A bunch of shows are returning next week with new seasons, including Will Trent and The Rookie, as well as new series premieres like Shifting Gears and Doc, and the long awaited third season premiere of The Traitors (which Peacock will now drop live at 9PMEST on Thursday) and the second season of Goosebumps (Which Disney Plus is dropping all eight new episodes at once). My body is ready. Is yours?
TV Shows Watched: Dexter: New Blood: S1E44 (Paramount Plus) with audio description, Squid Game: S2E6 (Netflix) with audio description, Laid: S1E8 (Peacock) with audio description, Krapapolis: S2E? (Hulu) no audio description, The Diplomat: S2E6 (Netflix) with audio description, Landman: S1E5 (Paramount Plus) with audio description, and A Man On The Inside: S1E7 (Netflix) with audio description
Movies Watched: The Front Room (MAX) with audio description, Separated (Apple Store) no audio description, Girls Will Be Girls (screener) no audio description, American Cats (screener) no audio description, and Goucho Goucho (screener) no audio description
I’m gonna start putting a spoiler warning before I deep dive. Not that everything I drop here is a massive spoiler, but they could be. One in particular I have to talk about.
Best Episode: Squid Game- This weird game of everyone running into rooms in certain groups was definitely interesting. I feel like all the major characters survived though. Until… (One more episode left? I’m SO curious.)
Runner Up: Laid- I also really love Laid. I almost gave today to Laid, because this was the season finale, and its last chance to be on top, but I was impressed with how this ended its season. There were some truly fantastic moments in that last episode, from AJ’s surprise, to Ruby and Issac making out in front of someone who just died, but never slept with Ruby. It does leave the door open for a second season, and I’m hoping Peacock puts a ring on this. They’ve cancelled so many great shows before, but almost all of them were two seasons. (RIP Rutherford Falls).
Special Achievement In Torpedoing Your Chance At Making This List: The Diplomat- LOL. Seriously? What a solid finale, and Keri Russell was firing on all cylinders. then, she gets this last minute phone call from her husband, who decided to call the President, and his phone call was so shocking he fucking killed the President over the phone with it. No. This was a smart show. That made me laugh so hard. it is the worst twist. It’s like they knew they wanted to make Allison Janney the President at the end, but they werne’t sure how to do it. Then, someone’s eager assistant tossed out an idea, and they ran with it. Season 2 is officially where The Diplomat “jumped the shark”. How did the President die? Phone call. He could have been taken out just by hearing Ghostface on the other end. Can you imagine having a President, who has constant medical checkups, and a battery of doctors, who has to deal with so many intense domestic and foreign affairs, that is so weak they could be felled by a phone call? I mean, really. No one stopped to ask “Is this too dumb?” Yes. it is. Also, side note, is her husband now an assassin?
Best Performance: Keri Russell (The Diplomat)- I needed to get all of that out first, because now that it is clear this writing team is headed downhill fast, she may never get good material again. A writers room that can justify “death by phone call”, which feels like a General Hospital thing, is the kind of writing team that will fail terrific actors like Russell, Janney, and Sewell in the already renewed third season. Keri, you need to run from this, fast. Ask the people who stuck around for the final season of Umbrella Academy, because I feel like your show is heded there fast.
Runner Up: Zosia Mamet (Laid)- I’ve mentioned her before, but she comes in super clutch in the finale, with a range of emotions about her friendship with Ruby, and her on-again, off-again, boyfriend Zack, that she has to show both sides in the same episode, for both relationships. But, the best moment is when she’s invited to a restaurant to have dinner with someone you’ll never guess in a million years did a cameo in this show. I’d give that person an honorable mention too, but I really don’t want to spoil that. Watch Laid.
Best Audio Description: Squid Game- It still has the most. We entered into this round with over 200, and that number was cut by more than half. So, we still have a lot of people alive. honestly, I think only one named character died, and I couldn’t even figure out which one that was, just that it was sad. So, not one of the really heavily featured characters. Then, the whole voting thing, and the final scene in the bathroom. All excellent work.
Runner Up: Laid- It is going to win moment. I wish Laid had done more world building and character building, but it just doesn’t It really comes in clutch on the deaths and sight gags, but is not interested in helping to shape the apartments, or the characters in meaningful ways.
Should Have Been A Runner Up: Landman- That final scene, with the guy, and the pipes, just wasn’t done well enough for me to understand it. I actually watch this with a sighted person, and they had to correct and give clarity to what was described, because it didn’t actually describe what happened.
Best Moment OF Audio Description: Laid- There’s this hilarious sight gag that goes on forever, where Ruby and Issac make out ferociously after watching a man die of a heart attack, and Ruby hadn’t slept with him. Behind their make out, is this full scene of people rushing to his rescue, and EMT’s coming in with paddles to try and save his life. The audio description did not disappoint.
Runner Up: Laid- Laid beats Squid Game twice! Sight gags are so important. There’s this other gag involving an entire band. Loved it. Very well described.
Runner Up: Dexter: Original Sin- There’s a highly dangerous target that Dexter goes after, and probably one of his more harrowing encounters. Considering we know Dexter can’t ever die, I thought the scene worked well, and was described well. You felt some danger for Dexter, again, knowing nothing could possibly happen to him.
Worst Episode: Oh God. The Front Room. I watched multiple films without audio description, including a documentary not in the English language. I felt more like my time was wasted watching The Front Room than i did a documentary that I understood very little. (My DuoLingo score in Spanish is 29). That is how awful that movie is.
Worst Performance: I’ve narrowed it down. I’ve been trying to figure out which Landman cast member annoys me the most, and it is Cooper. Jacob Laughlin. They went out and found the one person who felt like the complete oposite of Billy Bob Thornton to play his son, but yet, this is a character that wants to follow in his father’s footsteps (basically). He should feel more like Billy Bob. I realize, he doesn’t even have the same accent as the rest of his family. Thornton has a clear southern drawl to him, and his ex-wife (played by Ali Larter) is doing it as well by bringing back her Varsity Blues accent. Even the daughter Ainsley, who isn’t a strong actress, has a hint of something. Cooper feels adopted. he feels like he was recently adopted. he’s so out of place, that even for a role where he’s supposed to be, he’s too much. So, five episodes in, and I figured out that Cooper is the weakest link. If we’re lucky, they just killed off his character, since whence last we see him, he’s unconscious.
Runner Up: Andrew Berman? (The Front Room)- Fun fact. the old lady in this is Katherine Hunter, who hopefully fired her agent. I actually named her my Best Supporting Actress of 2021 for playing the Witches in Macbeth. I thought she was a revelation. A stage actress. I hate that she’s in The Front Room, but this fucking guy, who plays her son, and Brandy’s husband, couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag. Everything he was in was terrible. The film is inherently awful, but I didn’t have a problem with Hunter’s heavily affected old lady performance, nor did I think Brandy was bad. But this guy? Yeah. No.
Worst Audio Description- I still gotta go with the Spanish language doc with no audio description. Goucho Goucho was the most unwatchable thing all day. The Front Room may be awful, but the audio description is at least fine. Even the one TV show, Krapapolis, was at least in English (as were the other three movies without audio description).
