2 hours ago
4
In 2023, Freevee (owned by Amazon) aired Jury Duty, a hoax reality show starring an unsuspecting member of the American public who was unaware that everyone else deciding the outcome of a trial in an LA courthouse alongside him was in fact an actor. It was frequently ridiculous – not least when X-Men actor James Marsden was parachuted in as a member of the jury. It did, however, have a lot of heart, and a lovable mark in the form of Ronald Gladden, a sweet man who blindly followed the “hero’s journey” he was unaware was being meticulously plotted by producers, and who took the eventual reveal very well. Some questioned the ethics of this Truman Show-esque premise, although Gladden seemed fairly undamaged by his accidental fame. Certainly, you imagine that his prize – $100,000 and a two-year deal with Amazon – would have helped to soften any initial feelings of “WTF”.
And so to season two, which retains the Jury Duty brand name but takes place at an annual retreat for Rockin’ Grandma’s hot sauce, a company that – spoiler alert – doesn’t exist. Taking the starring role this time is twentysomething Anthony Norman, an office temp who quickly becomes the company’s most beloved employee. It is, we learn, the final Rockin’ Grandma’s retreat for CEO Doug Womack, who is set to retire and hand over the company to his son, the lackadaisical, cod-Jamaican-accented Dougie, a former ska band member who is somewhere between Chet Hanks and the Dude from The Big Lebowski. Like Gladden before him, Norman is kind and obliging to a fault, and a big fan of organised fun – the perfect candidate to take over the running of the retreat when HR boss Kevin taps out after a humiliating social faux pas. One minute Norman’s the new guy – the next he’s running around in a yachting cap, declaring himself the new “captain fun”. For somebody who thought he was merely taking on a short-term job – and being filmed for a documentary about the corporate world – his seemingly unending reserves of enthusiasm and commitment to the dysfunctional world of Rockin’ Grandma’s are commendable.
Company Retreat perfectly captures the low-level politics of working in a small family business. The cleverest trick it pulls, however, is to give Norman and his colleagues a common enemy: a big, rich rival called Truikas, whose executives arrive at the retreat with an enticing takeover bid and a rider of expensive crab. All of Truikas’s employees – including the ones in their corporate video – have red hair, which is just one element of the prank that will surely have you screaming “how has he not twigged this yet?!” See also: a stomach-turning episode with a used sex toy, said to have been left behind by a group of Miami estate agents.
Indeed, as Company Retreat goes on you can almost feel it becoming more pleased with itself, and more keen to shock both the audience, and Norman. The camera pans to his face during an increasingly weird set of seminars, including one in which a speaker describes how his testicles froze off and were later surgically removed, and another in which their visitor suggests a name change from Rockin’ Grandma’s to Rockin’ Stepsister’s, on account of the glut of (presumably porn-driven) online traffic for the word. Rather than confusion or amusement, often the emotion they seem to capture on Norman’s face is sheer boredom. This may be the weirdest workplace ever, but it is still another day at the office.
The inescapable reality is that – even as it skewers touchy-feely corporate bonding exercises – this is a show with a weird relationship to work, and to what it means to be employed. More than 10,000 people applied for this short-term gig – many, perhaps, wanting to be on camera; others maybe just while firing off as many applications as possible. The digs against corporate culture – especially towards the end of the series – are funny and well executed. But ultimately this is a series about convincing a man that he is employed when in fact he isn’t, and in fact it’s just a big joke masterminded by a gigantic shop.
“You couldn’t make this up for a TV show,” declares Norman at one point – and yet they did. Like Gladden before him, he is presented with a large cheque in the final episode; any further deals with Amazon are still to be confirmed. It’s chump change for them, and – as always – the big reveal is rather lovely. Just go in with the “captain fun” mentality rather than worrying about, you know, late-stage capitalism.
