SPOILER ALERT: The following contains spoilers for Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat Episode 3.

Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat Episode 3 is when everything hits the fan. “Soft Launch” is also likely to give Prime Video viewers a flashback to the original Jury Duty. Dougie Womack Jr.’s jerk sauce is this season’s chair pants.

“Soft Launch” is the disaster that catalyzes the entire season, and the audience will know that as soon as it’s announced that it’s time for the “Client Cookout,” in which Rockin’ Grandma’s invites all of their clients and vendors for a thank-you lunch. For a comedy show like Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat, that screams giant, ludicrous spectacle. And as already established in the Season 2 premiere, the creative team is going even bigger this time around. One can almost feel the glee as they’re setting up the scenario for Dougie’s massive reveal.

Before the show gets there, though, there are some other jokes to tide the audience over—mostly through Jimmy once again being overly politically correct. The best riff in “Soft Launch” takes place between PJ Green (a perfectly deadpan Marc-Sully Saint-Fleur) and Jimmy about country names. PJ explains that Jimmy kept giving him flags when he learned that PJ is gay—including, for some reason, country flags. Most notably, several Nigerian flags. A completely useless debate ensues, capped off by this laugh-out-loud zinger of ignorance from Jimmy: “There couldn’t be a whiter country name than Chad.” The looks from both PJ and Jackie (LaNisa Renee Frederick) say it all.

Jimmy borders on being grating to the audience in this episode, though, as it also comes out that he filed a human resources complaint about Kevin’s marriage proposal to Amy. Since Kevin is the head of HR, that means Jimmy complained about Kevin to Kevin—and Kevin filed a report on himself. The result of this nonsense is that the whole Rockin’ Grandma’s team has to attend a sexual harassment seminar. This bit is not as funny as the previous episode‘s “Seminar Day” segments, and it runs the risk of making Jimmy more annoying than funny to watch.

Luckily, the Client Cookout sequence gets the episode back on track. IT employee Claire arrives with an umbrella hat that is the physical equivalent to Todd’s chair pants from Jury Duty Season 1—a madcap solution to a negligible problem. The visual gag is good for a few laughs, most obviously when Claire hits Amy with the umbrella. But the real chair pants moment happens between Dougie and Anthony, when the former’s big announcement goes terribly, inappropriately wrong. The announcement of Rockin’ Grandma’s Jamaican Jerk Sauce turns into a giant sexual joke, involving the accidental placement of the word “off” and a moving display that makes Grandma seem incredibly lewd.

Is it remarkably juvenile humor? Yes. Is it still remarkably funny? Also yes, because the Company Retreat team plays out the gag—particularly the moving part—just long enough. They don’t see how much mileage they can get out of sex jokes. It shocks the audience, there’s room for laughter, and then there’s actually a heartfelt beat when Doug Womack comes to his son’s defense. Audiences are likely expecting Doug to get up on stage and chew out Dougie, but that’s not what happens. And it’s lovely to see that, because in a lot of real business environments, there wouldn’t be that kind of understanding.

How Doug and Anthony react to the Jamaican Jerk-Off Sauce problem is where fans will be reminded of Jury Duty Season 1. Ronald Gladden was there to support Todd after his public humiliation with the chair pants, and in this case, Anthony is likewise there for Dougie. The character of Dougie is that familiar sort of bumbling son type; comedy fans might compare him to candy company exec Ferdie Spratt from the Bob’s Burgers episode “Like Gene for Chocolate.” Both are working for the family business in positions they’re not really suited to, but they mean well. At least in Dougie’s case he’s actively trying to grow the business, and it’s another testament to Anthony’s character that he’s there for Dougie to lean on.

Keep in mind that the eight-episode season is almost half over already, so viewers have to be invested in Anthony Norman by this point. They have to want to see him succeed. “Soft Launch” is the best example yet of why Anthony was the right protagonist for Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat. Like Ronald before him, he’s a genuinely good guy that the audience can root for, showing that he cares about these people who he doesn’t know all that well. On top of that, this retreat is supposed to be like a big party, and he brings that energy. Anthony seems like someone that viewers would want to go to a party with. His excitement and optimism are infectious.

Now, the writers could have stopped there. The Jamaican Jerk-Off Sauce debacle is more than enough plot for one episode. But again, they go one step further: Dougie reveals that one of the ingredients in his recipe is Taco Bell hot sauce. He’s using another company’s sauce in his sauce—meaning that today’s word is “proprietary.” That’s the note that Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat ends on, unexpected and dumbfounding. “Soft Launch” is big, loud and funny but its best bits are the conversations viewers don’t see coming.

Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat streams Fridays on Prime Video. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Prime Video.

Article content is (c)2020-2026 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.