Masters Of The Air (Apple Plus) continues to impress with the level of difficulty. There’s a very large cast here, and without facial recognition, it’s hard to follow who is who sometimes, but Laura Post is tracking them as much as possible with names. It’s really important in this episode, where a lot of these guys are killed in an air battle that doesn’t go their way. Some get to parachute out, but some just don’t make it, and for the ones who do, you can feel that weight on them of survivors guilt.
Tokyo Vice (MAX) continues its run of making me feel like i should be more invested. Mainly, I think I just didn’t remember the first season enough, and now I’m treading water. I don’t have a problem with the audio description, as most of it is handy in terms of translating speech to English. When it’s not busy doing that, in more intimate moments, it seems to have a solid grasp on the scene. There was a scene between a man and woman in the second episode that really started to get intimate, and was well described. Later, there’s one interaction between two characters slapping each other before one pulls out a knife. It’s a crime drama, but it seems to do everything well.
While I can’t claim the audio description was terrific, The Connors (Hulu) hit a home run with me on a personal level this week by having a plot where the family has to stand up to the school board because, after trying to bring some arts back to the school, Louise is told that she can’t sing Dancing Queen by ABBA because a student MIGHT go home and tell their parents, who then might interpret the Queen to be a Drag Queen. Of course, this is ridiculous, but it highlights the idiocy in our schools now, and the fact that a show with a cast of characters always meant to represent working class middle America is fed up with this nonsense is great. I know the people who need to hear this will just call it woke and walk away, but I applaud this show for trying.
Not Dead Yet (Hulu) really does have underwhelming audio description. It isn’t the worst of the shows I’m listening to, but it is flirting dangerously with the bottom. I believe a few days ago I still had it in the bottom five. that feels appropriate. I know it’s a sitcom, but i can always hear two or three moments that could have had description and just didn’t.
Oddly, right after I mentioned Life and Beth (Hulu) as being one of the better described shows, I caught a little moment that made me regret that. however, I also included Mr and Mrs Smith from Amazon up there, and that show has also had “a moment”, so we’ll just hope it isn’t a trend. I love this narrator. She also does Family Matters on MAX.
And, I did also watch this weeks episode of So Help Me Todd (Paramount Plus), which featured Todd and his mom helping an ambulance chaser type of lawyer out of a legal bind. It was a cute episode, and this audio description is fine. It’s not making me feeel the need to either criticize or praise it. If you are looking for the middle, this is where the middle is.