Jury Duty Is Back For A Second Season — But Is The Prime Video Series Still Worth Watching?

The first season of Amazon Prime Video and Freevee's original series "Jury Duty" felt like a straight-up miracle. Created by "The Office" veterans Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky and released on the service in 2023, it was, in essence, a "nice" prank show in which regular guy Ronald Gladden participates in what he believes is mandatory jury duty. As Ronald rolls with increasingly wild punches — and accepts that the whole thing is being filmed for a documentary — viewers at home know that everyone except for Ronald is an actor, and this whole thing is meant to lightly freak him out while also encouraging him to be kind and make good choices. 

When news broke that "Jury Duty" would get a second outing, I groaned. I loved the first season, and I genuinely didn't think a follow-up would be worth watching.

It's rare that this happens, but I am so happy to be so wrong.

"Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat" follows a familiar format: Everyone but one guy is an actor, and they make his surroundings stranger and stranger by the minute to essentially see how he'll react. When the first season premiered, actor James Marsden, who played an odious version of himself alongside Gladden, told Parade about Eisenberg and Stupnitsky's intentions. "What the producers told me at the beginning when they pitched it to me is that we're creating a hero's journey for this man," Marsden said, meaning that they hoped Gladden would rise to the occasion. 

I genuinely can't believe they've done this and I can barely even figure out how, but in season 2 of "Jury Duty," they stuffed the proverbial lightning back into its also proverbial bottle and threw a kindly stranger into a demented company retreat ... and it's great.

When I settled in to watch the first three episodes of "Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat" after they dropped on Amazon Prime on March 20, I was flabbergasted to see the admittedly deranged but extremely funny situation they created for everyman Anthony Norman. Anthony, who's just looking for a straightforward temp job, ends up agreeing to be the assistant to Kevin (Ryan Perez), the extremely fake HR manager of a made-up company called Rockin' Grandma's Hot Sauce. Kevin asks Anthony to join them all on the retreat and explains that a documentary crew will be speaking to everyone as the CEO of Rockin' Grandma's, Doug Womack (Jerry Hauck), is set to retire and hand the reins over to his wayward but very enthusiastic son Dougie (Alex Bonifer).

Anthony, bless him, does not appear to think any of this is weird — not even when Kevin stages an elaborate proposal for the company's customer service representative Amy (Emily Pendergast). Why is that weird? Kevin and Amy aren't dating, but they got tipsy once while "My Best Friend's Wedding" was on at a bar and joked about getting married if they were still single at 40. However, they've never even gone on a single date. 

Things devolve from there, but just like with Ronald Gladden in the inaugural season of "Jury Duty," Anthony ends up in a leadership position, taking over from Kevin as "Captain Fun" after Kevin leaves the resort in shame. From there, he has to solve petty squabbles (like figuring out who stole a case of Cool Ranch Doritos, for starters) and roll with the punches. It's an understatement to say Anthony acquits himself admirably.

The world can be a rough place, people can be cruel, and the weight of it all certainly can wear down on you. That's something I've found special about "Jury Duty" from the jump. It's a show about kindness, even as the producers and actors do their level best to alarm the one normie in their midst — and like Ronald Gladden before him, Anthony Norman is an absolutely astounding find. He's friendly, sympathetic, and appears to be genuinely interested in the honestly bizarre lives of these Rockin' Grandma's employees that he just met.

Take, for example, a scene where Amy, still ruffled from Kevin's failed proposal, tells her coworkers she wants to put together a bucket list of things to do before she dies. (In fact, making a bucket list at all is Anthony's suggestion.) Amy lists relatively normal things — even if one feels patently absurd because she says she hopes to spend New Year's Eve in Times Square because she "loves crowds" — that almost anybody can accomplish, clearly unable to dream big. Anthony isn't the one who tells her she should think bigger, though; another actor, Stephanie Hodge — playing the hard-boiled Helen — butts in and gives Amy some suggestions. (They are all too dirty to reprint here.) Anthony, instead, just encourages Amy and even says he'll watch episodes of the Fox drama "Bones" with her after someone else insists that even one episode of the series warrants a spot on her bucket list.

I could go on and on, but the fact of the matter is that, despite a hyper-specific concept that could fall apart at any second, "Jury Duty" has done it again. 

You can watch new episodes of "Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat" on Fridays on Prime.