Jury Duty Presents: Corporate Retreat Fails to Capture the First Season’s Magic: Review

When the first season of Jury Duty premiered, the quasi-scripted/quasi-reality series benefited greatly from the surprise factor. The new follow-up installment, Jury Duty: Corporate Retreat, attempts to capture that same magic for Prime Video. But without the novelty factor, the whole experience ends up feeling relatively pointless.

Trying to exactly duplicate the original Jury Duty would of course be near-impossible, so for this new season the producers came up with a very different setting and storyline into which to dunk this season’s “hero.” Enter the unknowing Anthony Norman, who gets hired as a temp worker, believing that he’ll be working a two-week gig for a small family business devoted to hot sauce.

Much of Anthony’s job, he knows up front, will be taking place at the Rockin’ Grandma’s Hot Sauce company retreat, in an isolated camp located in the Santa Monica mountains. He’s also told that there will be a documentary crew on site following the event, a handy explanation for the cameras following them around. However, Anthony is kept unaware of just how much is being filmed, and that every wacky event he experiences has been scripted and staged. For, as we’ll be repeatedly reminded over these eight episodes, the business is fake, and everyone except Anthony is an actor.

The narrative around which Corporate Retreat is structured is a relatively simple one: Rockin’ Grandma’s is about to experience a change in leadership, with current CEO Doug planning to retire and leave the business to his 30-something son Dougie. Until, that is, Dougie manages to embarrass the company publicly and privately with some bad decisions, and Doug decides on a new plan — selling the company to a private equity firm.

The introduction of a private equity firm instantly creates a bad guy for the series (anyone who remembers the fate of Toys ‘R Us will know why), but the bulk of the action here focuses on Anthony trying to navigate the just-so-slightly-exaggerated personalities of the company staff.

It’s an eclectic collection of characters, including hapless Dougie, trying to prove that he’s not a failson, the head of HR who commits a massive HR gaff on day one of the retreat, the awkward, quasi-agoraphobic web designer, and a receptionist who feels more committed to his YouTube snack-rating channel than his job. Because we know none of this is real, the artificiality of their performances can’t help but shine through; between that and some of the more ridiculous events that occur, no wonder Anthony says more than once, “It feels like I’m on a TV show!”

Anthony ends up being the essential piece to Corporate Retreat being watchable, his natural charisma and dedication to helping the team making him a charming screen presence. Despite this being a temporary gig, he seems to legitimately connect with all of these people in a real way — his emotional engagement going a long way towards making the audience want to connect as well.

It’s not quite enough, though. Yes, TV viewers connect with fictional narratives all the time, but we’re not constantly being reminded that what we’re watching is fake, and that a big reveal is coming at the end. The awareness that at the end of the day the stakes for Rockin’ Grandma’s and its employees are literally non-existent keeps the whole exercise feeling relatively pointless, beyond telling a David vs. Goliath story that we’ve seen a hundred times before.

The Corporate Retreat season finale emphasizes how much bigger this season was from last season: More cameras, more footage shot, more square acreage for the location. Most importantly, more rehearsal time, since instead of bringing together a group of alleged strangers for a jury, the cast of Corporate Retreat needed to play a convincing group of longtime employees, with a deep shared history.

But watching all the work that was put into tricking one guy, for the sake of the cringe comedy involved, just makes one wish that there was more being said here, beyond the good vibes that Anthony brings to the screen. Stunts like this can be funny. But as a full series, they’re not sustainable.

The first three episodes of Jury Duty: Corporate Retreat premiere Friday, March 20th on Prime Video. The remaining episodes drop subsequent Fridays.