Yesterday, i hinted at some shows I was watching still (like The Pit), which are just there because a wave of TV hasn’t hit. Next week, a bunch of shows return, including Matlock, Elzabeth, Ghosts, The Recruit, and Mythic Quest, along with premieres of promising new shows like Your Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman and Watson. Some of these current shows I’ve been watching are living on borrowed time.
TV Shows Watched: The Night Agent: S1E3 (Netflix) with audio description, the Traitors: S3E5 (Peacock) with audio description, The Agency: S1E10 (Paramount Plus) with audio description, Harley Quinn: S5E3 (MAX), Dexter: Original sin (S1E7 (Paramount Plus) with audio description, and Pop Culture Jeopardy: S1E? (Amazon) with audio description.
Movies: Your Monster (MAX) with audio description (be sure to check out my Quality check which is already up), Carrie Underwood: Reflection (Disney Plus) with audio description, Crescent City (Tubi) no audio description, and the Wild Robot (Peacock) with audio description
Best Episode: Harley Quinn- We’re in Season 5, and we are just now getting the Poison Ivy backstory. I love how we have come to know Ivy so well, and I love how there’s this take on Ivy’s origin.
Runner Up: the Agency- I didn’t realize last week wasn’t a cliffhanger until I saw there was one more episode. i guess last week they dropped two episodes, but this finale made way more sense. I just thought I was getting Squid Game’d.
best Performance: Lake Bell (Harley Quinn) Again, I’m throwing Ivy all the love this week. lake has done such a nice job with her over five seasons, and she really got to shine this week.
Runner Up: The Ensemble Of The Agency- Now that I’m sure I’ve reached the literal season finale, I’m going to shoutout everyone I haven’t mentioned yet that helped make this a solid spy thriller. I know I singled out Fassbender twice, and John Megarro, but I haven’t always had the chance. i do now.
Best Audio Description: The Agency- I think, overall, this show got an edge.
Runner Up: Dexter: Original Sin- This is a very close second.
Best Moment Of Audio Description: Harley Quinn- I’m not always in love with the audio description, but in Ivy’s flashback to her origin, I thought that scene really stood out to me in ways a lot of other scenes haven’t previously.
Runner Up: The Night Agent: While I can’t grant the whole track grace, since they introduce characters with no character description throughout the show, I will say that picking up where we left off from episode 2, and that exciting chase sequence Rose was a part of, while Peter was dealing with his own attackers, was well described. This does a good job of describing the action, but the show doesn’t do much more than that.
Worst Of… Anything?- Well, The Traitors happened. And, while the audio description track suffers from its usual lackluster approach, we need to talk about something else. Narrators who have made it this far, please allow yourself the integrity to question a script. Typos happen. I make them all the time. i battle against spell check, or screen readers that make me believe I wrote either the right or wrong thing depending on pronunciation. But there is one thing I know for sure, five episodes in. no one on this show is named Bo B.
this narrator, who has read a few episodes now, and has already put the audience through the asinine lack of distinction between TWO men named Bob, allowed herself to actually say Bo B. Pronounced like Beau. Like Beau Bridges. She either is so apathetic, or so checked out, that upon reading this, didn’t think to herself… might that be a typo? Might Bo b not be someone named Bo, with the last initial B, who just randomly appeared in episode 5 never to be heard from again, or is it more likely… that the person is one of the TWO Bob’s on the show. I would give her an ounce of grace if this made any sense at all. Because she has been reading TWo men named bob. She should be fairly comfortable and aware of the presence of bob’s, and not allow herself to actually read Bo B. It also shows that Vi Tech has no quality check phase.
And Yes, it is a stupid little thing. I fully agree. but it is a stupid little thing coming off of an already staggeringly mediocre audio description track. I’ve complained about this for seasons now. I got a comment last week from someone looking up why the audio description was so bad on this show, from a post from last year. Someone else was just out there searching, for shitty Traitors audio description and came across me complaining a year ago about season 2.
It feels like more of a systemic problem with this AD provider, who I’ve been trying to push to make higher quality audio description since they inherited a bunch of ABC shows. This isn’t good. And if the narrators are so checked out they can’t catch something as simple as Bo b, it tells me they aren’t paying attention, and they aren’t aware of what they are voicing. Some of the best audio description is made to compliment the show, and I know narrators are able to see at least some of the projects they narrate. Maybe not all the time, but I don’t know why a simple NDA wouldn’t make Peacock feel Ok in letting one person see what they narrate. She knew there wasn’t a Bo. it is very likely there was a space, then an under case b. She read it anyway.
Don’t let this be you. And for the love of God, can we please get some better narration for season 4? If random blind people who don’t know i exist are searching for answers on the web and commenting on a blog post from a year ago, because the track is so bad it compelled them to do so, then it is time to make a change.
