now that my jury duty is over and i can legally talk about my jury duty, a short list of things that i have learned about jury duty:
when the judge wants to sidebar with the lawyers they turn on a static noise machine for the jury. this is very like the experience of being trapped inside a television
sometimes they load the entire court -- judge, lawyers, court reporters, jury, etc. -- onto a bus and take you all on a little field trip to see a crime scene. this is very like the experience of being in elementary school
when you are on a jury field trip you May Not share a seat, you May Not speak, and you May Not look at anything you have not been officially told you can look at. this is very like the experience of being trapped inside a point-and-click adventure except that instead of being limited in your investigation by the constraints of the game mechanics, you are instead limited in your investigation by the court officers herding you around like ducks with their long wooden Official Court Staffs
no matter how much an FBI agent may encourage the court to call him kevin, the court will not call him kevin
“We put you in an adjoining hotel room with Todd, whose odd demeanor and obsession with body parts were specifically intended to frighten you. But you didn’t shut him out. You welcomed him into your room, and into your non-optimally designed heart.”
jury duty, the show where everyone except one person - noted sweetheart ronald gladden - is really an actor (full clip of the chair pants/chants episode here)
jury duty is such an insane concept for a show bc the creators really said “it’s a week (plus) long improvisation project filmed like a documentary based around a fake court room. james marsden is there & his role is to be as douchey as possible. the twist????? one single man is completely unaware that it’s a fake trial. truman show with a sprinkle of psychological warfare”
if you were going to tell me i would be in tears at the end of an eight-episode mockumentary on fucking freevee because not only did they manage to find one of the most genuine men on the planet earth to be part of their entirely-staged story, but because every single actor who got to know him longer than we did at the end said full-stop they’d fallen in love with him and were so happy to be his friend and had so much fun with him and because everyone acknowledged that he just went above and beyond time and time again every time he was faced with a moral or ethical dilemma and proved people ARE inherently good actually!!!
“these are chair pants, or chants…” WHOLESOME ;______; (everyone in this show is an actor except for ronald, the guy in blue, who thinks he’s in a documentary about jury duty)
The following series explores the American judicial process as seen through the eyes of a jury. During a normal trial, jurors are forbidden from discussing the case. But this is not a normal trial. It's fake. Everyone involved is an actor. Except for one person...
crying because jury duty is about the genuine kindness and compassion of a man and crying because they called him the hero behind the scenes and crying because we 100% need more human stories about real people being kind and compassionate and being every day heroes