I don't know if there's a worse pitch than this. “So guys, the most boring thing in the world: jury duty! We re-imagine it in the comedic style of The Office, by following a fake jury around with hidden cameras for a few weeks while they participate in a fake civil case… right?” Nobody wants to be on a jury*, never mind watch a jury. (*Correction: I suppose there are always some freaks who are fascinated by the prospect of play-acting at being amateur lawyers for a brief amount of time). But buried away on Amazon Prime is a series that allows you to follow 12 individuals as they embark upon this not-so-epic journey for two weeks. Jury Duty is a show that turns reality TV on its head and makes something heartfelt and absurdly amusing, because – above all – it manages to have an actual point. (This is not an invitation to school me in how The Real Housewives Of Sherman Oaks, or whatever, has an actual point).
The premise for the “show” is as follows: Eleven of the jurors chosen are actors. One is not an actor. He is a regular person who responded to an ad on Craigslist appealing to anyone willing to participate in a documentary while sitting on a jury in the state of California. Ronald, said juror, applied. He is a really regular man from San Francisco. And what Ronald doesn't know is that there's more than the one camera he can see. There’s a whole scene behind-the-curtains, pulling the strings of this operation that he’s willfully signed up for, thinking it was for the greater common good of humanity. Ronald thinks all of this is real. Ronald genuinely believes that the judge is real, the plaintiff is real, the defense is real, the bailiffs are real, and that his fellow jurors are real. But Ronald is being duped.
Ronald is in his very own Truman Show, unaware that he's a normal guy in a simulation that is entirely designed by a team of creators who are playing god with his life. He's living in a scripted world, while he himself is totally unscripted (this in itself is quite the feat to pull off). But Jury Duty is unlike hoax reality shows of the past. In MTV's Punk'd, Ashton Kutcher would find ways to derail the excessively dumb lives of his even more excessively dumb celebrity friends, enticing audiences to be in on the act of getting back at these awful specimens while behaving equally as annoying (think of Kutcher as a human German Shepherd in a Von Dutch hat who just accidentally hoovered up a pile of cocaine).
The point of Punk'd was to laugh at how pointless humankind can be, specifically celebrity. The backbone of reality TV is weak. It has located the lowest common denominator: here are x amount of famous people, or x amount of people who want to be famous, who have been allowed to crave attention without limitations, so let's observe them and cast judgment so we can feel better about our smaller lives. In reality TV, there was never a hero. Kutcher wasn't even an anti-hero. Reality TV has never had a moral compass (Selling Sunset is a sharkfest of realtors bitching about each other's boyfriends and girlfriends because they're so bored of selling multi-million dollar houses). Reality TV has never had any conclusions (The Hills literally runs for 102 episodes of young women either being mad at each other, or wondering what he really meant by that, etc). Reality TV has never had any grand purpose (Keeping Up With The Kardashians is nothing more than an advertisement for lipgloss and vitamin water, which only serves the Kardashians, and bankrupts the rest of us).
Reality TV is not about good people. But that changes in Jury Duty. Because somehow Ronald, seemingly picked from total obscurity, is good people. Ronald is an upstanding citizen of America. Ronald is the guy you'd want to be on your jury. Ronald is the man you'd want to meet in a bar. Ronald is not here to crave attention. Ronald tolerates and empathizes with infuriating situations and bizarre people on a daily basis, and sees the best in them, throws everyone a bone, and doesn't once crack under pressure, or question whether or not he's drawn the short straw. Without spoiling much of the show, the comedy rests on ridiculous situations that are just zany enough to be plausible. The comedy follows in the footsteps of shows such as The Office and Parks And Recreation, refreshingly built around characters that you're designed to love. There is not one character in this show who you could justifiably dislike, even James Marsden playing the most hyperbolic sack-of-shit version of himself, an A-list actor. The jurors are a cross-section of the weirdest personality types you may come across: a jury of one's peers, so to speak. And due to Marsden's notoriety, the jury is forced to sequester in a hotel, where all manner of human bonding happens.
And despite the relentless tomfoolery of the courtroom, including the hilariously inept counsel to the defense, and the unhinged nature of most of his fellow jurors, Ronald remains inhumanly patient. Even in the face of geriatric Brenda who continuously falls asleep in session. Even while rooming next door to amateur inventor Todd who is obsessed with human body parts and makes his own pair of pants with chair legs attached - “chants” – so that he can sit down whenever he wants. Even as he challenges Ken (whose day job is manager of two gumball machines) to a made-up board game only to have to deal with Ken's unravelling cabin fever-ish anguish as he realizes he's lost a $2000 bet to Ronald. Even when he agrees to be foreman, against all of his wishes. Even in his budding bromance with manchild Marsden, who ropes him into making a self-tape with him for an upcoming audition for a made-up movie called Lone Pine. (Marsden's comedic performance is brilliant and surprising throughout). Ronald's humanity shines through the never-ending chaos. What’s more, he’s always trying to do better. Early on in the trial, he tells Marsden that the movie Sonic wasn't very good. Ronald then recognizes how hurt Marsden is by this comment (he didn't realize Marsden was in the movie), so he decides to go home and watch it and corrects himself the next morning, by telling Marsden how great his performance was. Would I have done that? Absolutely not.
Jury Duty begs you to ask yourself honestly if you would have carried yourself like Ronald did. It has managed to capture how in spite of it all, there are still some good and ordinary people out there, who are just trying to make the best of a really annoying situation. Who are never sure why, or when they might be recognized, even perhaps rewarded for just putting up with it. Reality TV has never been more inspiring.