TV Shows Watched: Zero Day: S1E2 (Netflix) with audio description, Mythic Quest: S4E4 (Apple Plus) with audio description, St Dennis medical: S1E10 (Peacock) with audio description, Beyond The Gates: S1E1 (Paramount Plus) no audio description, Grosse Pointe Garden Society: S1E1 (Peacock) with audio description, the Kardashians: S1E5 (Hulu) with audio description, and Muslim Matchmaker: S1E2 (Hulu) with audio description
Best Episode: Mythic Quest- the murder mystery themed episode was fantastic. it felt very Glass Onion, and while the reveal was a little silly, the journey was delightful, and there was some heart thrown in there, and a bombshell at the end. A very unexpected home run in the middle of the season.
Runner Up: Grosse Pointe Garden Society- I liked the pilot a lot. i think it did everything a pilot needed to do, introduce you to the characters, their world, give you a tone, an idea of where future episodes are headed. All of that. it was everything Suits: LA was not. I would say if you were a fan of Good Girls or Desperate Housewives, you should be giving this show a chance.
best Audio description: Zero Day- Our limited series thriller still has some interesting audio description moments even without the big action set pieces. it also is a track that knows it has a diverse cast, and embraces it.
Runner Up: Grosse Point Garden Society- i was pleasantly surprised. It seems like Peacock and NBC haven’t nailed a lot of audio description, but Grosse Pointe Garden Society nailed some really specific things in the pilot, like shoes and bracelets that were really important, and also like Zero Day, is aware it has a diverse cast and telegraphs that to the audience at least somewhat.
Best Performance: The Ensemble Of Mythic Quest- the script always leans a bit more into the leads of the show than the supporting regulars, but this concept was so quirky, it gave them all some excellent moments and great lines.”OK Maggie Smith.”
Runner Up: Robert DeNiro (Zero Day), David Alan Grier (St Dennis Medical), and Melissa Fumero (Grosse Pointe Garden Society)- three actors who delivered, but honestly no one was so strong that I felt like this one performance dominated my day. So, I’ll just mention all three since I can’t pick one.
Best Moment Of Audio Description: Taking Out The Trash (Zero Day)- There’s kind of a two-part moment here. there’s part one, involving a truck, and a second part that reveals a character walking into their house to find someone already there waiting in darkness for them. the scenes are connected, and both had elements described that stood out to me as perfectly enhancing the purpose of these scenes.
Runner Up: Burying The Future (Grosse Pointe Garden Society)- A mild spoiler, but much like the initial mystery of Desperate Housewives, there’s a death that will loom over the whole season. It is revealed fairly early in the pilot, with a flash forward, but we also flash back a few times. What I liked about this initially was the description of the dead person’s shoes. There was an earlier reference to shoes appropriate for gardening, when one of the ladies has some fancy shoes, and the description picked up on it then, and reinforced the importance of shoes in the “who is this dead body’ moment. You don’t know who it is, and later I assume we will find out. For now, solid description.
Worst Of…- Beyond The Gates- It isn’t the quality of the show itself. I’ve never really been a daytime soap person, and I understand this is a bold new format. I jumped on the next day air for the pilot to a brand new soap, because it isn’t every day a new soap premieres, but no audio description existed. Theretofore, it is the worst. I actually didn’t even finish the episode, so I’m not commenting on the quality of the program at all, rather simply the lack of accessibility. Maybe this will be like how HBO/MAX handles Last Week tonight by adding audio description much later, but then you’d have a fuck load of daily soap episodes to catch up with, while your sighted family and friends are all caught up. Perhaps daytime soaps are the last frontier in audio description, while also being somewhat of a dying breed.