'Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat' Almost Makes Corporate Culture Seem Fun

Anthony Norman is your emblematic Gen Z worker: 25, a small wayward, and struggling to find a afloat clip job.

You can’t precisely responsibility him for the presumption he’s in. Unemployment rates are high. AI is creating a situation for young radical trying to participate the workforce. Hiring has slowed. And respective companies—including Amazon, Block, and Meta—have embraced tech’s latest epoch of layoffmaxxing, with immoderate cutting their unit by 20 percent.

So erstwhile Anthony lands a temp presumption astatine Rockin’ Grandma’s Hot Sauce, a tiny concern successful Southern California, he’s conscionable blessed for what helium assumes is simply a regular gig: assisting with unusual jobs and helping program the yearly retreat.

What Anthony doesn’t cognize is that helium is really the people of Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat, the 2nd play of Prime Video’s experimental docu-comedy wherever 1 idiosyncratic unwittingly participates successful a staged sitcom (the archetypal season, which blew up connected TikTok and snagged 3 Emmy nominations, was astir a fake assemblage trial). Everyone is an histrion but for him.

Anthony joins the squad during a infinitesimal of transition. The founder, Doug Womack, is preparing to measurement down. His son, Dougie Jr, is adjacent successful line, and due to the fact that not everyone thinks he’s acceptable to tally the household business, helium wants to beryllium that he’s much than an unqualified nepo baby—“the Bronny of blistery sauce,” helium says. Having conscionable returned from a four-year stint successful Jamaica “jamming” with a edifice lobby ska set called the Jive Prophets, the retreat is meant to beryllium a trial for Dougie Jr.

The play trades successful the monotony of cubicles and watercooler speech for Oak Canyon Ranch, a cozy edifice and recreation halfway nestled successful the grassy suburb of Agouria Hills—about an hr thrust northwest of Los Angeles—where the unit convenes for assorted activities: squad building, a lawsuit cookout, motivational speakers, and a endowment contest. Desperate for “one week without Cocomelon” and her 3 kids, Jackie Angela Griffin, the organisation and logistics rep, is acceptable to get away.

Like each offices, Rockin’ Grandma’s is simply a circus of eccentricity and ego. Accountant and bourbon enthusiast Helen Schaffer has been “cooking the books for 26 years.” Receptionist PJ Green has dreams of being a snack influencer. Sourcing manager Anthony Gwinn, who astatine 1 constituent confuses a soma airy for a h2o thermos, is jokingly nicknamed “Other Anthony” contempt moving astatine the institution longer. Kevin Gomez, caput of HR, has flashes of Michael Scott: He’s an overeager, comically delusional, hopeless romanticist who loves his occupation and Amy Patterson, the lawsuit relations coordinator. “Hot Sauce is having a moment,” helium tells Anthony during the onboarding process. “You don’t spot this benignant of happening happening with ketchup.”

On time two, anxious to show his instincts arsenic CEO, Dougie Jr. calls an audible and brings successful an “emotions and vulnerability expert”—she’s the Walmart mentation of world Brené Brown—who confusingly leads the radical done a speech connected however to navigate uncomfortable scenarios.

It’s bully signifier for Kevin’s failed connection to Amy—they’ve really ne'er been connected a existent day minus the 1 clip helium went retired with her and 8 of her different girlfriends connected her birthday. A humiliated Kevin makes a speedy exit from the retreat center, with cans tied to the backmost of his car, and Anthony is forced to measurement up.

“I got a promotion,” helium says, improvising connected the alert to assistance morale by embracing the relation of “Captain Fun.”

Even arsenic radical person struggled to find meaning successful their work—or simply find work—TV’s fixation with the American workplace has ever been fashionable with viewers. Mad Men examined the existential toils of advertizing executives. Severance has contemplated autonomy, successful summation to a batch of different precise weird shit. And nary bid has explored the delightful chaos of workplace hijinks amended than NBC’s The Office, which followed the oddball unit of Dunder Mifflin, a Pennsylvania insubstantial company.