As the final episode, Open Season, of Joe Pickett’s first season begins, Joe (Michael Dorman) rushes to the Kensingers property to see if Sheridan is home. Lucy and April (Vivienne Guynn) confirm she is not there because she went somewhere with her mother. Joe tells them to get dressed and be ready to leave the house in a hurry. He wakes up Missy (Sharon Lawrence) to tell her about Marybeth being shot and Sheridan being missing, but Missy can’t tell him where they went. Meanwhile, Sheridan (Skywalker Hughes) spots one of the weasels that she calls Willie. As she urges Willie to run away, Wacey (Paul Sparks) tries shooting at them. Sheridan hides nearby as Wacey curses and stomps on the fire. Joe takes Lucy and April to the Bouvier sisters to ensure they’ll be safe. The sisters agree to let them stay along with Missy and the dog. Deputy McLanahan (Chad Rook) drives back to the station where he finds Sheriff Barnum (Patrick Gallagher) drinking in his squad car.
Barnum admits they’re not paid enough to go after criminals like Nate. He invites his deputy to hang out with him and have a few drinks so McLanahan realizes something is wrong. The Sheriff says that was an order. Wacey chases after Sheridan who hides under his truck. Joe tries to get in touch with McLanahan or Barnum to find out where Marybeth was found. Another truck slams into the side of his forcing it off the road. Joe collects himself and looks over just in time to see someone shooting at him. He gets out and takes cover. Within seconds, he shoots one of the men. Joe grabs his rifle, shoots the other truck a few times, and escapes in his truck. Once he drives away, Hank (Roger LeBlanc) tells Arlen (Brendan Fletcher) to call mama so she can send someone to get them out of here. Hank begins dumping gasoline on the truck with the intention of burning it. Vern Dunnegan (David Alan Grier) hangs out with a woman at the bar and she seems particularly interested in him.
She tells him that you’re supposed to keep going when you’re going through hell. As Joe drives through town, he spots Vern’s vehicle and decides to question him. When he doesn’t see him in the bar, he goes across the street to the motel and gets rough with the receptionist. He gets Vern’s room number and bursts in on him and the woman seconds later. Joe gets rid of the woman before Vern says this isn’t like him at all. Joe tells him that he has never seen him on a night when his wife gets shot, his baby dies, and his daughter goes missing. Vern denies having anything to do with it and reveals he was at Stockman’s all night. Joe shoots out the light to prove he isn’t playing games. Then, he orders Vern to call Wacey to tell him he won. When he calls, Wacey doesn’t answer although he says he is getting it done. He decides to check the house for Sheridan. Joe tells Vern to get dressed because he is going to help him find Wacey.
First, he says he is going to take him to the Scarletts since they both know they’re involved. Vern claims they don’t know that. He says the Scarletts are dangerous so they shouldn’t mess around with them. Vern goes on to say the Scarletts won’t have his daughter because they won’t get their hands dirty with something like that. Joe warns him he better start saying something he believes. Vern admits he wasn’t straight with him on that, but this is going on because Wacey has lost his mind. He confesses there were extinct weasels there although he claims it was a victimless crime. That changed when Wacey went and killed the two outfitters. He reminds Joe he told him to stand down when he went to Crazy Woman Creek because he didn’t want anything to happen to him. Joe stops abruptly once he sees smoke rising in the woods nearby. He believes it is a smoke signal from Sheridan so he rushes toward it. Sheridan hides in the house while Wacey searches it for her.
Wacey tries to trap her upstairs and slowly checks the room to see where she is hiding. When he sees the window slightly ajar, he puts his rifle down and sticks his head outside. Sheridan hits him and runs for it. She runs across the roof as Wacey takes shots at her from inside. Wacey shoots several times as Sheridan keeps moving. He believes he got her with the last shot. Sheridan is relieved when she spots Joe arriving. Wacey hides nearly to prepare. Sheridan screams for her father to look out, but Wacey shoots him before he can hide. Joe hides and begins shooting back at Wacey while Vern asked to be uncuffed. Joe distracts Wacey long enough to run to the side of the house where he helps Sheridan climb down from the roof.
He shows her where to hide on the porch before Joe turns his attention back to Wacey. He sees him walking around the side. Joe walks toward the edge of the exterior wall and waits for Wacey to step in front of him. Once he does, Joe attacks him knocking him to the ground. He rushes over, gets rid of Wacey’s gun, and keeps assaulting him. Joe tells Wacey is it over, but Vern walks out with Sheridan and says it isn’t. Vern insists he tried doing this differently. Joe asks what he is going to do and whether he’ll shoot him when he puts his gun down. Vern threatens to hurt Sheridan. Joe swears he’ll kill him if he does. Vern admits he’d rather die than go to jail. When Wacey comes up behind Joe with a knife, Pickett finds himself surrounded. He backs up against the exterior wall and offers to go peacefully if Vern lets his daughter go. Vern and Wacey aren’t sure that is going to work. After all, Wacey believes Sheridan has already seen too much. Joe tries to negotiate with Vern as Sheridan shows him the pocketknife she has in her hand.
He says not yet. Joe tells them someone is going to have to go down for this since there was a dead state agent. He doesn’t think it’ll be Vern so he warns Wacey he’ll be shot if he drops his gun. Pickett tries to convince Wacey that Vern is going to turn on him so he should get the jump on him. Joe tells Vern not to worry because he has Wacey on his side and there is no honor among poachers. He decides to test that theory by tossing his rifle to the ground. Wacey runs toward it before he is shot by Vern. Sheridan stabs Vern in the leg. Joe shoots Vern and gets the rifle before Wacey can snatch it. A quick flashback shows Wacey shooting Clyde before Joe shoots Wacey. He remembers Wacey telling him he’ll get a medal and needing to be around family people today. Joe shoots him again. Joe watches him die on the woodpile. He rushes over to embrace Sheridan and tells her that Marybeth is okay.
While Joe sits with Marybeth, he remembers sitting with his mom, Sadie (Cassie Dzienny), after she was beaten. Missy walks in to ask if she can take a shift and give Joe a break. She promises to call him if anything changes. When Joe leaves, he goes to the game warden’s house and looks at the chaos left behind. He begins cleaning up the blood and other mess left in the house. Then, he disassembles the baby crib since they’re not going to need it. Moments later, Joe gets a visit from Governor Budd (Lochlyn Munro). Budd shows him his fishing license. He admits he hasn’t had one in a decade, but Joe made him get it. Joe is asked what he’d do right now if he saw Budd fishing without a license knowing who he is now. Joe admits he’d ticket him all over again even though the governor could fire him. Budd believes Joe is one of the few people in the state he can trust although he blew up his state pipeline deal.
Budd told Les Etbauer (Blair Young) to hire him back, but he refused. As a result, Budd fired him and wants to reinstate Joe immediately. Joe agrees to accept the job. Budd admits he may call on him to help him with certain things from time to time. At the hospital, Barnum tells Joe that the truck that attacked him was burned and the VIN was removed. Nobody went to the hospital for a gunshot wound to the leg either. Barnum suggests he didn’t hit him like Joe thought he did. Joe returns to his wife’s hospital room where she asks about Sheridan. Joe promises they’re all safe. She learns they’ve lost the baby and begins crying. When they arrive home, they’re greeted by Lucy, Sheridan, Missy, and April. Marybeth says they’ve been talking and they’d like April to stay with them from now on. She agrees.
With Missy’s help, they’ve prepared a picnic for their mother. Missy greets and comforts her daughter. During the picnic, Joe pulls Sheridan away to show her something. Missy tells her daughter she doesn’t know where she is going to put that girl since they’re bursting at the seams already. Marybeth agrees that she is right so she asks her mother to move out. She tells Missy she was drunk and that is why nobody realized Sheridan was missing. Missy isn’t sure anyone could’ve seen that coming. She also says she has been taking care of these kids as if they were her own. She is surprised she didn’t get a little appreciation for that. Marybeth says she remembers that special kind of neglect because she grew up with an alcoholic mother. She swore her kids would never go anything like that, but they did. Therefore, she wants her mother to leave immediately. Missy is told to look at what they just survived and the Vankeuren women are tough as hell. It is time for her to stand on her own.
Joe shows Sheridan that Willie survived. He asks her how long she knew about the litter although she didn’t know there were babies. Willie is supposedly the mother. Sheridan knows he is going to have to report them and take them away. Joe says she has done a better job keeping them safe than the people who were supposed to. He suggests taking them somewhere safe only they know about and she can visit them whenever she wants. Joe returns to Marybeth to see how she is doing. Marybeth tells him what she’ll never get to do with their baby boy and how she will miss him forever. Joe says she has a lot of love in her and he is lucky he got to spend that time with her. Marybeth says there are certain things a child should never have to go through and she is talking about Joe. The things he endured were horrible, yet he learned from it and taught it to their daughter. She explains he protected Sheridan by teaching her how to protect herself.
She will forever be grateful to him that they didn’t lose two children that night. Lucy sits down and says they haven’t done a song in a while. They all gather around and sing with Joe. Next, Joe takes Sheridan and the Miller’s weasels to the Wind River Indian Reservation where Taylor Maldonado (Rachel Colwell) is waiting for them. Before they release them into the wild, Sheridan asks if they can name them. Joe believes it would be okay so she names one of them Nellie. She calls another Snuggle Bear. They agree to call another one Victor.
Joe Pickett Review
The first season of Joe Pickett has now ended and we’ll have to wait for an announcement regarding a second season. So far, I haven’t seen anything about the show being renewed by Spectrum. The finale had some of the same issues as the other episodes including some scenes being too dark. I wish the episode would’ve gone into greater detail about some of the characters and what happened to them. I can’t remember it saying anything about any of the Scarlett family getting into trouble or going to jail.
Barnum said the truck was burned, the VIN was removed, and nobody showed up at the hospital with a gunshot wound. Other than that, we really don’t know what happened. We’ll also have to assume that Vern died from his gunshot wound since I don’t think he was mentioned again either. Besides that, I wish some of the episodes were a little shorter. Regardless, the finale and Joe Pickett was a decent watch overall.
If a few things could be tweaked here and there, the second season could easily be much better than the first. The first wasn’t bad. The flashbacks, learning about Joe’s childhood, and seeing how he overcame these things were likely the highlight of the season for me. If there is a next season, I’d like to see Joe interact with animals and non-criminals a little more often. Not everyone in the show needs to be an enterprising criminal.
The finale scores a 7 out of 10. All Joe Pickett recaps are now available on Reel Mockery here. Find out how to support the Reel Mockery project by following this link.