Animation
Knuckles
The Sonic spinoff blends explosive adventure and road-trip-buddy-comedy into a fun romp for both kids and diehard fans.
Ronald’s just happy to be there.
He’s pleased as punch to fulfill his civic obligation and serve on a jury—even if the case is a little strange. He’s ready to rub elbows with his fellow jurors, no matter how unhinged some seem to be. Why, when the jury’s sequestered, he’s even reflective about giving up his phone for the foreseeable future.
“It is kind of a nice break to be away from the phone,” he tells the ever-present documentary crew.
The rest of the jurors? It’s hard to tell how they really feel. Because, of course, they’re not really jurors. The case isn’t a real case. And the documentary crew? Yeah, they’re about the only folks doing something close to what Ronald thinks they’re doing.
See, Ronald’s not serving on a jury. He’s the star of a comedy. And he’s the only one who doesn’t know it.
The case that Ronald believes he’s supposed to be focusing on seems relatively straightforward. But everyone in court is actually focused on Ronald—a clueless everyman just trying to do his best in an increasingly unhinged court environment.
One of his fellow jurors is a member of the “U.S. Transhumanist Organization,” a group dedicated to grafting inorganic contraptions onto their organic bodies. (A fake ear, equipped with Bluetooth, is taken from him during the jury’s sequestration.) Another claims to be a business owner—even if his “business” begins and ends with a couple of gumball machines. (He’s had a bit of a downturn, he admits.) Still another, famed actor James Marsden playing famed actor James Marsden, does his best to be as arrogant and entitled as possible. (When fake-James tells Ronald that he was in the movie Sonic the Hedgehog, Ronald opines that that “was not a good movie.” Fake-James, and perhaps real-James, looks deeply crestfallen.)
But while the gimmick is all about Ronnie, the show, oddly, is not. At times, Jury Duty slides away from being a prank-reality show and into the realm of mockumentary, with other characters revealing bits of their personalities and backgrounds to the camera. Take Ronald out of the picture, and you have a knockoff of The Office or Modern Family. Add Ronald in, and you’ve got … something else.
“This literally feels like reality TV,” Ronald tells the “documentary crew” in a later episode, as the rest of the “jurors” stay impressively straight-faced.
And it’s just about as “real” as most reality TV shows, too.
In 1998, Jim Carrey starred in The Truman Show, a movie about a guy whose entire life is, unbeknownst to him, a sitcom. We’ve seen some other reality shows that mix real people with fake settings, too. Sacha Baron Cohen pranked many a person in his Borat and Bruno films. The Joe Schmo Show put one unknowing individual into a fake reality series for three straight seasons. And almost always, these hoax shows come across as just plain mean.
That in itself sets Jury Duty apart. In fact, the AVClub calls it “the world’s first feel-good prank show.” Writes Sam Barsanti:
[Ronald is] an everyman in a way that you don’t normally see in reality TV, let alone complicated phony reality TV, and so it’s Good and Nice that the show ultimately reveals that it’s not really a prank on anyone. It’s just a bunch of people having a good time, and one of them eventually discovers that it was all done for his benefit. It’s like showing up at a birthday party, having a fun with new friends, and then realizing that everyone is singing for you and waiting for you to blow out the candles.
But while the show may be nice in spirit, it’s naughty in some other ways.
Freevee, an ad-supported adjunct of Amazon Prime Video, seems intent on keeping Jury Duty in the equivalent of PG-13 territory—but that’s still plenty problematic. Every episode bleeps out several f-words, and everything else (including s-words) go through unaccosted. One juror (Jeannie) definitely wants to sleep with another juror (Noah), and her advances can involve some rather scandalous outfits and telling double entendres. (“He’s like really innocent,” she tells the crew, “and I feel like I want to corrupt him.”)
Violence, substance abuse, bathroom humor and just flat-out bad behavior can mar the screen, as well.
Jury Duty isn’t guilty of any ethical felonies—at least not given the state of television today. Still, if Plugged In was serving on a jury to judge this show, we’d definitely be considering some unflattering evidence.
Ronald Gladden shows up for jury duty along with dozens of others. And several will do whatever they can to get out of this civic duty.
James Marsden (an actor who’s been in such productions as Westworld and the X-Men movies) tries to escape duty by pulling his celebrity status—claiming that his presence would be a distraction. (The judge disagrees.) Another would-be juror, Ross, asks to leave because he’s caring for 36 kids. (Turns out, he’s a high school teacher and the kids are his students.) Noah wants desperately to be available to go on vacation with his girlfriend—his first “completely unsupervised” time with her, making some veiled references to how they might use that unsupervised time. When he asks Ronald if he knows of any tricks that he might use to get out of jury duty, Ronald jokingly suggests a Family Guy episode where a character pretended to be racist. Noah dutifully stands up and announces, “I’m racist” to the judge. But it does not go well.
Noah mistakes the interest of another juror in him as just yet another person being unexpectedly nice to an out-of-towner. (The other juror, meanwhile, says she’d like to “corrupt” Noah. A fan asks James Marsden if she can kiss his cheek for a selfie. “If not, I can pretend,” she adds. Someone sticks a licked lollypop on her chest for safekeeping. We hear about a controversial director who hasn’t been “Me-tooed” yet. Someone shows up to court with a bandaged hand. (He explains he cut it.)
Characters say the f-word a half-dozen times, all of which are bleeped. Not so the five s-words, or the two uses each of “d–n” and “h—.” God’s name is misused five times.
Ronald and his fellow jurors settle in to listen to the opening arguments in the case. The prosecutor shows an animated video (the kind that sometimes shows up on trashy tabloid shows depicting various criminal acts) depicting the accused at work. He slaps a female coworker’s animated behind, encourages another coworker to smoke from a pipe and collapses, unconscious, in a pile of new T-shirts that he promptly urinates on. The defense also claims to have a video, but the defense attorney knocks over the TV, and the animation glitches out after about five seconds. (The attorney mumbles he’s going to have a talk with his nephew—apparently the video’s creator—about the vid’s shoddy production values.)
Elsewhere, a juror is injured by falling off a cabinet, opening the door for an alternate to come in. The jury’s foreperson is selected—a gig that seems surprisingly coveted.
The injured juror moans in pain and is eventually taken out on a stretcher. Another juror begins praying to Jesus to help. The judge tells the court later that the juror’s life isn’t in danger, but he is in considerable pain.
When the jury’s foreperson is selected, he’s told by another juror that “when God blesses you, just take the blessing.” A juror is forced to give up his realistic ear prosthetic. Another tells Ronald that he’s going to go defecate (using more crude language) before court returns to session. James Marsden, an alternate, feels slighted to be not a regular juror. It’s the first time “I’ve ever been treated differently in a negative way,” asking his fellow alternate—a Black man—whether he’s ever experienced that feeling of disenfranchisement. Ronald remembers that James Marsden was in one of his favorite movies: Sex Drive.
Characters say the f-word five times (all of which are bleeped). The uncensored s-wor is uttered another five, and we also hear “a–,” “d—n” and “p-ssed.” God’s name is misused three times.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
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