TV Shows Watched: Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man: S1E9 (Disney Plus) with audio description, St Dennis Medical: S1E13 (Peacock) with audio description, Mythic Quest: S4E6 (Apple Plus) with audio description, Toxic Town: S1E3 (Netflix) with audio description, Grosse Pointe Garden Society: S1E3 (Peacock) with audio description, Denise Richards And Her Wild Things: S1E1 (Peacock) with audio description, and Suits LA: S1E3 (Peacock) with audio description.
Best Episode: Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man- I think the season’s penultimate episode did a lot. it showed us where Doc Oc was locked up, it revealed that perhaps Norman isn’t as altruistic,Lonnie sees his gang’s leader is a chicken, and fully becomes Tombstone, and Scorpion gets his ass beat.A lot happened, and it was a ton of fun.
Runner Up: St Dennis Medical- Maybe the season finale? the gang is supposed to have an influencer come and entertain the sick kids, but when it turns out the influencer might be sick himself, they need to fill the time with other less talented individuals. This cast, in just one short season, has delivered a series of strong performances, and created a memorable new tight ensemble.
best Audio Description: Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man- I always need to lament the pilots total lack of mentioning the intentional diversity on screen, but yes, every action sequence was very well described.
runner Up: Grosse Pointe Garden Society- It is very much a mixed bag after Spider-Man, but if I am giving one show the edge, it would be this show, which seems to manage its ensemble fairly well, and the murder mystery element.
Best Performance: Jodie Whittaker (Toxic Town)- She’s still giving the strongest performance of the cast, as Susan, the mother who is the driving force behind the lawsuit, who is willing to do damn near anything for her son, or this case. She has some really great moments in the episode with her son, as well as the deadbeat ex-husband who shows back up after seeing her on TV.
Runner Up: David Alan Grier (St Dennis Medical)- At first, he seems like the only sane person, as he’s the one who spots the potentially cancerous lump, and recommends telling their entertainment before he performs. Later, he conspires with Alex to get other tests and priorities shoved through, while they are trying to rush tests for the influencer. He finishes the episode reluctantly listening to the guy performing an inherently awful song, and comparing it to how his parents didn’t understand the Beatles. Grier has been a comedy staple since In Living color, and has pulled off some wacky comedy in his younger days. It is so refreshing to see how he’s matured into a comedian who understands how to make you laugh without going big, and playing the role of the wiser older doctor while still managing to be a memorable comedic presence.
Best Moment Of Audio Description: The Fight (Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man)- It is kind of cheating, because 75% of the episode is this big action set piece. However, it is also excellent. So, there you go.
Runner Up: Those You’ve Known (Suits LA)- I struggled with labeling this, because it is the end of the episode, and I didn’t want to spoil it, so I pulled a lyric from Spring Awakening (A broadway musical), which has always stuck with me. “Those you’ve known and lost still walk behind you.” If I was trying to find a memorable (in a good way) moment that wasn’t in Spider-Man, it would be the ending to this episode.
Worst Of…- So, I really am not a fan of some of the “hot takes” that the team who made Toxic Town feel the need to comment on. In the third episode, one of the characters, in a moment of stress destroys a model train set. the audio description mentions something like “destroys the set that looks like it took a really long time to build”. It’s not the first time this track has tried to deviate creatively, and it doesn’t always work. I did laugh last episode when they chose to refer to some paperwork as “dodgy”, but sometimes it just feels a bit too much. However, there’s very little audio description in the new Denise Richards reality show. Technically, there is some, if you were really looking forward to it, so that would be eligible here as well.To be fair, it isn’t structured in a way that would ever allow for much description. It will most likely need to always be concerned with A) Who is talking, B)Where are we, and won’t have time to do much else than that.
