TV comedy
The frenetic Amazon Freevee show became an unlikely viral hit before scoring last week’s announcement of Emmy nominations in major categories
When the 2023 Emmy nominations were announced last week, one of the big surprises was the presence of Amazon Freevee’s hybrid reality/screenplay comedy Jury Duty, which placed in four categories, including best comedy series.
Whether the series — a Truman Show-like experiment about a staged civil trial where only the foreman is unaware of the ruse — ends up raking in gold or not, its dominance among the other contenders — including behind the awards’ lead man Ted Lasso, Abbott Elementary, The Marvelous Miss Maisel and Only Murders in the Building; critical darlings Barry and The Bear; and Netflix’s cultural juggernaut on Wednesday – counts as a winning lap for the underdog hit.
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On paper, this description may not seem appropriate. After all, “Jury Duty” was produced by Amazon, created by two alumni of The Office (Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg) and starring James Marsden, an actor who, while not a household name until then, was still a popular and recognizable character with a number of blockbusters on his resume.
But this family tree doesn’t tell the whole story. The show was secretly filmed (in a real courthouse in Los Angeles) for 17 days in 2022 and opened quietly in April. The first reviews were mediocre to bad. Even more frightening for the show’s prospects was the fact that it initially aired on Amazon Freevee, the corporation’s little-known, ad-supported streaming platform, rather than on Amazon Prime. In a sea of content, Jury Duty seemed doomed to sink into obscurity.
But then came the TikTokers. Clips from the show circulated on this app, garnering millions of views. Users especially loved the show’s lead actor, Ronald Gladden, a 29-year-old solar entrepreneur from San Diego. Gladden, responding to a Craigslist ad for what he believed to be a genuine documentary about jury duties, proved to be a once-in-a-lifetime discovery: a distant but intelligent and charming everyman who didn’t just tolerate all the madness of the showrunners and actors threw at him, but through his innate kindness and empathy transformed what would likely have been an experiment in cringe comedy into one about the transformative power of a makeshift family. (In this it reflects The Office’s long-term arc.)
After “Jury Duty” went viral, Amazon made the wise decision to push the film to Prime, where it shot to the top of the streaming charts in May. Contrast this with the reception of what was intended to be Prime’s crown jewel: The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. The most expensive show ever only managed to retain 37% of viewers from the first episode to the finale. Against this background, the success of Jury Duty becomes even more impressive.
But what exactly is this success? Why did the show resonate with audiences—first the coveted audience of Zoomers on TikTok, and later all age groups—to the show?
On the one hand, the appeal is obvious: it’s what used to be called “watercooler television,” with a conceptual premise that breaks the tide of streaming content and sets it apart from all other shows. At the same time, all of its distinct elements are pleasantly familiar: the workplace comedy, the reality-TV hothouse, the courtroom TV, and the true-crime docudrama, the hidden-cam prank show.
Certainly the cast of characters that populate Jury Duty – including Marsden’s over-the-top version of himself (his ability and willingness to make himself into a petty and pretentious narcissist while still being likable is undoubtedly laudable), Mekki Leeper’s lovesick virginal nerd , Edy Modica’s sexpot in love, David Brown’s transhumanist weirdo, and Rashida “Sheedz” Olayiwola’s dry bailiff — these are the lovable loser dudes essential to the popularity of any situational sitcom.
What’s more, “Jury Duty” touches on a particular appeal appropriately and perhaps obviously bequeathed by The Office, which seems only to have grown in popularity since its last episode aired a full decade ago.
Stupnitsky and Eisenberg have said so in interviews, describing their original idea simply as “The Office in Court.” Admittedly, in the years since the American version of this show debuted, countless sitcoms have adopted its mockumentary framework and style of awkward yet heartfelt humor with great success, including Parks and Recreation, Modern Family, and the current Emmy Abbott series. Elementary school. But Jury Duty feels like The Office’s true heir, particularly in its use of the Reaction Shot punchline – except that most of those Reaction Shots are unscripted and real, which adds a bit more pizzazz when they land cares.
Photo: Courtesy of Amazon Freevee
The reality aspect is another key factor in Jury Duty’s appeal, although it’s not without precedent. Aside from The Office, the series that comes to mind the most is HBO and Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal. While this series garnered a lot of attention and discussion last year, its cooler, far more intellectual, and somber sentiment prevented it from becoming a crossover hit. Not surprisingly, it was rejected by the Emmys.
As with “The Rehearsal,” the mere existence of “Jury Duty” raises interesting ethical issues, though unlike Fielder’s show, it never addresses them. In fact, the final episode, in which Gladden reveals the swindle (before then gifting $100,000), disregards all possible considerations and ends with an unequivocally happy ending imbued with the kind of oppressive positivity that defines modernity Comedy series (see: Ted Lasso and Abbott Elementary).
It’s interesting to consider what the resounding success of “Jury Duty” means for the future of the original programs. It’s not hard to imagine that a flood of hidden camera sitcoms will flood the market in the years to come. But it seems unlikely that any of them will be able to capture the same magic of bottle lightning.
Still, the path charted by “Jury Duty” proves that the TV comedy still has some life in it, even if it has to reach into real life to do so.
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