If you have followed
this column for awhile you are no doubt aware that one basic genre I have avoided
in TV for the last decade has been reality TV. I have never believed that the trope
is any true form of entertainment and given the revelations we have heard over
the last several years from shows such as The Bachelor and Survivor, I
was far from shocked to learn it was fictional.
I was therefore inclined, when Jury Duty debuted
on Freevee earlier this year, to see it as just part of the same noxious
package. Not even the fact that it was a satire of the documentary format – or indeed
the considerable amount of raves that piled up in the subsequent months - caused me to budge. Then the awards nominations started to roll
in, many of them from my fellow critics groups such as the TCA and the Hollywood
Critics Association. Then last month the Emmys decided to get on board,
nominating it for Best Comedy series and nominating James Marsden for Best
Supporting Actor. The fact that it was nominated over Poker Face was
enough for me to finally realize I had to at least engage with it. Even
that might not have been enough to get me over the top had I not learned that
Freevee was a spin-off on Amazon and that it was now available. When I saw the average episode was half an
hour long, I decided there was nothing to be lost by at least watching the
first episode.
Well, if our sole standard for what makes a comedy
is its originality you really have to give credit for Jury Duty for
following through on that concept. It makes it very clear in the subtitles what
the show will be. The writers have decided
to create a fictional trial and jury and then show us what is going on behind
the scenes. Only one person, however,
does not know that everything he sees is being staged. That person is Ronald
Gladden, the hero of the show.
Jury Duty takes the form
of cinema verité, We follow Gladden as he has been called for jury duty and
does not know if he is going to be selected. Now because there’s no person in
this world who would not think there was something suspicious if he went to
jury duty and there were cameras everywhere, the writers throw in a wild card.
The show takes place in California and one of the people called into jury duty
is James Marsden.
One can’t help but watch Marsden and not be
reminded of John Malkovich’s work in Being John Malkovich. Asked why he signed on, Malkovich later
said: “that he enjoyed being an asshole.” Marsden is essentially doing the same
thing here, though in this case it helps that Marsden is a celebrity but not a
superstar. When Gladden sees him for the first time, he later tells the
audience that he had no idea who Marsden was and had to google him that night
to remember. Some of the truly
hysterical moments around this series surround Marsden who, like all of us, is
annoyed he’s been called in the first place – and is subsequently humiliated
when the judge asks him if his audition would get in the way of his performing
his duties. Marsden is in a sense
responsible for everything that goes wrong in the series: he calls the paparazzi
in hoping it will get him; instead the jury is sequestered. He then gets to
stay at his apartment rather than actually being sequestered, and in the third
episode spends his days looking at his screenplay (which he gleefully shows off
to everybody) and going out of his way to just keep saying the worst thing
possible. When the Emmy nominations came out, I couldn’t comprehend why Marsden
was nominated for this rather than Dead to Me; having seen three
episodes, I completely understand the Academy’s thinking.
The rest of the cast is fundamentally unknowns (no
doubt by design because too many famous faces would understandably peak the
suspicions of Gladden) but they all perform superbly in the characters they
portray in front of Gladden. I’m not entirely sure how the writing for Jury
Duty was done; if I had to guess I imagine all the performers were giving
the model of a script to follow and then had to improvise certain details based
on Gladden’s reactions. It helps matters
that the trial, at least, seems like the kind of thing that does not appear
to be part of a legal drama. The judge makes it clear this is the last trial he
will ever supervise and tries to be fundamentally nice but he plays a certain
level of impartiality. The case is a
civil trial in which the plaintiff is the typical LA liberal: she manufactures ‘eco-friendly
clothing’ and the defendant showed up drunk to his job and destroyed her place
of employment. The plaintiff (who asks us to call her ‘Jac-QUI) speaks
with understandable pretension when she describes everything and her attitude
is such that we’re not along when the jurors think her clothes are edible and
that they are ‘white people problems’. Her attorney starts her presentation with
a computer animated slideshow that looks like the kind of thing that you’d see
if you screwed up on The Sims. Her
therapist, before he begins to tell the jury about her level of depression,
makes it clear Jacqueline has both a sex addiction and is polyamorous. One of
her character witness is a social media figure who goes into such hysterical
lengths to describe just how important job is that we all want to follow the
model of jury and slap her. It’s hard to know which part of this is more
hysterical: how the attorney presents the tweets that show the failing business
or the straight-faced way the influencer explains those tweets.
We have yet to hear from the defendant but based on
his attorney, it’s clear he needs a refund. When the attorney tries to present
a similar slideshow, his computer doesn’t work, he gets the case he’s examining
wrong and the version he finally presents looks like the world’s cheapest
screensaver. We have not truly heard him
cross examine any of the witnesses but he truly doesn’t seem to know what he’s
doing.
Of course, considering the title of the show, we
spend most of our time with the jury. There’ve been many hysterical moments so
far: one with a woman who tries to become foreperson by getting the lunch order
and keeps screwing it up. In the midst of this one of the elderly jurors pulls
a vending machine on himself and has to be hospitalized and everyone on the
jury tells us how fond they were of him. (Ronald’s only exchange with him was
that he was planning to go to the men’s room to masturbate he does not share
that.) Ronald gets the foreperson job because the judge celebrates him for
stepping up and getting the lunch order right.
Ronald then has to deal with Barbara, an elderly juror who keeps dosing
off, a young inventor (who demonstrations ‘chair pants- which as we see are
crutches used as legs for chairs) and a man who wanted to go on vacation with
his girlfriend before this. Right now, that story is the most endearing. In the
pilot, in order to try and recuse himself he said he was a racist; he decided
to let his girlfriend go with her friends and for the last episode, he’s been
trying to find out if one of the friends, Cody, is a guy or a girl. This leads
to the jurors debated whether Cody is a guys name or a girl’s name, one of the
other jurors conspiring with the bailiff to find Cody on Instagram, and finally
finding ‘Code Red’, which leads to a hysterical debate on whether the man in
the photo has an erection or whether its an illusion of the camera. Marsden, of
course, has the last word – and its not the least bit comforting.
I don’t know whether Jury Duty truly
deserves to compete under the banner of a comedy series – it honestly seems
more along the lines of Sketch Variety than anything else. I do admit that it
is tremendously entertaining and I am certainly glad that I have seen the first
few episodes. I also want to give a special shoutout to Ronald for not only
going through all of this but being such a good sport when the truth was
revealed. I’ve heard Gladden is now considering taking up an acting career
himself as a result of the popularity of the show. While I won’t deny that part of me would like
to see Gladden do something like this, I would also like to tell him to
remember something that most don’t: the great ones always know when to leave
the stage. However, if you ever do get called for jury duty again, maybe nudge
one of your fellow draftees to talk. Ask them if they recognize you.
My score: 4.5 stars.
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