Have you picked up on the Joe Pickett TV series on Amazon Prime? I just did last night. Having already made my way through three-quarters of the current available books … I gotta tell ya … the Joe Pickett TV series is a hotdog!
I’ll explain what I mean by ‘a hotdog’ — but first, I need to back-up a little …
Ten-plus years ago I couldn’t be less interested in Westerns. I had seen few such movies or TV shows — as far as I was concerned, they were okay — but for the most part … they didn’t catch my interest. Then, one evening, one of my piping students turned me on to westerns. He had received his first set of bagpipes — and new pipes need a lot of work to get set up right — so I suggested that we book an evening where he brought his instrument, snacks and a stack of movies. We watched True Grit (remake) and Appaloosa — and I was HOOKED! (Or maybe ‘roped in’ is more genre correct?) I have since come to not just enjoy but also value this section of the big-screen selection.
(Side Note — In my new exploration, I’ve found the source of scenes and characters in Firefly from Westerns and other Sci-Fi movies.)
In more recent years, I was given solid recommendations about the Longmire TV series, so I bookmarked the seasons in my To-Watch List. These kept getting passed over, and a few years ago I decided to give them a try. With the first few episodes I COULDN’T GET ENOUGH! I fairly well binge-watched the seasons back-to-back.
Once through the TV series, I wanted more — yep, I loved watching Longmire! So I thought to give the original Craig Johnson books a try. I soon found that the TV show and the source material had little to do with each other. Book one, in my opinion, was so miserable I didn’t want to give the second book a chance — I had excitedly downloaded them all from my library, and I remorselessly deleted the entire collection. Sorry, Craig — them’s the breaks!
Still, I wanted more Longmire’ism … a modern western based around a flawed yet well oriented good-guy, finding his way through life while striving for justice in the face of complex moral situations controlled by underhanded, devious bad-guys.
A short time later, I was given the suggestion to try the Joe Pickett books by C.J. Box — a few beautifully descriptive lines were even read to me, and I soon dove into the debut story. The work quickly revealed that the stories are thought provoking and well paced between exposition and thrills. The main character is easy to enjoy and endearing in his foibles. Box writes pleasing storylines with an array of characters — better than that are his beautiful descriptions, usually presenting a moment in nature. I wanted something like Longmire, and I began to find this in the Joe Pickett books with a whole new character to appreciate.
(Side Note — C.J. Box’s ability to release one book a year in chronological story order — book #1 in 2001, book #2 in 2002, and so on — has also been impressive.)
(Additional Side Note — I think the Longmire TV series ‘borrowed’ story elements from the Joe Pickett books to make what they couldn’t out of the Longmire stories. There are too many things in Season 01 that are identical in the early C.J. Box books … or to say, too similar to be a coincidence.)
As I progressed through the books — in my case, I have been consuming the audiobooks — I thought that this character and these stories would make for a good TV series. Or maybe a couple of good quality movies … maybe made-for-TV, similar to the Jesse Stone installments. What better time than now to feature a down-to-earth do-right family-man through a “neo-western“.
Around the release of book 22 or 23 I picked up that these Joe Pickett was going to get made into a TV series — I was thrilled! Someone read my mind, came up with a bunch of production money, and were on their way to fulfil my wish — that was considerate of them!
Last evenings I finished Season 01 of the Jack Carr / James Reese / Terminal List on Amazon Prime — books 1 through 5 and the recently released 6 had been GREAT! Out of curiosity, I scrolled down through the TV series listings and … to my surprise … happened to find the “Joe Pickett” TV series! I had been expecting to wait and hear more about my favourite fictional game warden hitting screens, and IT’S ALREADY BEEN MADE!!!
Clicking the link, I was excited to see that Season 01 is available now through 30June2023, and I’m right in time for the release of Season 02 on 04July2023! Between last night and today, I watched through the first 3 episodes of Season 01. Before finishing Episode 01 I found myself frankly disappointed. In my opinion … the Joe Pickett TV series is terrible — I forced myself to finish Episode 03 — and I’m giving up on the show.
Like books, just because you start a TV series doesn’t mean you are required to finish it. Each of us only live so long, and if the book you’re reading isn’t pleasing … move on to another. I have better things to watch — like The Expanse, which I’ve also been reading (audiobook) — and my viewing time is better spent with something that I find makes me happy. So in this case, I’d rather preserve perception of Joe Picket that I have from the books than the garbage the producers are trying to pass-off as the TV show.
I think this IMDB review does a good job of introducing the conflict …
DiCaprioFan13 / 4 October 2022
“Joe Pickett is a must watch for any western fan. It seems most people who’ve watched it seem to really like it. The only people who seem not to like it are fans of the book that are mad that it isn’t exactly like the book.“
‘Not exactly the same as the book’ … really, how hard is it to get a modern-day story based in reality reasonably correct? The book started at an exciting moment that would have been a great hook for the TV show — NOPE, they didn’t do that! The pistol Joe Pickett is carrying is the wrong type, but I guess strapping a revolver on him makes more of a Western impression? Giving TV-Joe the less-expensive problematic truck that book-Joe distinctly complained about was not good enough for the production budget? Fitting TV-Joe with the dog that book-Joe doesn’t get until much-later in the series does … what … win cute-points with the unfamiliar audience? Putting the Pickett family in a nicer (2-story) house on a better piece of property located outside of town was somehow more TV-savvy? In the books, the (single-story, cramped) crummy house provided through his low-paying state job speaks to his humility and his wife’s love of Joe superseding materialism. I should also mention that his mother-in-law, Missy, is all wrong and April (their adopted daughter) arrives too early.
For me though, this isn’t the crux of the issue — this isn’t why I find it disappointing, or why another viewer like DiCaprioFan13 might think that Joe Pickett book readers are somehow ‘angry’.
(Not to mention that it seems DiCaprioFan13 makes redundant use of “it seem/s”, seemingly in close proximity … doesn’t it seem like that would make someone itch?)
So what do I mean when I say that
“the Joe Pickett TV series is a hotdog”?
Have you ever heard the humor-intended line about what hotdogs are made of? At the end of the work-day in a butcher’s shop, the butcher sweeps the floor, and what they collect in their dust pan is what they use to make hotdogs — dirt, dust, and discarded bits of bone and meat … or what previously looked like something edible.
I will 100% own that I am biased by the C.J. Box / Joe Pickett books. Yes, I am one of the fans of the books who are unhappy — not because the show ‘isn’t exactly like the book‘, but because it is such a terribly missed opportunity at making a good TV series out of a good book series.
The collection of actors in the show seem to be C, D, E, and F-List nobodys — most of whom I have never seen, including the lead played by Michael Dorman. The choices someone made for the characters — the changes loosely based on the books — has turned them into amateurish versions of the characters. This book series seems to have received the same wacko-treatment Disney has been applying to Star Wars since buying the franchise — changing the characters for agenda-driven reasons instead of serving the previously developed story, and telling the established fanbase what they should like.
My general impression of Joe in the books is that he is more more … manly … than the Joe actor in the TV series. I’m not saying he’s duke-dashing with a chiseled physique and Tom Selleck’s chest carpet, but somehow more … masculine. I don’t know how better to say it, but this guy seems like a +90% self-doubting beta-male. When you are familiar with the characters in the books, and see how they’re changed in the TV show … one could easily form the impression that specific choices were made in attempt to satiate the new politically-correct mob.
In the books, Joe and his wife are a team — he confides in her, and she places her trust in him. However, in the TV show, Marybeth steers Joe. Nate Romanowski in the books is a ruggedly handsome, tall, blond, white man, former special forces. Alternatively, in the TV show Nate is “… one part mystic, one part hardened criminal. He was a survivalist who (lives) off the grid deep in the woods …” and is played by a black man (and not the only character who has undergone such changes, clearly for the sake of ardent “Political Correctness!”). When Joe meets Nate, he conducts himself more like a ghetto gangster than the way any former special forces soldier would — brandishing a pistol that doesn’t appear to be the celebrated Freedom Arms Model 83 .500 WE Nate is famous for in the books (until switching to another similar revolver around book 12).
Supposedly there are funny bits in the TV show that weren’t in the books. Three episodes and I never caught one of those. Is there a guide that tells viewers where those are? I mean, it makes sense, right — the producers are already telling you what you should think society should be like … so why not this funny-bits guide, too? Frankly, were I C.J. Box, I’d feel worse about this show than finding out I had permanent podium / lectern and basic geographical errors in my books*.
(* see below)
I have no idea what C.J. Box’s opinion is of the Joe Pickett TV series. Maybe he likes it, or — and I wouldn’t be surprised — maybe he’s contractually obligated to say he approves of it. But personally I’m sorry for him, and I’m sorry for Joe Pickett. Compared to the books, the TV show is a hotdog — floor sweepings, collected up and shoved into a casing, sold as being ‘good for you’ when really its* only worth being dumped into the garbage.
(* that was intentional)
I would be remiss if I didn’t say there have been a few things that have made me twitch from the Joe Pickett books.
Recently I started book #15. It was only just before this that C.J. Box, his editor, or his wife seemed to get the difference between a podium and a lectern corrected — although in American English “podium” has sadly come to mean “lectern” through further dumbing-down of the language. Here’s a tip — DO NOT STAND ON A LECTERN — it’s dangerous, you could get hurt. I know I won’t make that mistake a third time. Alternatively, under most circumstances, it should be safe to speak standing behind a podium.
One or more geographical errors would have been corrected if someone just looked at a map. While reading (listening to) an early book, I laughed sardonically when some hitmen were approaching Bremerton, WA ‘from the east’ driving their SUV, arriving in a logging town full of modern lumberjacks in a bar. Apparently this SUV has some sort of non-factory amphibious feature — pontoons perhaps? I presume the nearby US Navy base would like to know about this technology. I also suspect it’s the United States Navy that is hiding all those lumberjacks, too! The secret is now out … you read it here first at BagpiperDon.com … Area 51 hides the flying saucers and aliens, while the Bremerton Navy base hides all the loggers!
