So let’s jump right into a real audio description topic. This happened, and smacked me in the face because I happened to watch two shows on the same day, almost back to back. On Sunday, I watched the first episode of Shogun (FX/Hulu) and gave my thoughts on the use of one narrator for every voice. Granted, there are a few English speaking characters, but not many. I did think it was odd that the series is going out of its way to represent Japanese characters through their own language, but has a Portuguese character who speaks perfect English. Shouldn’t he also be speaking his own language? But the big problem is one narrator. When doing the reading of what would be subtitled dialogue, it gets really messy, and it is a guy reading for all characters, including female ones. This doesn’t change in the second episode, as he is still the sole audio description narrator. However, I did watch Tokyo Vice (MAX), now on the same day, which actually has the same problem. It does feature far more characters speaking English, which does help and is probably why it hasn’t hit me until now, but also the narrator of Tokyo Vice does at least trying and change the pitch of his voice. no, he doesn’t have a strong female voice up in his falsetto like a Dame Edna, but for example in the 2nd seasons third episode, there is a scene where he has to narrate for a child, and the child’s mother, so he’s trying to raise the pitch of his voice ever so slightly so it makes some difference. The problem here, is that it actually is what he does for both the women and the child, so in that conversation, it becomes harder to distinguish where one talking begins and ends. but in other scenes, where it is an adult male and adult female speaking, he does change the pitch slightly, something that doesn’t happen in Shogun. One thing that is confusing in Tokyo Vice is that I believe there are characters who speak in Korean. I know this, because in places where it doesn’t make sense, he will say “In Korean” right before the dialog. It’s a little like language inception, because this show (starring Ansel Elgort), is made primarily for an English American audience, but takes place in Japan, so adding that third language layer in there, where a Japanese character, speaking a language we already need translation for, switches to Korean, is just a prime example of how if this show had more voices, we would have heard it in a way that made sense. One voice doing the primary narration would have said “In Korean”, while another talent assigned to voice the female characters would have then spoken the line, making it even more clear what wasn happening. I’m desperate for international audio described content, but we should take on the description with the care and attention to quality all projects deserve.
I also watched another episode of The Traitors (Peacock), which wasn’t the season finale yet. Though, the fact that I’m this close to the finale gives me a sense that this shit is about to end soon, and in a way where the most recent recruited Traitor could win. There were 9 people left in this episode, and the cliffhanger ending is how MJ votes. Will it be Fedra or Peter? Even if it is Peter, I don’t think Fedra can survive another round table. With this few episodes left, my guess would be that Peter is eliminated, Fedra and Kate murder someone, bringing it down to 7. Those 7 people vote off Fedra, dropping it to six, and then believing they have all the traitors, vote to end the game, with Kate still there. I just don’t have that many episodes left to do that many eliminations.
Boy Swallows The Universe (Netflix) saw their mom get out of jail in episode 6, but of course nothing really ever goes right in this show. And the third episode of The Rookie’s (Hulu) new season saw the newly married couple on a weird honeymoon. Also, shoutout to Smitty, who keeps getting more and more screen time with each season.
In classic TV world, I used my CrunchyRoll subscription to see if Attack On Titan was watchable without audio description. Not really. It helps that I remember the imagery from the past, but it just feels like it is missing a lot. Dystopian future shows are hard to sell, anime or otherwise, without audio description. However, a comforting episode of Friends (MAX), where Joey buys one volume of an encyclopedia, and Chandler is handcuffed to a chair, was a nice end the the day.