Jury Duty: A TV Review - Guilty of Being Funny
/****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!***
My Rating: 3.25 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SEE IT. Brevity is the soul of wit and this quick hitting reality/hoax series is brief and funny.
I finally got around to watching Jury Duty, the much-talked-about reality/hoax/sitcom series that premiered in April of this year on Amazon, and I have some thoughts.
The premise of Jury Duty is that a collection of people are called to serve jury duty for a civil trial in Los Angeles. But the twist is that the entire trial is fake, and all of the jurors except one – the target of the hoax, are actors who are in on the scam, as are the fake judge, bailiff, plaintiff and defendant.
The thing about Jury Duty that really surprised me was that unlike nearly every other reality tv show ever made, it actually left me with some hope for humanity.
The “regular guy” who is the target of the hoax is Ronald Gladden, who is the most normal of normal guys imaginable, and he is a really good dude. He treats everyone, no matter how weird or annoying they may be…and they are often very weird and very annoying, with not just respect but with genuine kindness. He also takes his civil duty as a juror seriously and doesn’t just bide his time on jury duty but actually fully engages with the process.
Watching Ronald navigate some very potentially uncomfortable-to-the-point-of-being-ludicrous situations with grace and good-nature restored some of my long-lost hope in humanity.
The reality, pardon the pun, is that the majority of people in the world are like Ronald, but the vast majority of reality tv, the most loathsome of television genres, is about rewarding boorish behavior and spotlighting self-serving, self-centered, fame-whoring anti-Ronalds.
For this reason, I was skeptical of even giving Jury Duty a try as I assumed it was the usual soulless formula of talentless/narcissistic people masquerading as real people acting like fake people reality tv bullshit that always leaves me irritated, aggravated and depressed. But watching Ronald thoughtfully negotiate through the bizarre situations he is thrust into, and do it with such a pleasant and appealing attitude, not only left me laughing but also optimistic…not a state I’m used to.
Jury duty in real life is like spending time in Darwin’s waiting room, and the series Jury Duty is no different as the fake jurors are a perfect and hilarious encapsulation of the army of morons and misfits that inhabit our world.
For example, there’s Todd, the socially awkward pseudo-inventor, who never fails to be incessantly weird. The actor who plays Todd, David Brown, is remarkable as he repeatedly does the most insane and inane things but never even approaches breaking character or laughing…a Herculean accomplishment.
Joining Todd is Noah, the clueless Mormon, and the far-out floozy Jeannie, who is hungry to take Noah’s virginity.
There’s also the crotchety old lady, Barbara, and Ken, a slow-talking Korean, who are unique enough to be realistic but not so odd as to raise red flags. The same is true of Nikki the bailiff, who I never expected to NOT be a real-life bailiff.
The “star” of the show is actor James Marsden who plays a hyper-narcissistic version of himself. This version of Marsden is constantly talking about his fame and his movies and even gets his own private bailiff so he can stay at home and not be sequestered with the riff raff at a hotel for the trial. Ronald takes all of Marsden’s celebrity quirks in stride and with a smile…even when Marsden takes egregious advantage of him in the most odious (literally) of ways.
I am a pretty tough audience, but Jury Duty was actually able to make me laugh out loud on numerous occasions, something that rarely happens when I watch tv.
The last show that had me laughing and cringing this much was last year’s bizarre, pseudo-reality show The Rehearsal on HBO. In fact, The Rehearsal and Jury Duty would be a fascinating and fantastic double feature to watch back-to-back, as they somewhat inhabit the same documentary/hoax genre but approach it in very different ways.
Jury Duty is a breezy watch, as each of its eight episodes average a brisk 24 minutes or so and keep you engaged the whole time.
So, if you want to experience the absurdist humor of serving on a jury without having to experience the hell of actually serving on a jury, then I strongly recommend you hop into the bizarro-world of Jury Duty.
My final verdict on this show is that it is NOT GUILTY of being the usual reality tv junk and is definitely GUILTY of being funny…and maybe…just maybe…a little bit profound…or at least inspirational.
Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo
©2023