Three years ago, the quasi-scripted drama “Jury Duty,” an unassuming offering connected the present defunct streaming work Freevee, became a social-media sensation done its peculiar marque of gentle brazenness. Its creators, Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky, Frankensteined the bid by stitching unneurotic 2 moribund TV genres—the mockumentary sitcom and the prank show—to conception thing new, if inactive lumbering. Cameras followed a fistful of actors serving arsenic the jurors successful a fake proceedings alongside 1 unwitting civilian, a thirty-year-old star contractor named Ronald Gladden, who believed that helium was taking portion successful a straightforward documentary astir the workings of the justness system. Surrounded by weirdos, losers, and a preening movie prima (James Marsden, playing a fame-monster mentation of himself), Ronald spent 3 eventful weeks connected his precise ain “Truman Show.” At 1 point, helium came perilously adjacent to the truth, declaring, “This virtually feels similar world TV.”
Since the days of “Candid Camera,” a practical-joke programme that began connected the vigor successful 1947 and jumped to tv the pursuing year, prank shows person been critiqued for their exploitative dynamics. “Jury Duty” strives to reassure the assemblage by portraying its accumulation arsenic a just trade: though the amusement deceives its main character, it besides presents him successful a favorable light, takes pains to minimize his distress, and insures that jokes are ne'er astatine his expense. (Gladden besides received a 100 1000 dollars and an over-all woody astatine Amazon for his trouble.) The series’ cautiously curated feel-good vibes seemed to transcend adjacent the caller premise arsenic the superior root of its appeal: 1 reappraisal praised its “life-affirming joy.” But that precise prime renders the follow-up, the awkwardly titled “Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat,” unnecessary. Like truthful galore sitcoms earlier it, it withers nether the unit of its ain unrelenting sunniness.
The sophomore season, present streaming connected Prime Video, features a full caller cast, who play the tight-knit employees of a Los Angeles-based hot-sauce institution called Rockin’ Grandma’s. Ronald’s successor astatine the halfway of the communicative is Anthony Norman, different young antheral with an unfastened look and an inviting disposition. Early on, Anthony is told by the company’s H.R. chief, Kevin (Ryan Perez), that he’s been hired arsenic a temp to assistance retired astatine the yearly unit retreat—the past specified lawsuit for the firm’s founder, Doug (Jerry Hauck), who plans to retire. Poised to instrumentality implicit is his thirtysomething son, Dougie (Alex Bonifer), a failed ska-E.D.M. instrumentalist with a mop of bleached hairsbreadth to match, who intends to instrumentality immoderate changes to the household business.
Season 2’s grander ambitions are evident from the start. While the archetypal “Jury Duty” mostly took spot successful a courtroom and successful a edifice wherever the jurors were sequestered, leaving the formed drably entrapped, “Company Retreat” feels little cloistered. The employees of Rockin’ Grandma’s roam the grounds of the retreat site, which boasts aggregate structures, and are visited by a bid of impermanent speakers whose lectures scope from the simply dull to the genuinely Dada. After Dougie bombs a presumption and gets dressed down by his father, helium flees into the adjacent hills to lick his wounds. The actors’ hours-long committedness to the spot continues done meticulously choreographed stunts and persists adjacent erstwhile they permission Anthony’s show line.
These hyper-dedicated formed members are “Company Retreat” ’s top asset. Rockin’ Grandma’s is compared, without irony, to a family, and its “employees” consciousness much distinctive than the banal types who populated the archetypal season. The astir memorable see a warehouse manager named Jimmy (Jim Woods), who’s intent connected reforming his boorish ways but inactive can’t assistance blurting retired faux pas, arsenic erstwhile helium calls Martin Luther King, Jr., “the Tom Brady of civilian rights.” A receptionist and aspiring snack-fluencer, PJ (Marc-Sully Saint-Fleur), who offers Anthony immoderate octopus-wasabi chips connected his archetypal day, could beryllium the astir fashionable feline successful immoderate workplace. Even Dougie, an inveterate screwup, isn’t without hidden depths—and Anthony, a earthy hype antheral for whoever’s around, takes his plea for affectional enactment seriously, rapidly becoming invested successful a twisty succession crisis.
It isn’t hard to bargain that Anthony’s a bully guy, and he’s truthful charismatic that you tin forget, for agelong stretches of the season, however small other determination is to specify him. But adjacent arsenic the remainder of the ensemble’s subplots go progressively complex—and their precocious jinks progressively overwrought—he remains a blank slate. Eventually, it becomes intolerable not to wonderment however helium came to Rockin’ Grandma’s successful the archetypal place, and wherever helium hopes to spell from here. He’s a young dad, a transplant from Tennessee who’s been moving unusual jobs for years. Are the lengths to which he’ll spell to disregard the weirdness of his caller gig and marque a affirmative content each astir being “good,” oregon is this a hopeless audition for full-time employment that volition ne'er come? The show, with its involvement successful firm buffoonery, doesn’t rather negociate to hand-wave distant the queasy implications. The harder it pushes for a black-and-white imaginativeness of morality, the much shades of grey appear. ♦
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