Jury Duty you can get excited about
The Freevee show is the ultimate palate cleanser.
Well, I asked for a light palate cleanser after the intense-but-worth-it Beef, and I received! The show Jury Duty was mentioned to me a couple of times, and it was being tossed around in the news as the new hot thing from the TV app Freevee, because apparently giving people free TV with ads is being sold as a new hot thing too!
Jury Duty is an experimental comedy, with a premise that’s intriguing enough: one real dude is duped into thinking he’s participating in a documentary about being on a jury; the rest of the jury members and courtroom participants are actors1, including actor James Marsden playing actor James Marsden.
It’s not actually that complicated, I just love this gif. Anyway, Ronald, the real dude, thinks he’s the jury foreman in a case in LA filled with hijinks. He does a great job being a real guy. Great job, Ronald!
But it’s the actors fooling him who are excellent; watching them have to play normal, with some elevations (OK, yeah, some of the scenarios really push it, but don’t blow it) makes you realize how hard it is to play a real person. Except James Marsden, who is cute and charming and funny, and doing that thing TV fans are now used to seeing: an actor playing an “exaggerated” version of himself.
Countless actors from James Van Der Beek to NPH have been doing this, where they simply act like an entitled actor, and that’s the punchline. I’d complain about it getting tired, but Marsden made me laugh so many times that he gets a pass.
And that! That’s why I fell for Jury Duty. It made me laugh. Audibly. Multiple times. Right before I started this show, I’d just described to a friend how I usually react to comedies, which is my favorite TV genre. It represents most of what I watch, but generally, I just smirk at the TV. I smile at a bit. I might quote it later. But to make me laugh?! Out loud—a for-real LOL, friends—it almost never happens. Starting at the moment in episode two when the stupidest animation is shown to a silent jury, I exploded.
Situations made me laugh. Improv-ed lines made me laugh. A giant turd (on brand) made me laugh so hard I snorted (also on brand).
It’s quick—a 10-episode series—but I also moved through it pretty swiftly because I was fascinated at how the production pulled it off. Ronald is so nice to his peers and so invested in the case that I started to doubt the veracity of the prank. It’s too good, I thought. Too together.
Finally, it concludes in the most satisfying way. Nearly every question I had of how it was pulled it off is revealed. All my doubts were cleared. It’s also reassuring to see how the production and actors treat Ronald after the reveal.
That’s not even the best part! THIS SHOW HAS A PRODUCTION DESIGNER DISCUSSING HOW TO MAKE THE PERFECT FAKE TURD. Chef’s kiss!!!
It’s entirely possible you’ve made it through my glowing review while also wondering what the fuck Freevee is and where the hell one finds a Freevee. It’s apparently owned by Amazon, and my guess is that if you have a TV that was manufactured in the last 10 years, you can search for this app and bam, you too can have a delightful viewing experience, courtesy of a pretty-normal amount of ad breaks. It’s old school! It’s quaint! It’s worth it for the gut-shaking laughter.
This is my brag that I immediately recognized Sewage Joe from Parks and Rec and Noah from Sex Lives of College Girls. I’d never get picked for this faux jury!