“Jury Duty” is a wacky comedy that aims to be amusing and uplifting. But scratch beneath the surface, and it’s one of TV’s most insidiously cruel shows.
In 2023 when Season 1 became a viral hit, Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling mentioned it during their “Barbie” press tour. The actress asked Gosling if he liked it, and he replied, “Well, I mean, how is that guy? Is he okay?”
It was a relevant question then, and it still is now that the show is in Season 2 (“Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat” on Prime Video).
“Jury Duty” essentially puts a real person into “The Truman Show” scenario. Recall that the 1998 movie followed Truman (Jim Carrey), a man unaware that his town was on a soundstage, his friends and family were all actors, and his life was broadcast for everyone’s entertainment. The movie didn’t shy away from how horrifying it was for him to eventually learn this.
In Season 1 of “Jury Duty,” Ronald Gladden was an ordinary man who believed he was part of a jury in a court case. Unbeknownst to him, the court case was fake, and everyone around him was an actor.
Gladden told The Post in 2023, “The day of the reveal… there was no way I could process it.”
He added that he took “an entire weekend” to realize “what had happened,” and that he messaged James Marsden, who was nominated for an Emmy for Season 1, to ask the actor, “are there still cameras following me?’”
He also told iHeartRadio, “Months and months down the road, things would just randomly hit me. I’d be doing laundry or washing the dishes or something, and I’d be just like, ‘Oh, wow, was that fake?’”
If a show causes a person to doubt his own reality, something is wrong! That’s going too far, in the name of comedy.
Sure, Gladden seems to be doing well these days. He’s since appeared in some ads (for Mint Mobile and Elf Cosmetics), he was photographed with Kardashians, and he signed a deal with Amazon MGM Studios.
But, he didn’t knowingly sign up to have his mind messed with. No matter what the end result was, it’s inherently cruel.
“Jury Duty” isn’t as cruel as shows like “The Biggest Loser,” “America’s Next Top Model,” or even dating shows like “Love is Blind” where people sacrifice their dignity in order to be on TV, and elements of their appearance or personality get judged. But at least those people (mostly) knowingly walked into that.
The show’s production refers to Gladden and Season 2’s real person, Anthony Norman, as “heroes.”
Onscreen, they explain that the point of “Jury Duty” is to “celebrate” how gracious the “heroes” are, since both Gladden and Norman gamely humor the weird antics of the people around them and treat them with kindness, without knowing that they’re actors (instead of bizarre people).
The aim is not for the “heroes” to be the butt of the joke, producers told Page Six. The tone of “Jury Duty” isn’t mean, either. It’s goofy.
But, does that matter? Putting a real person in a situation that psychologically screws with them is an awful thing to do, no matter how much it’s packaged into a show that’s supposedly nice.
In its tone and audience reception, “Jury Duty” is like a mockumentary, slightly deranged version of “Ted Lasso.” It’s a brand of aw-shucks comedy that aims to make the audience walk away feeling good.
Really, though, it’s treating a human being like a lab rat, for the sake of entertainment.
