I Loved 'Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat.' I Also Have Some Questions

Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat wrapped up its second season last week (with two bonus episodes pending), and the whole season went down precisely as the writers had planned it: Anthony quickly bonded with his new co-workers over the course of a week, helped manage relationships, navigated blunders and screw-ups, and in the end, saved the Rockin’ Grandma Hot Sauce company from an evil corporate conglomerate that tried to buy it and sell it for spare parts.

It was joyous and heart-warming and life-affirming, and it briefly restored humankind’s faith in humanity. It was perfect.

So what’s the problem? Honestly? It was maybe too perfect.

To be clear, I don’t think Anthony was an actor. I don’t think anyone let on that he was appearing on a staged television series where the joke was on him.

But I do think that Anthony may have figured it out — either consciously or unconsciously. Either that, or he fell under the show’s power of suggestion and began following its cues rather than his own instincts. There were just too many baffling, over-the-top moments piled on top of each other — especially late in the season — that would make any sane person wonder, Is this all a setup? Am I being played? But to Anthony’s credit, and to his genuine good nature, he played along anyway.

In the second episode, there was a misprint on a hot sauce bottle that made it read “Rockin’ Grandma’s Jerk Sauce,” accompanied by an entire display featuring a Rockin’ Grandma cutout essentially jerking off a guitar handle. That is an insane, almost comically perfect moment — so perfect that it might have planted a seed in Anthony’s mind that something was amiss. After all, cameras were out in the open the entire time because, ostensibly, the retreat was being recorded for documentary purposes.

Here’s the thing: When I was young, I was brought up on stage and hypnotized. I remembered every moment of that interaction, but I played along anyway — because going along was easier and less embarrassing than defying the hypnotist and humiliating him. And that, it turns out, is actually how stage hypnotism works: the hypnotist isn’t really putting anyone under anything. He screens the crowd, picks the most willing performers, and then exploits the social contract of the show itself. Nobody wants to be the person who ruins it. The “suggestion” is just cover — permission to do something silly in public without taking the blame for it.

I think that’s how Company Retreat worked, too.

Anthony did what the show wanted him to do because he didn’t want to disrupt their well-laid plans. Consider: Anthony ran down a hill, ran back up the hill, and sprinted back down again in a matter of minutes — then stepped over the CEO’s son, interrupted a board meeting, demanded the CEO not sign the agreement, and swore to him on their bond as fathers that the deal was a sham.

Anthony was a temp assistant. That is just not normal temp behavior. You don’t step over a co-worker, shut down a board meeting, and blow up what was presumably a multimillion-dollar deal because you have a feeling.

And maybe it’s just me — and I loathe being the buzzkill here — but when the reveal finally arrived, Anthony seemed a little like a guy walking into a surprise party he already knew about. Did he know all the intricacies? No. Did he know he was appearing on the second season of Jury Duty? Absolutely not. But did he have a hunch that something was going on — because the HR manager of a hot sauce company doesn’t just follow a Sia performance with an impassioned, stalker-rendition of Radiohead’s “Creep” — yeah. I think so.

None of that makes me think less of Anthony. But I do think he acted like a “hero” because he was put in a position to act like one, and because he had the predisposition to do so. He did all the right things, and he genuinely bonded with the actors playing his co-workers. But would he have done any of that if the path hadn’t already been cleared for him to become the best version of himself? Yeah, I’m not so sure.