Sorry to report, but MAX has dropped Elevation without audio description. Unlike a few previous films where I couldn’t confirm the existence of an audio description track, I’m 100% sure this film has one, and MAX just didn’t care enough to procure it. Decisions like this at a time when it seems like companies can’t run fast enough from disabled individuals, and there are multiple current lawsuits pending to strip us of protections, and argue that the government and private companies have the constitutional right to discriminate against us, every little thing like this is amplified a thousand times over. Maybe MAX doesn’t feel like that’s a fair representation, but do they also want me to comb their catalog to come up with a list of titles they are currently hosting without audio description that also have available known tracks? Because I will. It isn’t just this one track, but this is a big new premiere for them. This is either apathy, or driven with intentionality, and both are unacceptable.
TV Shows Watched: Win Or Lose: S1E2 (Disney Plus) with audio description, Severance: 2E6 (Apple Plus) with audio description, Going Dutch: S1E? (Hulu) no audio description, Court Of Gold: S1E2 (Netflix) with audio description, Invincible: S3E2 (Amazon) with audio description, and The Rookie: S7E7 (Hulu) with audio description.
Best Episode: Severance- Again, it isn’t even close. This series continues to surprise me with its superior second season that feels somehow more mysterious and dangerous. Season 1 almost had a whimsical approach in the beginning. That is totally gone from this season.
Runner Up: Going Dutch: I almost picked Invincible, but despite the lack of audio description, I’ve actually enjoyed Denis Leary’s somewhat formulaic grumpy old man comedy. In this episode, he thinks he’s being promoted, but isn’t, and has to host his rival, who was. He ends up putting on a smile, due to his daughter (who he shares command with), and playing nice, until he learns that his daughter (who would be more than qualified for a promotion she’s set to get) is being led along. Plus, Danny Pudi is here, and I can’t be mad at anything with Abed.
Best Performance: Tramell Tillman as Melilchick (severance)- After spending the first season as a studious second fiddle to Patricia Arquette, he managed to elevate himself to the manager of the innies and has maintained a calm collection that has just struck me all season as dissociative. But, in episode 6, after having previously been given a performance review, he found himself having to rectify his problems. One of those problems? he’s too smart. Can you imagine being told you are too verbose, and being required to tone down your use of “big words”? In a management role? Well, neither can he, and sitting alone in his office, staring at a mirror, trying to simplify one sentence was causing him visible anguish in one of this season’s most powerful moments.
Runners Up: John Tuturro, Christopher Walken, and John Noble (Severance)- A long time coming. At the end of the last episode, we were promised a dinner, after seeing who was following Irv in that car. And a dinner we got. A dinner that explored the theological implications of innies, do they have a soul, do they go to heaven? Hearing Walken say “rapscallion” was enough to make the scene work, but to have a scene with three old guys that had this strong undercurrent of sexual tension was pretty impressive. They talked around it. They didn’t want to address the elephant in the room, until Fields (Noble), the one person without an innie finally did. And although he claimed to not have any ill will toward the outtie version of Irv for his innie having a relationship with his husband, it was clear this had weighed on him. The fancy dinner, the wine, the pleasantries, ultimately was reduced to a spurned husband wanting to know what no one really knew. What went on inside that building between these two men?
Best Audio Description- Severance- To be fair, Severnce does seem to sweep every Saturday, even if I throw new shows at it. Last week, none of these shows were up against it. It has a new batch, and Severance, which is proving to be the best show on television right now, also has the best audio description of the bunch. This time, it had a lot to do with capturing the emotional complexities the actors above brought to their rather uncomfortable sequences.
Runner Up: Invincible- It has a ton of science fiction fight sequences, and characters using their superpowers. It was a pretty clear leader as well.
Best Moment Of Audio Description: Invincible: There was a lot of fighting, but I’d actually single out the description around the madness Mark was feeling when the chip in his head started to affect him. It was also during a fight sequence, but that specific moment.
Runner Up: Welcome Back? (The Rookie)- After an odd two week span of watching without audio description, the runner up is simply turning on the show to find out it had audio description. it really is the little things, but this little thing also highlights how pathetic it is that I should even need to point this out. it’s like “after eating at the same restaurant for the past two weeks, and experiencing food poisoning, I was pleased to find out that this time… I didn not shit my brains out. Huzzah for small victories!”
Worst Of…..- Win Or Lose- I need Disney to provide me audio description. I need Disney to allow audio description providers, professionals in their field, to create their own tracks, unobstructed by any list of “do’s and do nots” It is incredibly offensive and reductive to know that Disney explicitly is hellbent on making diverse content for sighted audiences, while also producing auditory experiences for blind and low vision users that could not be more homogenized if they tried. What is the point of “drawing creativity from diversity”, if you aren’t willing to stand by that in all forms? The fact that anyone would actually think to not continue to include diversity in the audio description, means you don’t actually find that diversity you draw from actually important. It is just bullshit you throw out to make the world think you care. If you actually celebrated diversity, when you have diverse casts like in this show, or Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man or Percy Jackson, that you would actually want all of your audiences to recognize that very important diversity. instead, much like the rest of the world currently running from DEI like it is the measles outbreak in Texas, you are showing it to sighted people, and making a concerted effort to keep blind people away from any knowledge that they too might be represented on screen. Blind kids know they are black, Hispanic, Asian, indigenous, etc., so hiding their representation from them is degrading and utterly stupid.