“Jury Duty,” the original comedy series released by Freevee (an Amazon-owned streaming platform), gives viewers an inside look into the American justice system through the eyes of juror Ronald Gladden. The hook? Everyone, from the judge to the attorneys to the security guards, is an actor. Except for Ronald, who believes he’s participating in a documentary.
The eight-episode show follows twelve jurors in Los Angeles as they’re picked for jury duty, sequestered, witness testimonies, and make a unanimous decision on the trial.
So, what does this have to do with screen printing?
The plaintiff, Jacqueline Hilgrove (played by Whitney Rice), is the owner of Cinnamon & Sparrow, a blank apparel manufacturer and screen printing company. Cinnamon & Sparrow produces clothing pieces made of recycled burlap sacks, dehydrated mango fibers, and cacti. Hilgrove is suing former employee Trevor Morris (played by Ben Seward) for allegedly coming to work high and intoxicated, passing out, and urinating on a batch of custom shirts that were ordered for an influencer’s event. According to Hilgrove, the ruined shirts led to thousands of dollars of lost sales, and an inability to financially and mentally recover.
In the defendant’s testimony, he states he was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol and believes he lost consciousness due to barrels of poisonous chemicals next to the automatic screen printing machine.
Jury members are taken to the factory, filled with Gildan boxes, printed T-shirts, reclaimed screens, racks of ink, and automatic presses, to assess the location of the incident. In one scene, the operations manager (played by Jean-Louis Martin) gives a basic overview of the printing process. “The way it works is you have an operator here who loads the shirts into pallets. It gets printed, gets cured, comes back here at the end of the cycle, and then it goes through the CDU … a sophisticated dryer,” he says. “The first shirts start coming out, we can take them for finishing. You just have to be careful about one thing. If the CDU overheats there’s going to be a big warning sign flashing on the screen. That stops the production. But you have to let it do its thing. You never, never override it. That’s about it. It’s not rocket science.”
While exploring the space, Ronald and fellow juror Lonnie Coleman (played by Ishmel Sahid) find boxes of the misprints and unlabeled barrels filled with a mysterious chemical, causing the jurors to reassess the case.
“Jury Duty” is available to watch on Freevee and Amazon Prime Video.