One of my favorite shows is the sketch comedy I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson. The segments are full of absurd twists and chaotic tension, veering from one extreme to another. There’s a segment in season 2 where Tim’s character is doing a prank show. The initial joke of the bit is that he wears a ton of really bad, obnoxious makeup and costuming to do this prank which is just him being at a mall food court. But then the bit becomes him not wanting to do it anymore, getting playfully existential with it before the sketch ends suddenly.
I thought of this bit and many others while bingeing the FreeVee (formerly IMDBTV) show Jury Duty. Released earlier this year, Jury Duty is a strange mix between prank show and mockumentary. The set-up is simple: we follow Ronald, the prank-ee, as he goes through the rigors of an intentionally outlandish and absurd jury process over the course about 17 days. Everyone else in every other situation is an actor (people like me who watch way too much TV will notice a handful of people from things like Parks and Rec or I Think You Should Leave).
But what makes Jury Duty so weird, and unsettling, is that it breaks what I would say are the two cardinal rules of prank shows: anonymity and duration. In my experience, prank shows, like Candid Camera or whatever, set up a prank situation, let unsuspecting people pass through it for a few minutes, and then there’s a shared laugh. Jury Duty dispenses with anonymity—by having Ronald form real and “genuine” connections with the people around him—and duration—by extending the experiment for over two full weeks.
This creates in me deeply split feelings. On one hand, I can’t help but marvel at the technical achievement. It’s incredible that so many people and pieces could be coordinated for so long. It’s amazing that so many people could stay in character for two weeks. They reveal at the end that one guy had prop glasses different from his real glasses, so he did some of the things with limited vision. That alone is amazing.
But on the other hand, I don’t like it at ALL. The show created a space where everything about Ronald’s life was manipulated for over two weeks! I remember the kind of close bonds that formed while working at camp, bonds that still mean something to me a decade later. The bonds on this show seem similar, but they’re all fake. Ronald is a very good sport about it (I’m sure the prize money helps with this), but that doesn’t change that this is pretty messed up. He’s clearly consenting to be part of this fake documentary (more on that in a second), but he’s completely unaware that his whole reality is fake.
Interestingly Jury Duty provides a good counterpoint to The Rehearsal last year. In that show, Nathan Fielder goes to similarly absurd lengths to create a fake reality, but one that people know about. Even in the most extreme situations—like the woman fake raising a child—there’s full knowledge of all parties of what is going on. Now, The Rehearsal raises other ethical questions, especially concerning young children who had a hard time discerning the act from their real life. The Rehearsal, to its credit, addressed these by the end and, presumably, will be smaller in scope if there’s a second season.
But you can’t help but compare the shows. Both create meticulous versions of “reality” populated with actors executing precise movements. Except in one everyone knows what’s going on and in the other, someone doesn’t.
I’m really bothered by the prank component of Jury Duty. I think the manipulation is too large scale for too long. It could cause really serious psychological harm with long lasting repercussions. Of course, that’s kind of how it is with all reality TV, but I don’t give other shows a pass either. But the thing that really bothers me about the prank aspect is that they did this sometime in 2022. At this point COVID was ebbing enough that it was reasonable for shows to be in production, but I think it’s reasonable to ask further if it was ethical for a show this involved to happen at such a time. But more than that, at the time they filmed it, people like me were just starting to reemerge into the world, making tenuous social connections again. Mid 2022, I was still cautious doing most things, and this level of manipulation—in a world that already felt so unstable and absurd—would have really messed me up.
That’s the prank component. My feelings there are mixed. I’m less mixed on the mockumentary part. Here I think it’s well-intentioned but not very successful. Ronald clearly consents to being in this documentary, and the show does well to keep the case relatively innocuous and low stakes. We’re talking about liabilities and damages, not homicide. But to the extent that it is a semi-scripted mockumentary about the American jury system—which we ought to know is a MESS—what is it saying? There are some light barbs at racial prejudice and the absurd ways people try to avoid jury duty, but there’s nothing particularly incisive about this deeply broken institution. On one level this is fine as it isn’t the goal of the show, but on another level, it’s kind of irresponsible to just act like you can exist removed from the systems of the American judicial system. I mean, this is the summer Roe v. Wade got overturned. So many people, I think rightly, feel like the Supreme Court is a joke right now, and that corruption trickles down to all levels of legal dealings. This show almost says something about that a lot of times, but the prank concept is such that it never does.
I wish this show had been made in 2007. Then it would be a breath of fresh air to the stale world of early 2000s prank shows and exist at a (relatively) stable time. I wouldn’t have as many concerns about participant health, the safety of the crew, or the frivolous nature of the project at such a challenging time of TV history. But it came out in 2023, and it’s hard for me to find enough artistic or sociological value here to justify this odd experiment. The stakes are just too high.
They got really lucky that Ronald was so legit and likeable. They got really lucky that nothing went disastrously wrong. They ought to wipe their brows in relief and call it a day. Season 1 was an interesting and, ultimately, pretty innocuous prank show and an inert mockumentrary. I’m pretty nervous about what season 2 would be.
