We’re gonna be famous 5 ever, cause forever’s too short. I know Community talked a lot about six seasons and a movie, but what makes sense to me is that Girls5Eva (Netflix) gets to Season 5. This new season is amazing, hilarious, and I love that even though they were on a streaming service before, they still feel like they have more creative control on Netflix. I think the show actually got better. Netflix, please, renew this.
I think I’m now one episode away from the finale of Halo (Paramount Plus), as Master Chief could have killed the new guy in charge who has been so obviously evil since he set foot on screen. He does basically do what John asks him to do, but no one listens to him. It will be interesting to see where they go from here in terms of destroying or not destroying the Halo. I assume this got picked up for a third season. Season 2 is way better than Season 1. And the audio description is still the best I’m listening to right now.
Shogun (Hulu) could be up there with the audio description greats if it just wasn’t this one guy doing everything. It gets really confusing. There’s a scene with two characters speaking in Japanese in the fourth episode, and they had very similar tones to their actual voices, so it was hard to tell who was talking to whom, and the narrator couldn’t do anything about it. It’s like being scheduled to work, but everyone else calls out, so you are stuck having to keep the store clean, stocked, run the register, answer the phone, and somehow maintain an acceptable level of customer service. the reality is that, the customers see you are understaffed and overworked, so they don’t blame the staffer (usually, some people are idiots though), they blame the company or manager who allowed this to happen. So, I blame FX, and by proxy Disney, for not understanding the importance of *bare minimum* having a second narrator.Really, the sweet spot for this show is three. one to read the description, and two others to do the voices so that when we have a scene like this, it doesn’t sound like the same guy talking to himself. the description of the action, the set, all of that is fantastic, but the work with the translation is rather abysmal. I do enjoy this man’s voice, but someone call the manager, cause he needs assistance.
The Connors (Hulu) also has description that not everyone is crazy about. It’s a multi cam sitcom, so the sets are always going to be limited, and there’s a lot of dialog. I keep looking for glaring holes, but they don’t come with every episode. Every once in a while, this has a dropped ball, but this latest episode is fine.
The Regime (MAX) is moving into what I shall call “dark satire”. It has some satirical elements, but it also is kinda scary in what it is trying to do, and does have some serious moments. It is walking a very odd line, but I don’t have a problem with the audio description. There was a tense interaction between Kate Winslet’s dictator and her husband, and that was done well, as were the repercussions of it.
Apples Never Fall (Peacock) continued to try and stir up some drama. I’m really starting to dislike a show that gives Annette Bening the least amount of screentime out of this cast. I basically tuned in for her, and she’s barely in this. Toni Collette was dead for all of The Staircase and still had more screentime than this. This is not a well made show, but I’ll keep watching and hoping I get more Bening.
And finally, I did start Palm Royale (Apple plus), which underutilizes Carol Burnett, at least in the pilot. However, this limited series has a great cast, Kristen Wiig is killing the game here, and the pilot is good, just not great. The audio description won’t win awards, because it has to fight Wiig for airtime. Not only does it have the normal dialog it can’t trample, but Wiig offers some externalized inner thoughts throughout the pilot episode. That takes up a lot of time that would have been used for audio description.
