{"id":549151,"date":"2026-03-20T14:29:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T14:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/549151\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T14:29:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T14:29:08","slug":"jury-duty-presents-company-retreat-review-the-episode-with-the-sex-toy-is-stomach-turning-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/549151\/","title":{"rendered":"Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat review \u2013 the episode with the sex toy is stomach turning | Television"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2023, Freevee (owned by Amazon) aired Jury Duty<\/a>, 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 \u2013 not least when X-Men actor James Marsden<\/a> 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 \u201chero\u2019s journey\u201d 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 \u2013 $100,000 and a two-year deal with Amazon \u2013 would have helped to soften any initial feelings of \u201cWTF\u201d.<\/p>\n

And so to season two, which retains the Jury Duty brand name but takes place at an annual retreat for Rockin\u2019 Grandma\u2019s hot sauce, a company that \u2013 spoiler alert \u2013 doesn\u2019t exist. Taking the starring role this time is twentysomething Anthony Norman, an office temp who quickly becomes the company\u2019s most beloved employee. It is, we learn, the final Rockin\u2019 Grandma\u2019s 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 \u2013 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\u2019s the new guy \u2013 the next he\u2019s running around in a yachting cap, declaring himself the new \u201ccaptain fun\u201d. For somebody who thought he was merely taking on a short-term job \u2013 and being filmed for a documentary about the corporate world \u2013 his seemingly unending reserves of enthusiasm and commitment to the dysfunctional world of Rockin\u2019 Grandma\u2019s are commendable.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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\u2019s employees \u2013 including the ones in their corporate video \u2013 have red hair, which is just one element of the prank that will surely have you screaming \u201chow has he not twigged this yet?!\u201d See also: a stomach-turning episode with a used sex toy, said to have been left behind by a group of Miami estate agents.<\/p>\n

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\u2019 Grandma\u2019s to Rockin\u2019 Stepsister\u2019s, 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\u2019s face is sheer boredom. This may be the weirdest workplace ever, but it is still another day at the office.<\/p>\n

Somewhere between Chet Hanks and the Dude from The Big Lebowski \u2026 Alex Bonifer as Dougie Jr and Jerry Hauck as Doug. Photograph: Amazon Content Services LLC\/PA<\/p>\n

The inescapable reality is that \u2013 even as it skewers touchy-feely corporate bonding exercises \u2013 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 \u2013 many, perhaps, wanting to be on camera; others maybe just while firing off as many applications as possible. The digs against corporate culture \u2013 especially towards the end of the series \u2013 are funny and well executed. But ultimately this is a series about convincing a man that he is employed when in fact he isn\u2019t, and in fact it\u2019s just a big joke masterminded by a gigantic shop.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou couldn\u2019t make this up for a TV show,\u201d declares Norman at one point \u2013 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\u2019s chump change for them, and \u2013 as always \u2013 the big reveal is rather lovely. Just go in with the \u201ccaptain fun\u201d mentality rather than worrying about, you know, late-stage capitalism.<\/p>\n

Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat is on Prime Video now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2023, Freevee (owned by Amazon) aired Jury Duty, a hoax reality show starring an unsuspecting member of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549152,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,348],"class_list":["post-549151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}