TV Shows Watched: Watson: S1E1 (Paramount Plus) with audio description, XO Kitty: S2E3 (Netflix) with audio description, The Night Agent: S2E5 (Netflix) with audio description, and Paradise: S1E1 (Hulu) with audio description.
Movies Watched: Babes and Ezra (both films I own digital copies of from the Apple Store). I also bumped up the speed since I’ve seen, and reviewed, both.
Best Episode: Paradise- Hulu’s new drama was calling itself buzzy before it premiered, and I even knew what it was. Then, it boldly decided to premiere the first episode a day early, as two more drop today. Hulu’s confidence should be rewarded, because not knowing what this was, I was 100% here for it. Sterling K Brown is back, and excellent, in a new show that slaps you in the face, and then screws with your mind before the end of the show. Just when you think you know what the show is about, those final minutes change everything. I’m not spoiling anything here, but I would loosely classify this as a mystery/suspense, and Sterling K. Brown has a very important government job. If you forced yourself to sit through Watson, you owe yourself a pilot that doesn’t treat you like you never made it past kindergarten.
Best Performance: Sterling K Brown (Paradise)- I feel like I’m going to choose him again. This will likely be a recurring appearance. But, I did only watch 4 shows, and while I thought he held his character together nicely, he’s presented in a way that leads be to believe the best is yet to come. There just really wasn’t a standout performer in Xo Kitty or The Night Agent, the only two acceptable alternates.
Best Audio Description- Paradise- This one is tough. While I love Paradise, I definitely could always use more character description in this track. However, it does have substantially more audio description than The Night Agent in that regard. I almost picked XO Kitty, which does have a strong track, but the contents of the pilot led to us needing a lot of clues given to us in the pilot of Paradise, which just edged out Xo kitty.
Best Moment Of Audio Description: Paradise- Those final, rather game changing moments of the premiere. No spoilers.
worst Of…- Well, I truly have nothing good to say about Watson. It is one of the worst pilots I’ve seen in a long time. The audio description is even a rare misstep for Media Access Group, which usually does solid work. the show dodges ethnic description, despite one of the main cast being there for her unique makeup. So, clearly Watson as a person is interested in those specifics. The character descriptions were weak. But, the show is awful. It is full of exposition that is painful to sit through. In one scene, Watson has to explain something to a character we find out is his ex-wife, but it is something so fundamentally important to his process, the last person he should be explaining it to in this cast is his ex-wife. morris Chestnut is horribly miscast. In the same day I watched Paradise, I thought afterward that Sterling K Brown could have played Watson. I’m glad he’s not, because his show is better. But just a few shows later I was offered a much better actor who could pull off this role. Chestnut just doesn’t have the range, and benefits from being able to use his charm and good time vibes in the roles he’s been most successful. he’s also athletic in build, so he’s a solid choice for any role in that regard. This uses neither of his assets. hell, he’s a good looking dude, and his character here is so off-putting, he’s only believable with an ex-wife, not a current love interest. He also doesn’t seem likely to be rekindling anything anytime soon. He has a supporting actress in this that is trying to pull off the worst fake southern accent I’ve heard in a while. Yes, this show is bizarrely a direct adaptation of THAT John Watson, if John Watson was an American doctor who traveled to London, and hung out with Sherlock until he died in a mysterious accident, only to find out Holmes was absurdly wealthy and left money to Watson so he could go be a doctor again in Pittsburg, in a hospital that seemingly already exists and is run by his ex-wife. Someone thought this show up, and because we don’t have pilot seasons anymore, CBS saw “high concept”, remembered that Elementary ran for a bunch of seasons, and thought why not? I’m not sure a human being ever saw a pilot, and I’m certain this was never put in front of a focus group or test audience. If Watson survives on a network where better shows like East New York and So help Me Todd could not, I’ll be upset. If you came to me and asked… “John, I have a dilemma. Should I watch Watson, or should I stick my face into this bowl of broken glass?” my answer to you would be… “How sharp is the glass?”
