TV Shows Watched: The Recruit: S2E6 (Netflix) with audio description, severance: S2E4 (Apple Plus) with audio description, Celebrity Bear Hunt: S1E2 (Netflix) with audio description, School Spirits: S2E2 (Paramount Plus) with audio description, Shifting Gears: S1E5 (Hulu) with audio description, SNL: Chalamet (Peacock) no audio description yet.
Best Episode: Severance- Granted, the competition for Severance every Friday is pretty easy to beat. Severance is just on another level. but this weird retreat, which followed that excellent cliffhanger in the third episode, which then found another interesting way to end an episode, clearly was the best thing I saw.
Runner Up: The Recruit- The season finale for this was pretty action packed, and even though we got a truncated six episode second season, it was pretty tight. I said this to someone else off the blog, when I wasn’t jumping up and down about the show as much, and it is because Max was just such a great character in Season 1. No Max is definitely felt.
Best Performance: John Tuturro (Severance)- Tuturro has mostly used his time on Severance to have irv be the old one in the quartet. the wise. The thoughtful. The melancholic. In the first season, we saw he had developed a bond with a fellow innie, and then in the short time he had out in the real world, he saw his dreams crushed. He’s been mostly haunted all season, but he was stunning in episode 4, which clearly gave him all the room in the world. Here’s hoping we see more of Tuturro in the future. one of the greatest character actors that ever was.
Runner Up: James Austin Johnson (SNL)- I really didn’t like most of this SNL episode, with or without audio description. it just didn’t really work for me. A thankless cameo by Lin Manuel Miranda was interrupted by Johnson as trump, and he brings much levity to a character whose real life counterpart brings the opposite of levity. clinical depression? I think that’s what they call the phenomenon. that’s what the real one brings.
Best Audio Description: The Recruit- Action packed. The finale ran the longest of any episode, because it was full of action set pieces.
Runner Up: Severance- That being said, I did really enjoy what Severance brought to the table this week, in this frosty environment which had many beats to it that are offbeat and vibrantly unique.
Best Moment Of Audio Description: Burn It Down (School Spirits)- At the end of this episode, Janet makes a choice that could have big ramifications, and we aren’t given an easy answer. The audio description did such a nice job in this moment, from her holding the match for a few extra sequences, to her sitting up against a wall like she had previously, and then the reference that Janet, who is not in her own body, was seen, so we knew when it was her body, and not her host body. Really a lot of great work in a very pivotal scene.
Runner Up: I’m On A Boat (the Recruit)- There are so many action sequences in this, but honestly, after being tossed into a river, when owen climbs aboard a random boat, the narration and description of the boat is so good. You get Owen peering in, description of him busting in a locked door, a full description of a table and chairs, with half drank/eaten food and drink, and then the whole blanket thing. Then, this scene turns into a combat sequence, with references to a hockey stick and a helmet, the repeated bashing in of someone’s head, the struggle for a gun, everything. the entire time Owen is on this boat, there is almost no dialogue, and from the smallest non-action detail, to the action packed fight, everything was terrific.
Worst Of- Not even the audio description, but I really didn’t like this episode of SNL. Chalamet’s monolog was poorly written for him. He loses a lot? this is his second nomination. that joke is funny if you have Glenn Close or Amy Adam’s as a host. not a 29 year old on his second Oscar nomination, who is up against Ralph Fiennes (62, 3rd nomination, no wins) and Coleman Domingo (55, 2nd nomination, no wins). Like, am I really supposed to be sad? The Oedipal Arrangement sketch felt like something someone has pitched for twenty years, and every year hears a groan. But the groan quit this year, so it made the show. Same could be said for the Dog sketch, which isn’t timely, and just could have been done at any time. It probably has been. if it took the writers of SNL fifty years to think “What if dogs could talk?” And that was the sketch they got, then I don’t know how we got to 50 years. And I think we were all excited to hear Chalamet do his thing one more time as Bob Dylan. nope. he lost his Dylan sound. Fucking Austin butler walks around still like he’s Elvis Presley, but Chalamet can’t be bothered to bring the voice back? I like the kid, but this episode was dreadful.
