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Three years ago, Jury Duty on Prime came out of nowhere to garner great reviews and Emmy nods despite its out-of-left-field conceit that one person thinks he’s on a real jury in a real trial despite the fact that everyone around him is an actor. In the second season of the show, Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat, tries to pull off the same feat, only at a fake company’s fake retreat. And like the first season, the “patsy” is a hell of a good guy.
JURY DUTY PRESENTS: COMPANY RETREAT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A shot of the offices of Rockin’ Grandma’s Hot Sauce in California. HR rep Kevin Gomez (Ryan Perez) conducts a Zoom job interview with Anthony Norman (himself).
The Gist: Kevin is looking for a temp to help him manage a company retreat at the Elk Canyon Ranch. It’s an important week, because this is when the company’s founder and CEO, Doug Womack (Jerry Hauck), is going to retire and pass the torch to his son, Dougie Jr. (Alex Bonifer), and he wants to make sure things go smoothly.
Only thing is: Rockin’ Grandma’s Hot Sauce isn’t a real company. And everyone that Anthony Norman is going to work with is an actor.
During the interview, Kevin tells Anthony that there will be a documentary film crew in the office and at the retreat, making a film about a family business being passed to a new generation. When Anthony comes in for his first day, he’s introduced to everyone in the office, including Amy Patterson (Emily Pendergast), on whom Kevin seems to have a crush. Anthony also meets Dougie Jr., who spent time in an unsuccessful reggae band before deciding to come back into the Rockin’ Grandma’s fold.
At the retreat, the usually buttoned-up Kevin dons a captain’s hat and says he’s “Captain Fun” for the week, and Anthony is “Lt. Fun.” He also wants Anthony to help him set up a place where he can propose to Amy.
When things go sideways, though, Kevin takes off, and suddenly the temp he just hired is in charge of running the retreat.
Photo: Courtesy of PrimeWhat Shows Will It Remind You Of? Created by Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky (James Marsden is an EP), Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat combines the fun conceit of the first season of Jury Duty with the format of The Office,; both Stupinsky and Eisenberg worked on that series.
Our Take: One of the things we kept wondering about when we watched the first episode of Company Retreat was how long Anthony Norman was going to last before he figured out he was in the middle of a TV show instead of a real company.
From the outside, it seemed like we were watching a pretty typical mockumentary workplace sitcom, with people giving silly side interviews, and people like Bonifer’s character Dougie Jr. being so ridiculous that it felt more like a heightened comedy than something real.
But we had to put ourselves in Anthony’s shoes to really understand why he might buy into the craziness. Firstly, the show’s producers found a friendly, eager, and hardworking guy that doesn’t seem to get thrown by, well, anything. In a confessional from the season that we see at the beginning of the episode, he even admits that he feels like he’s on a TV show, but then says that none of what he sees could be made up.
He’s already put in a cringeworthy situation at the outset of the retreat, when Kevin asks him to help with his proposal to Amy. What we don’t know is that the proposal was on much shakier ground than Kevin led Anthony to believe, but somehow when it goes south, Anthony is there to console Kevin and clean up the mess, even saving him a tiny amount of humiliation in the bargain. It feels like Anthony would be an asset to any company that hired him, whether it was real or not, given how he conducts himself among this group of crazies.
If we were in his position, how would we react to all of this? Perhaps we’ve watched too many shows and we’d be too skeptical to think of this as anything but fake. But it seems that the show’s producers found someone who can keep his cool and be empathetic while still being credulous that everything going on around him is real.
As far as those goings on are concerned, though, it’s all pretty damn funny. Even the characters that don’t get a ton of screen time, like receptionist PJ Green (Marc-Sully Saint-Fleur) and procurement guy who nicknames himself “Other” Anthony (Rob Lathan) do just enough to let us know who they are.
There are times when the characters feel a little over the top, like accountant Helen Schaffer (Stephanie Hodge) drinks from a mug that says “Probably Bourbon” on it and talking about cooking the books. Dougie Jr. is about as buffoonish as any workplace sitcom character we’ve seen (more on him in a bit). But a guy like Anthony might buy all of it, especially if he starts to bond with everyone.
Photo: Courtesy of PrimePerformance Worth Watching: We almost admire Anthony Norman’s ability to buy into all of the nuttiness going on around him,
Sex And Skin: None.
Parting Shot: Wearing Kevin’s captain’s hat, Anthony gives a thumbs up in his confessional, hoping that he can make a fun retreat for this “tight group.”
Sleeper Star: Alex Bonifer is the only vaguely recognizable member of the cast, due to him being featured in an irritating and oft-aired Chase ad where a guy bores people while continuously talking about how he’s going to update his kitchen. But he also does a good job of making Dougie Jr. buffoonish but sincere about wanting to do right by his dad as the new CEO.
Most Pilot-y Line: Claire Coleman (Rachel Kaly), the IT person who works remotely, and apparently never leaves her house, sprays herself with bug spray even though she’s covered from head to toe in black sweats.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Even though it may not touch the heights of the original Jury Duty, Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat is a pretty funny workplace sitcom wrapped around the conceit that one of the people there have no idea he’s in a sitcom, and he’s buying into all of it.
How To Watch Jury Duty 2: Company Retreat
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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.
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