You can’t blame him for the position he is in. The unemployment rate is high. AI is creating a crisis for young people trying to enter the workforce. Hiring has slowed down. And many companies, including Amazon, Block and Meta, have adopted tech’s latest era of layoffs, with some cutting their workforce by as much as 20 percent.
So when Anthony lands a temporary position at Rockin’ Grandma’s Hot Sauce, a small business in Southern California, he’s only too happy to have what he believes is a routine task: assisting with odd jobs and helping plan the annual retreat.
Anthony doesn’t know what he really symbolizes Jury Duty Presents: Company RetreatThe second season of Prime Video’s experimental docu-comedy where a man unknowingly takes part in a staged sitcom (the first season, which blew up on TikTok and received three Emmy nominations, was about a mock jury trial). Everyone else is an actor except him.
Anthony joins the team during a moment of transformation. The founder, Doug Womack, is preparing to step down. His son, Dougie Jr., is next in line, and because not everyone thinks he’s fit to run the family business, he wants to prove that he’s more than an inept Nepo Baby – “the brony of hot sauce”, he says. After returning from a four-year stint in Jamaica “jamming” with a hotel lobby ska band called the Jive Prophets, the retreat is meant to be a test for Dougie Jr.
This season take the monotony of cubicles and watercooler talk to Oak Canyon Ranch, a cozy resort and recreation center located in the grassy suburb of Agoura Hills—about an hour’s drive northwest of Los Angeles—where employees gather for a variety of activities: team building, a client cookout, motivational speakers and a talent contest. Desperate for “a week without cocoamelons” and her three children, delivery and logistics representative, Jackie Angela Griffin, is ready to walk away.
Like all offices, Rocking Grandma’s is a circus of eccentricity and ego. Accountant and Bourbon enthusiast Helen Schaefer “has been cooking the books for 26 years.” Receptionist PJ Green has dreams of becoming a snack influencer. Sourcing manager Anthony Gwynn, who at one point confuses a meatloaf for a thermos of water, has been jokingly nicknamed “the other Anthony” despite working longer at the company. Kevin Gomez, the head of HR, mirrors Michael Scott: he is an overeager, comically confused, hopeless romantic who loves his job and Amy Patterson, the customer relations coordinator. “Hot sauce is having a moment,” he tells Anthony during the onboarding process. “You don’t see this kind of thing happening with ketchup.”
On the second day, eager to demonstrate his instincts as a CEO, Dougie Jr. calls an Audible and brings in an “emotions and vulnerabilities expert”—he’s the Walmart version of academic Brene Brown—who leads the group through a conversation on how to deal with uncomfortable scenarios.
This is good practice for Kevin’s failed proposal to Amy – they’ve never actually gone on a real date without it being her birthday, which also involved eight of his other girlfriends. After a humiliated Kevin storms out of the retreat center, the sound of tin cans rattling as he speeds away in his car forces Anthony to step up.
“I got a promotion,” he says, adding that he quickly improvised to boost morale and take on the role of “Captain Fun.”
Even as people have struggled to find meaning in their work – or simply to find work – TV’s association with the American workplace has always been popular with viewers. Mad Man The existential diligence of advertising executives was examined. separation Autonomy has also been considered, among many other very strange things. And no series has explored the delightful chaos of workplace kidnapping better than NBC’s Officewhich followed the strange employees of Dunder Mifflin, a Pennsylvania paper company.
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