In the age of binge-watching and streaming television shows, the water cooler is always bubbling. Even as many of us grapple with more consequential concerns, from climate calamities that seem to erupt by the hour to a looming national election, I find that many of my social interactions are punctuated with the question, “What have you been watching?”
The members of the Writers Guild and the actors union SAG-AFTRA, who have been on strike since early May and mid-July, respectively, are asking us to frame that query differently: Who have you been watching? Whose work, creativity, sweat, and aspirations have you been supporting — just barely in many cases — through your nightly viewing habits?
Entertainment is not a small thing. At the end of a hard workday, it can sometimes be the only thing. The striking writers and actors are fighting for their livelihoods in a fast-changing multibillion-dollar industry — one that is burgeoning with content but relatively stingy with the residual pay that helps sustain artists’ way of life, and one in which artists want assurances that their likenesses won’t simply be whisked away for the uses of artificial intelligence.
This is not so much about the big stars with the multimillion-dollar paydays but rather the great majority of creative artists, little known or yet to be known, who struggle to keep their dream alive and pay the bills. Allow me, then, to try to bring this labor battle into your living room, or wherever you watch, and offer one example of why these concerns matter. I call to the stand the viral hit TV series “Jury Duty.”
The Amazon Freevee comedy has a great premise: A pool of jurors is summoned to a California courthouse, but everyone involved, from the judge to the jurors, is an actor — except one. Ronald Gladden, a solar contractor, earnestly thinks he’s been called to fulfill his civic responsibility. Importantly, he also thinks he’s agreed to participate, like the others, in a documentary about the jury process. Gladden starts to get an inkling that something funny is going on. He just doesn’t know exactly what. The fun is in watching him react like a deer in the spotlight to the series of absurd situations the show’s creators throw at him.
But this balancing act of a prank could never have worked without an extraordinary cast with well-honed improvisational skills but faces few would place, and the whole enterprise could have collapsed without writers with the agility to pivot as situations demanded over the several weeks of shooting.
There is one recognizable name among the players: James Marsden, who plays a parody of himself as a self-absorbed “famous” actor serving on the jury among the so-called regular folks. Marsden has been nominated for an Emmy for best supporting actor, but such a nod could have gone to many of his castmates, including David Brown as Todd, a self-described transhumanist who invents outlandish wearable contraptions; Edy Modica as oversexed Jeannie, who only has eyes and other parts for shy fellow juror Noah (the excellent Mekki Leeper, also a series co-writer, for which he, too, received an Emmy nomination); and Rashida “Sheedz” Olayiwola as Nikki, the no-nonsense — well, a little nonsense — court officer.
Marsden, knowing that he and his costars would be messing with Gladden in any number of ways, had a stipulation before signing on: If the show was going to be cruel, he wanted no part of it. Even as the cast members hold a fun house mirror up to nature in their interactions with Gladden, they’re careful not to let it crack — or draw blood. Over and over, the tight ensemble takes him to the edge of “you’ve got to be kidding me” without letting him fall. In fact, the feel-good triumph of the show is that, faced with one temptation after another to behave badly, Gladden instead shows himself to be unfailingly decent, sensitive to others’ feelings, and patient.
It took true professionals to make a good-natured everyman the center of an elaborate stunt without turning him into the butt of a joke. Keeping things light was a strenuous effort. The actors and writers of “Jury Duty” deserve more credits to their bios and wider recognition, but for every member of the cast and writing crew, there are countless other skilled artists out there just trying to break through. They’re all fighting for a fair contract in a business with long hours and long odds. You’ve never heard of most of them, and maybe that’s what matters most.
Matthew Bernstein is the Globe’s letters editor. He can be reached at matthew.bernstein@globe.com. Follow him on @GlobeBernstein. He is an inactive member of SAG-AFTRA.
Matthew Bernstein is the Globe’s letters editor. He can be reached at matthew.bernstein@globe.com. Follow him @GlobeBernstein.