Jury Duty (Amazon)

0:01 Voyage. Welcome to watch this tonight. I'm your host, An Bettimore. I'm a producer, writer of film and television and now a podcast producer. And despite having every streaming service, I never know what to watch. So anytime I watch something good, I talk about it on the show. This way, you'll never have the same problem I do. I watch this tonight, there's always something good to watch. Let's get started Today. On the show, we are talking about Jury Duty, which is honestly one of the shows I am most excited to recommend to you of the year so far.

0:49 So Jury Duty is on free V, which is a channel on Amazon Prime. It sounds weird, I know, it's like it's like another fucking streaming service. You have it. I promise you have it. If you have any streaming device, I promise you have it. It's free with ads, otherwise known as television, right, I mean, it's basically it's hilarious how we're sort of circling back to just regular television. It's a show that would have been a hit show and like NBC ten years ago. So yeah, it's on. It's a channel on Amazon Prime called FREEV. If you don't have it, I'm sure. You just search for Jury Duty it'll come up, and you get installed it and take your two seconds and it's free without If you have Amazon, just go to Amazon type and jury Duty it'll come up. You might as well think about it as like it's on Amazon Prime, very easy to get to. I'm telling you, it's great. It's so I'm so excited to share it with you because I really feel like it's a fine right it's not. I mean, I saw stuff about it on TikTok. That's how I found it. I thought the premise absolutely hilarious.

1:49 But I think people are still catching up to its existence, especially because it isn't this weird freevie thing, which again is just Amazon Prime. Really. Now, when I initially decided I was going to do this, I think I started watching it on Saturday and I was like, all right, cool, so this will be you know, the Wednesday I'll record it. It'll be the Wednesday episode of the show. You know. Let me, I'll watch a couple episodes. I watched the whole thing, watch the whole season in like three days. What's great about it, though, is that there's really nothing that I can spoil for you, Like I've seen the whole thing, but I can easily tell you a bunch of hilarious stuff that happens in it and not spoil it for you. So that's kind of exciting for me.

2:30 It's like, there's not you can listen to this whole episode. It's not going to spoil it for you. You can still watch the show and have a great time. And it's certainly not a spoiler to tell you the essential premise of the show, which is there's a regular guy and they tell this regular guy, hey, man, do you want to participate in a documentary about what it's like to be on jury duty? And it's just a civil trial, and you know, basically the cameras are going to follow you and the other jurors around and we're going to document this civil trial. And this guy's like, all right, cool, So he goes to do this, and what he does not know is that every other single person in this experience is an actor. So imagine he goes to the courthouse. You know, everyone of the courthouse is an actor. All the other jurors are actors, all the lawyers are actors, the judge is an actor. It's all been carefully, carefully designed so that he doesn't realize that everything around him is fake. I actually was talking to our guy brother of Doom aka James Jefferson on Twitter and I was telling him about this and he said, oh, it's the Truman Show Law and Order Edition. I was like, yeah, it's a great way of putting it. So shout out to James. The other James I need to mention is James Marston, who is in this show playing himself. So basically they're pretending that the actual James Marsden was called for jury duty. It's a hilarious sort of bet a joke of the show.

3:49 If you've ever seen the movie Sex Drive, which is somewhat obscure movie, you know that James Marsden is actually really funny and has major comic abilities. And what I absolutely love is in this show, the real guy whose name is Ronald, He's like, hey, I realize you play one of my favorite roles of all time in Sex Drive, and he has him to sign the DVD of Sex Drive, and then they even make it like a meta plot point that I'm not going to spoil later on in the show. And obviously, in order to do this, James Marson had to have an incredible sense of humor about himself because he's the butt of almost every joke. In early on, he tries to get out of jury duty by saying he's a recognizable public figure, and the judge was like, I don't know who you are. You're not famous enough to get a jury duty. I want to highlight a joke that comes about halfway through the pilot. So what's interesting about Jury Duty is that, you know, it's like very much like The Office.

4:42 I think the guys who created this worked in the office. It's very much that sort of that fake documentary sitcom approach was to become very in vogue, right, and so it's a lot of like sort of like chuckles and smiles and you're like, is it going to be like laugh out loud? And then halfway through the pilot they came up with this gag. It was so funny and it could only happen on this show. There's no other show this couldn't happen on and work the same way. So I'm going to explain it to you and maybe this will be what kind of sells you on it, because it's what sold me on it. So Ronald is the real person. He's talking to the other jurors. One of them says, hey, do you know how I get out of jury duty? Like what's the move to get out of jury duty? And Ronald says, well, look, the only thing I know is what I saw a family guy, which is pretended to be racist. So then they're doing jury selection. The guy that he told, hey, I just saw this some family guy to pretend to be racist, he said it does a joke. Basically, he does try to be he Basically they're asking him, you know, it's like, hey, is there any reason that you shouldn't be on the shore whatever? And he's like, yeah, I'm racist, and then and then he's like embarrassed and he sort of walks it back. It's like, oh, sorry, you know, someone told me to say that. And the judge is like, who told you to say that? And he looked see it Ronald.

6:03 It's so funny, Oh my god, because it's like again, because Ronald is actually a real person, we have to watch his reaction. He's like super embarrassed that this guy's actually done this, and he's like almost like trying to like shake his heads like no, don't do it. I just love that, But I mean, think about the complexity of them pulling off this joke, right, Ronald has to tell this guy pretend you're racist. It worked up a family guy like that kind of thing. Then they got a behind the scenes as the writers and producers say Okay, we're gonna do this scenario and then we're gonna execute it like on the fly. So it's like a living and breathing thing to mind this whole situation for maximum comedy. They have to adjust what they're doing based on what the real person is doing, which must have been insanely difficult. And what I think is so great about the show is that if you watch the whole season, I think just about every episode has at least one joke that's that funny that I laughed out loud that I thought was like just a great thing they pulled off, and it also has a great sense of heart to it. Um there's a moment in the third episode. Again it's not really you know, it's not a spoiler, it's just it's just to help you understand why it's great. Used to watch it. So one of the guys who's in the jury is this like super weird oh guy, and he is always like inventing little gadgets and stuff.

7:26 And he comes to the court with chair pants, which are pants. It's crutches that he's like sewn onto the back of his pants so he can just sit down anywhere that he's standing. And Ronald there's this heartwarming moment where he's like, I showed him the movie A Bug's Life. The jury has been sequestered at their hotel. He shows him A Bug's Life to help him understand and inventors are often misunderstood. So it's just it's really it's it's just a pleasant, funny, innovative, crazy thing that they made this and then it even exists. And the balancing act of the show is that they do these gags. They have to be silly enough to be funny to us, but also within reality enough to not give it away to Ronald likes. It's a really fine line they have to kind of dance on. And I think where it comes out is imagine if you just had, like you met the goofiest group of people in your life. That's kind of what Ronald is going through on the show. I want to say, also, what really kept me in it? And I can confirm this because I've seen the last episode.

8:30 I had heard somewhere that on the last episode it's almost like a documentary of like how the hell do they do this? And it is so again, it's not a spoiler, it's something to look forward to. So if you're watching this show and you're thinking, all right, how could they possibly have done this? Like the amount of preparation and planning, you have to be like Stanley Kubrick, like how did they could they hire extras? Like at one point they go to Margaritaville, they go to dinner at Margaritaville, And so you're watching and you're thinking, all right, well, does this mean did they rent out of Margaritaville? Did they hire two hundred extras just to be people sitting and pretending they're having dinner at Margaritaville? Like the are the waiters actual Margaritaville waiters? Like what has happened? All that stuff?

9:11 Right? And so that's one of the fun things about the show is that you're watching and you're like, how how is it even possible? And it's just it's so well done. And yeah, I definitely even if you only watch like how that you totally still watch that last episode, but I don't think you'll be able to watch this half of it. I think you'll end up like I did. And once you get sucked into it, it's so fun. And then that payoff at the end whe they show you how they did it. It's so satisfying. So yeah, I just super recommend this show. I also want to say, incredible job of casting. You know, in real life, people don't look the way they look on television, and when they cast this jury, they did such a good job of finding people that look like actual people. And it's also like a diverse group of people, like there's like the Indian guys really funny, the Old Lady is really funny. Just the whole thing that it's is real. It's a realistic cross section of people that could actually be on a jury, that look like real people, and everything about it, all the little details are so good.

10:13 There's a joke. There's a joke in episode four they go to a T shirt factory. It's part of the case, the traits the case they're they're you know, supposedly doing the trial of So take the jury to the T shirt factory because it's relevant to the case, and there's a joke they do in this room full of mannequins that I'm not going to spoil for you, but I laughed so hard, and I mean to get half the fun of it. It's just seeing the real guy react and uh, it's just uh yeah, I I This is I think one of the most confident recommendations that I've given on the podcast as a whole. It is the show that I think would appeal to the largest cross section of people of anything that I recommended. You know, sometimes you watch something you're like, I know, I like this. I know that people who sort of have my taste will like it, but like, well, everybody like it. This is a show that my mom could watch, and my wife could watch, and you know friends of mine could watch. Honestly, like if my kids are like six years older or something, they could probably watch. So it's it's it's a rare situation where you have a show that is broadly appealing, but it's so good, it's so well done. And I think that you know, Amazon, with this freev thing, it's a real like breakthrough for that I didn't even know this this thing existed, And you know, the thing with the commercials. It's funny. You know, again, we're going back to the old day television. Do I really care that I have to watch like

11:43 a minute and a half of commercials every ten minutes? No, I don't care at all, So you know, it doesn't really affect it. And if anything, it kind of gives you a bit of nosalgia for the old day so we used to watch actual television. So yeah, Jerry Doody, it's free. You can watch you for free. It won't cost you anything. It's hilarious. Do yourself a favor. Go watch Jerry Duty and let me know what you think of it. You can always reach me Dan at voyagemedia dot com, Betty Moore Dan on Twitter, watch this Something on Instagram, and watch this Tonight podcast on TikTok. You can also join on our Facebook group. If you enjoy the show, please leave us a five store review and appul podcasts or anywhere you're listening. That is the biggest favor you could possibly do me and the best way to help the podcast. That's the show for today. I have an awesome interview that I'm doing tomorrow that I'm really excited about that I'm not going to tell you about until I actually get it in the can. But now I can tease something that's coming up until next time. Bye bye,