what happened. Marybeth is just happy that, after all the moving, they’re settled in Saddlestring; she may even look to put her law degree to use. But then get gets word that she’s pregnant with their third child, a prospect that they’re both delighted and worried about.

Skip forward a few months. Marybeth is showing, and the Picketts are more settled in their home and familiar to the people in town. At a farmer’s market, he has a run-in with Ote; Vern, manning a booth there, warns him that he may want to pick his battles, especially with the more desperate and alcohol-fueled poachers like Ote, if he wants to survive in the job.

We see some of the everyday stuff Pickett has to do in his job, like wrestle with an emu that got into the house of his eccentric elderly owners. But Pickett’s home life is equally complicated, like when they have to go to Jackson Hole to get Marybeth’s mom Missy (Sharon Lawrence), whose most recent husband was hauled off by the feds on wire fraud charges. His older daughter Sheridan (Skywalker Hughes) is getting bullied at her new school, but not as much as her new friend April (Vivienne Guynn), whom she doesn’t know is the daughter of Ote Keeley and his pregnant wife Jeannie (Leah Gibson).

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? If you mix Yellowstone, Ozark and Big Sky, you get Joe Pickett. It’s definitely between Yellowstone and Big Sky on the surreal spectrum.

Our Take: As we said, Paramount added Joe Pickett to its streaming service to appeal to fans of Yellowstone and 1883. But what viewers of both shows might not bargain for is that, while the show dives deep into Pickett’s childhood and violent history, and has a pretty heavy murder at the center of the first season, it’s also got an interesting sense of humor.

That sense of humor isn’t exactly lighthearted, but showrunners John Erick Dowdle and Drew Dowdle know that it’s important to balance some of the heaviness in Pickett’s life with at least a little bit of light. It’s why we have an extended scene of him wrestling an angry emu on a farm whose tag line is “We Second That Emu-tion.” It’s why Missy drunkenly yells “They took my lover away!” when Joe and Marybeth enter her house to bring her back to theirs.

Instead of making Joe Pickett into a standard-grade western with a conflicted hero, it’s apparent that Joe Pickett isn’t some sort of super cop; when Ote holds the gun on him, he’s visibly shaken, and his past will inevitably get dredged up as he confronts Ote and people like him.

We have a good sense of Saddlestring by the end of the first episode, as well as the idea that Marybeth may be able to practice law after all, and the fact that Joe and Marybeth’s daughters are going to be more than just cute moppets. The first episode definitely covers a lot of ground, but leaves just enough to give viewers story to explore during the rest of the season.

Sex and Skin: None, at least in the first episode.

Parting Shot: After hearing his daughter talk about hearing a man outside the night before, Joe goes to investigate. He finds Ote Keely with an arrow in his gut, his body lying on a pile of firewood. “Remember how I told you things weren’t going to escalate?” he says to Marybeth. “I was wrong.”

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to Grier and Lawrence. They’re both in unexpected roles, but they bring copious comedic and dramatic range to those roles, helping to keep the show from being a grim slog.

Most Pilot-y Line: “Ticket the tourists. You’ve got a better chance of making it to retirement that way,” Vern says to Joe. Wow, that’s some pretty lousy advice, right there.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Joe Pickett has some unexpected humor among the darkness, and a title character that shows his weaknesses and baggage on his face, even to the people he’s trying to help or arrest. It’s a show that has a more realistic feel and flows a lot better than some of the shows we’ve seen in the Western genre of late.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.