TV Shows Watched: White Lotus: S3E1 (MAX) with audio description, XO Kitty: S2E6 (Netflix) with audio description, Mythic Quest: S4E3 (Apple plus) with audio description, Celebrity Bear Hunt: S1E5 (Netflix) with audio description, Tracker: S2E9 (Paramount Plus) with audio description, and Last Week tonight: S12E1 (MAX) no audio description
Best Episode: Last Week Tonight- I needed this. My soul needed this.
Runner Up: White Lotus- While I’m not a giant fan of White Lotus, the real only other option for this was Mythic Quest, and I honestly think this edged that out. We’re treated to a mostly brand new ensemble, in a brand new location, wondering how the backstories of these characters will come into play. It is a lot of new faces all at once, a king it a tougher watch with audio description.
Best Performance: John Oliver (Last Week tonight)- I’m this happy. This is how happy I am.
Runner Up: The Ensemble Of Mythic Quest- While I feel like later episodes will reveal a standout for The White Lotus, that wasn’t the cluttered pilot, which has to introduce too broad of a range of characters for us to really get to know anyone more than someone else. However, the cast of Mythic Quest balanced essentially three different storylines with Ian learning to do things without Poppy, and instead trying to teach others what kind of hero they would be, while Poppy learned to just relax with Storm, and Danny Pudi (who is also excellent in Going Dutch) tried to teach fiscal responsibility to our core lesbians who are fighting over the inability to purchase Hustlers rather than rent it.
best Audio Description: Tracker? (Paramount Plus)- While I appreciate what the team behind the White lotus has to do, it is a little bit the same problem HBO threw out with their Dune series. too many characters all at once, leading to unfortunate lower quality character descriptions, as there is just this giant mountain to climb. out of the remaining shows, I think Tracker did the best job it could do, without the weight of having to introduce like 20 new characters.
Runner Up: XO Kitty? (Netflix)- Today is hard. I think this might be the first time I have put this show here for audio description, and it felt like the best choice.
Since there aren’t really memorable moments…. Let’s answer why the other three audio described shows maybe didn’t get the top of the list.
Mythic Quest- While the track was mostly solid, it does tend to rely on verbal cues as a cop out for not having to visually describe something. For example, when Ian takes the others for a swim, David points out that seemingly all of a sudden Ian is naked. And, I’m wondering if he was wearing some kind of cartoonish tear away outfit that he ripped off in one swoop, or was he taking off his clothes slowly and David didn’t just notice, and just how naked is naked? The problem is that the track relied on David’s reaction, and Ian’s confirmation that he is naked, but we’re not really told how we get there. Or, even how naked Ian is. Sometimes people use the term when others are still wearing underwear.
the White Lotus- Like I said, the audio description isn’t bad, it just has too much to do in one episode. Often the characters are introduced in clumps, which led to you needing to follow a name and a voice. No age, no ethnicity, not really anything about most of the characters. But occasionally, they might throw someone a hair color, or hair style, or point out that someone’s is physically fit, etc. It just gets added in little bit by bit as the show moves forward. So what I’m looking for from the audio description moving forward is do they remember that they didn’t really give depth to most of the characters, and will they continue to be described, or will they just go with names? In some ways, while it wouldn’t solve a lot, since a lot of people do give their names rather quickly, this is almost a good example of why the old format worked, because it forced someone to be described by some visual characteristic first. I’m not a giant fan of that, because some writers take that methodology too hard and will take a character for an entire movie with no name, or even do it in sequels where the character is the title person you came to see. There’s a balance, and maybe White Lotus, and dune Prophecy need that balance.
celebrity Bear Hunt- this one just didn’t make the cut, because without spoiling it in this exact moment, I said when i reviewed the first episode, that due to me not knowing most of these people, when *spoiler* is eliminated, I’m out. I literally stopped watching at the exact moment that person was sent home. I didn’t even finish the episode. It it felt like Bear wanted to eliminate that person, because there was another person epically failing in another area of the map that just wasn’t where Bear was, and another character who got saved because a player trapped early on gave them the keys while stuck in a cage. If they hadn’t done that, that player would have achieved nothing. Bear spent so much time stalking one player, and then eliminated that one player for giving him a good chase. Ridiculous. And yes, this means I’ve removed Celebrity Bear Hunt from my watchlist, which I’ll remind when I do Sunday Rankings!
