SPOILER ALERT: The following contains spoilers for Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat Episode 5.

Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat Episode 5 is when all hell breaks loose. Not just in the sense that the Prime Video comedy introduces its main villain, who may as well have showed up to the tune of Star Wars‘ Imperial March, but that everything else becomes more outrageous. “Offsite” is the episode where you’d swear that Anthony Norman has to suspect something… but he doesn’t, bless him.

First and foremost, this episode is about Elizabeth Prescott, who gives Jury Duty Season 2 a character people can love to hate. This woman is Cruella de Vil meets the Pointy-Haired Boss from the Dilbert comic strip. If viewers thought Jacqui Hilgrove from Jury Duty Season 1 was full of herself, Elizabeth is on a whole other level—because she doesn’t have Jacqui’s lack of self-awareness. Jacqui didn’t realize how tone-deaf she was; Elizabeth, as so entertainingly played by Wendy Braun, is very much aware of what she’s doing. The only thing missing from her all-black supervillain ensemble is a big, flowing cape to trail behind her.

But that exaggeration of character works because Jury Duty wants the audience to ultimately despise her and root for the little guy, in this case Dougie Womack, Jr. She needs to be as big a villain as possible so that viewers are actively pulling for Dougie to take over Rockin’ Grandma’s, even though they’ve just seen how he’s totally unqualified. But because of that mishap, Dougie’s father is reconsidering the sale offer that Elizabeth made him in the season premiere, and so in comes Triukas. Elizabeth arrives with her stormtroopers—erm, sidekicks Lee and Jean (played by Chris Kula and Rachel Hein), and a promotional video in which suspiciously everyone is a redhead. It’s a random visual gag that perfectly illustrates conformity.

Naturally, everyone is either annoyed by Triukas’ presence or trying to find an in with their new robot corporate overlords. This plays out against the backdrop of the “Dougcathlon,” which is Company Retreat‘s version of a school sports day. Shoutout here is due to actor Rob Lathan, because his entire goal is to be as terrible at everything as humanly possible. It is not easy to fail on purpose. And yet, despite that and an incident of believing he’s a stripper, “Other Anthony” Gwinn still gets the girl when he ends up making out with Amy Patterson… so he’s actually the real winner. The reverse of that is Kate Martinez, who loses all of her made-up points when she hits Elizabeth in the face with an inflatable jousting stick and gives her a bloody nose. But viewers can’t say that’s not just a little bit satisfying.

When the group goes out to dinner, fans will catch the parallel to the Margaritaville escapade in Jury Duty Season 1. The major difference is that this time, there’s a hypnotist—and yes, Michael Swenson is an actual comedy hypnotist. The audience knows some of the characters are going to get pulled into Swenson’s act, but using that to expose Elizabeth’s true motives is a pretty genius idea. While hypnotized, Lee does an impression of his boss that reveals she doesn’t mean a single thing she’s said to the Rockin’ Grandma’s employees. The viewers have sussed that out but to watch the characters clue in publicly and so spectacularly is hilarious.

“Offsite” is also another example of the chaotic good in Anthony Norman that separates him from Season 1 hero Ronald Gladden. Anthony’s actively encouraging Kate to send a rum punch to Elizabeth and making jokes about the hypnotist routine—he’s purposefully escalating situations. It’s hard to see Ronald doing that. Both of them are such endearing guys, but part of the appeal of Company Retreat is seeing Anthony essentially making the joke on him even bigger. Especially when he reiterates that there’s no way this could be a TV show.

But the parts of “Offsite” that don’t work, really don’t work. Claire’s parts of this episode, which consist almost entirely of lesbian jokes about Elizabeth, aren’t funny in a crude way—they’re just crude. Claire’s character is an example of Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat painting with a broader brush. In Jury Duty Season 1, Todd Gregory was weird and meant to make Ronald occasionally uncomfortable, but he still was somebody that Ronald (and the audience) wanted to be around. In this episode, Claire’s weirdness is actively off-putting. It feels like the writers had nothing else for her but to hit that same button over and over again. Likewise, the story that Jimmy Weber tells while hypnotized is pretty gross and doesn’t do anything but reinforce what audiences already know about Jimmy’s past.

Yet aside from those two big misses, “Offsite” is a factory of chaos that pulls the audience in so many different directions. Whether it’s Anthony having so great of a time that he’s adding to the joke, or the physical comedy, or the villains that are delightfully over the top, there’s a lot to take in (and thus to get excited about for future episodes). Plus, it’s now clear as day that there will be a showdown between Rockin’ Grandma’s and Triukas for the fate of the company. Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat raises the stakes for all of its characters in one chaotically efficient episode.

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.