Jury Duty (Amazon)

WEBVTT

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Voyage. Welcome to watch this tonight. I'm your host, An Bettimore.

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I'm a producer, writer of film
and television and now a podcast producer.

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And despite having every streaming service,
I never know what to watch. So

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anytime I watch something good, I
talk about it on the show. This

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way, you'll never have the same
problem I do. I watch this tonight,

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there's always something good to watch.
Let's get started Today. On the

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show, we are talking about Jury
Duty, which is honestly one of the

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shows I am most excited to recommend
to you of the year so far.

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So Jury Duty is on free V, which is a channel on Amazon Prime.

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It sounds weird, I know,
it's like it's like another fucking streaming

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service. You have it. I
promise you have it. If you have

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any streaming device, I promise you
have it. It's free with ads,

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otherwise known as television, right,
I mean, it's basically it's hilarious how

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we're sort of circling back to just
regular television. It's a show that would

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have been a hit show and like
NBC ten years ago. So yeah,

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it's on. It's a channel on
Amazon Prime called FREEV. If you don't

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have it, I'm sure. You
just search for Jury Duty it'll come up,

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and you get installed it and take
your two seconds and it's free without

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If you have Amazon, just go
to Amazon type and jury Duty it'll come

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up. You might as well think
about it as like it's on Amazon Prime,

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very easy to get to. I'm
telling you, it's great. It's

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so I'm so excited to share it
with you because I really feel like it's

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a fine right it's not. I
mean, I saw stuff about it on

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TikTok. That's how I found it. I thought the premise absolutely hilarious.

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But I think people are still catching
up to its existence, especially because it

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isn't this weird freevie thing, which
again is just Amazon Prime. Really.

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Now, when I initially decided I
was going to do this, I think

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I started watching it on Saturday and
I was like, all right, cool,

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so this will be you know,
the Wednesday I'll record it. It'll

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be the Wednesday episode of the show. You know. Let me, I'll

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watch a couple episodes. I watched
the whole thing, watch the whole season

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in like three days. What's great
about it, though, is that there's

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really nothing that I can spoil for
you, Like I've seen the whole thing,

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but I can easily tell you a
bunch of hilarious stuff that happens in

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it and not spoil it for you. So that's kind of exciting for me.

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It's like, there's not you can
listen to this whole episode. It's

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not going to spoil it for you. You can still watch the show and

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have a great time. And it's
certainly not a spoiler to tell you the

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essential premise of the show, which
is there's a regular guy and they tell

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this regular guy, hey, man, do you want to participate in a

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documentary about what it's like to be
on jury duty? And it's just a

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civil trial, and you know,
basically the cameras are going to follow you

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and the other jurors around and we're
going to document this civil trial. And

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this guy's like, all right,
cool, So he goes to do this,

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and what he does not know is
that every other single person in this

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experience is an actor. So imagine
he goes to the courthouse. You know,

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everyone of the courthouse is an actor. All the other jurors are actors,

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all the lawyers are actors, the
judge is an actor. It's all

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been carefully, carefully designed so that
he doesn't realize that everything around him is

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fake. I actually was talking to
our guy brother of Doom aka James Jefferson

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on Twitter and I was telling him
about this and he said, oh,

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it's the Truman Show Law and Order
Edition. I was like, yeah,

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it's a great way of putting it. So shout out to James. The

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other James I need to mention is
James Marston, who is in this show

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playing himself. So basically they're pretending
that the actual James Marsden was called for

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jury duty. It's a hilarious sort
of bet a joke of the show.

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If you've ever seen the movie Sex
Drive, which is somewhat obscure movie,

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you know that James Marsden is actually
really funny and has major comic abilities.

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And what I absolutely love is in
this show, the real guy whose name

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is Ronald, He's like, hey, I realize you play one of my

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favorite roles of all time in Sex
Drive, and he has him to sign

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the DVD of Sex Drive, and
then they even make it like a meta

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plot point that I'm not going to
spoil later on in the show. And

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obviously, in order to do this, James Marson had to have an incredible

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sense of humor about himself because he's
the butt of almost every joke. In

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early on, he tries to get
out of jury duty by saying he's a

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recognizable public figure, and the judge
was like, I don't know who you

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are. You're not famous enough to
get a jury duty. I want to

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highlight a joke that comes about halfway
through the pilot. So what's interesting about

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Jury Duty is that, you know, it's like very much like The Office.

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I think the guys who created this
worked in the office. It's very

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much that sort of that fake documentary
sitcom approach was to become very in vogue,

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right, and so it's a lot
of like sort of like chuckles and

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smiles and you're like, is it
going to be like laugh out loud?

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And then halfway through the pilot they
came up with this gag. It was

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so funny and it could only happen
on this show. There's no other show

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this couldn't happen on and work the
same way. So I'm going to explain

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it to you and maybe this will
be what kind of sells you on it,

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because it's what sold me on it. So Ronald is the real person.

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He's talking to the other jurors.
One of them says, hey,

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do you know how I get out
of jury duty? Like what's the move

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to get out of jury duty?
And Ronald says, well, look,

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the only thing I know is what
I saw a family guy, which is

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pretended to be racist. So then
they're doing jury selection. The guy that

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he told, hey, I just
saw this some family guy to pretend to

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be racist, he said it does
a joke. Basically, he does try

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to be he Basically they're asking him, you know, it's like, hey,

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is there any reason that you shouldn't
be on the shore whatever? And

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he's like, yeah, I'm racist, and then and then he's like embarrassed

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and he sort of walks it back. It's like, oh, sorry,

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you know, someone told me to
say that. And the judge is like,

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who told you to say that?
And he looked see it Ronald.

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It's so funny, Oh my god, because it's like again, because Ronald

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is actually a real person, we
have to watch his reaction. He's like

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super embarrassed that this guy's actually done
this, and he's like almost like trying

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to like shake his heads like no, don't do it. I just love

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that, But I mean, think
about the complexity of them pulling off this

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joke, right, Ronald has to
tell this guy pretend you're racist. It

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worked up a family guy like that
kind of thing. Then they got a

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behind the scenes as the writers and
producers say Okay, we're gonna do this

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scenario and then we're gonna execute it
like on the fly. So it's like

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a living and breathing thing to mind
this whole situation for maximum comedy. They

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have to adjust what they're doing based
on what the real person is doing,

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which must have been insanely difficult.
And what I think is so great about

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the show is that if you watch
the whole season, I think just about

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every episode has at least one joke
that's that funny that I laughed out loud

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that I thought was like just a
great thing they pulled off, and it

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also has a great sense of heart
to it. Um there's a moment in

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the third episode. Again it's not
really you know, it's not a spoiler,

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it's just it's just to help you
understand why it's great. Used to

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watch it. So one of the
guys who's in the jury is this like

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super weird oh guy, and he
is always like inventing little gadgets and stuff.

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And he comes to the court with
chair pants, which are pants.

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It's crutches that he's like sewn onto
the back of his pants so he can

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just sit down anywhere that he's standing. And Ronald there's this heartwarming moment where

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he's like, I showed him the
movie A Bug's Life. The jury has

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been sequestered at their hotel. He
shows him A Bug's Life to help him

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understand and inventors are often misunderstood.
So it's just it's really it's it's just

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a pleasant, funny, innovative,
crazy thing that they made this and then

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it even exists. And the balancing
act of the show is that they do

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these gags. They have to be
silly enough to be funny to us,

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but also within reality enough to not
give it away to Ronald likes. It's

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a really fine line they have to
kind of dance on. And I think

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where it comes out is imagine if
you just had, like you met the

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goofiest group of people in your life. That's kind of what Ronald is going

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through on the show. I want
to say, also, what really kept

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me in it? And I can
confirm this because I've seen the last episode.

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I had heard somewhere that on the
last episode it's almost like a documentary

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of like how the hell do they
do this? And it is so again,

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it's not a spoiler, it's something
to look forward to. So if

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you're watching this show and you're thinking, all right, how could they possibly

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have done this? Like the amount
of preparation and planning, you have to

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be like Stanley Kubrick, like how
did they could they hire extras? Like

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at one point they go to Margaritaville, they go to dinner at Margaritaville,

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And so you're watching and you're thinking, all right, well, does this

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mean did they rent out of Margaritaville? Did they hire two hundred extras just

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to be people sitting and pretending they're
having dinner at Margaritaville? Like the are

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the waiters actual Margaritaville waiters? Like
what has happened? All that stuff?

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Right? And so that's one of
the fun things about the show is that

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you're watching and you're like, how
how is it even possible? And it's

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just it's so well done. And
yeah, I definitely even if you only

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watch like how that you totally still
watch that last episode, but I don't

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think you'll be able to watch this
half of it. I think you'll end

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up like I did. And once
you get sucked into it, it's so

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fun. And then that payoff at
the end whe they show you how they

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did it. It's so satisfying.
So yeah, I just super recommend this

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show. I also want to say, incredible job of casting. You know,

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in real life, people don't look
the way they look on television,

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and when they cast this jury,
they did such a good job of finding

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people that look like actual people.
And it's also like a diverse group of

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people, like there's like the Indian
guys really funny, the Old Lady is

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really funny. Just the whole thing
that it's is real. It's a realistic

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cross section of people that could actually
be on a jury, that look like

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real people, and everything about it, all the little details are so good.

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There's a joke. There's a joke
in episode four they go to a

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T shirt factory. It's part of
the case, the traits the case they're

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they're you know, supposedly doing the
trial of So take the jury to the

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T shirt factory because it's relevant to
the case, and there's a joke they

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do in this room full of mannequins
that I'm not going to spoil for you,

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but I laughed so hard, and
I mean to get half the fun

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of it. It's just seeing the
real guy react and uh, it's just

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uh yeah, I I This is
I think one of the most confident recommendations

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that I've given on the podcast as
a whole. It is the show that

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I think would appeal to the largest
cross section of people of anything that I

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recommended. You know, sometimes you
watch something you're like, I know,

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I like this. I know that
people who sort of have my taste will

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like it, but like, well, everybody like it. This is a

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show that my mom could watch,
and my wife could watch, and you

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know friends of mine could watch.
Honestly, like if my kids are like

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six years older or something, they
could probably watch. So it's it's it's

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a rare situation where you have a
show that is broadly appealing, but it's

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so good, it's so well done. And I think that you know,

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Amazon, with this freev thing,
it's a real like breakthrough for that I

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didn't even know this this thing existed, And you know, the thing with

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the commercials. It's funny. You
know, again, we're going back to

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the old day television. Do I
really care that I have to watch like

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a minute and a half of commercials
every ten minutes? No, I don't

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care at all, So you know, it doesn't really affect it. And

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if anything, it kind of gives
you a bit of nosalgia for the old

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day so we used to watch actual
television. So yeah, Jerry Doody,

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it's free. You can watch you
for free. It won't cost you anything.

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It's hilarious. Do yourself a favor. Go watch Jerry Duty and let

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me know what you think of it. You can always reach me Dan at

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voyagemedia dot com, Betty Moore Dan
on Twitter, watch this Something on Instagram,

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and watch this Tonight podcast on TikTok. You can also join on our

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Facebook group. If you enjoy the
show, please leave us a five store

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review and appul podcasts or anywhere you're
listening. That is the biggest favor you

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could possibly do me and the best
way to help the podcast. That's the

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show for today. I have an
awesome interview that I'm doing tomorrow that I'm

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really excited about that I'm not going
to tell you about until I actually get

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it in the can. But now
I can tease something that's coming up until

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next time. Bye bye,