TV Shows Watched: Daredevil: Born Again- S1E7 (Disney Plus) with audio description, the righteous Gemstones: S4E4 (MAX) with audio description, The Walking Dead: Dead City (S1E3 (Netflix) with audio description, Top Chef: S22E3 (Peacock) with audio description, Good American Family: S1E3 (Hulu) with audio description, and The Wheel Of Time: S3E4 (Amazon) with audio description.
Best Episode: the Righteous Gemstones- the kids invite Eli and his new girlfriend to the lake with the express purpose of breaking them up. Things do not go as planned, and the results are hilarious. For the sighted people, I’m sure things happened in this that you can’t unsee. This episode achieved a rare actual laugh out loud from me. not just a chuckle. not a smirk. But an actual audible laugh.
Runner Up: Good American Family- While the show claims to be an amalgamation of the stories of three different individuals, after three episodes, I tend to agree with Christine’s view. This is coming from the perspective of someone who had no idea of who Natalia Grace was. It’ll be interesting to see if they can actually shift that.
Best Audio Description: The Wheel of Time- This series just easily has a consistent barrage of detail, lots of fantasy elements, and an expansive cast. it is the hardest of the six to describe, and does it very well.
Runner Up: daredevil: Born Again- the action sequences here are really well done. Also, the attention to detail, like in the shower sequence.
Best Performance: The Ensemble Of The Righteous Gemstones- Everyone made this episode work. Each one of the kids all had their perfect moments, sometimes together (like that silly song they sang), or separately, like Edi Patterson’s excellent attempt at seduction, or Walton Goggins as Baby Billy just waterskiing in the nude or yelling at the German nanny to watch his kids, and of course our main couple at the center and what happens at the end. There’s also a hilarious decision made by Keith, and BJ reminding people in a slightly more dramatic sequence that this inaccessible weekend has sucked for him. this whole ensemble was perfect.
Runner Up: Lauren Cohen and Jeffrey dean Morgan (The walking Dead: Dead City)- Both of them have individual moments, but there’s a really great scene where Negan offers to listen to Maggie, who tells a story, followed by Negan telling a story, and Maggie leaving the conversation with a cold retort. can’t these crazy kids kiss and make up? Never? OK.
Best Moment Of Audio Description: The daredevil/Muse Fight (Daredevil Born Again)- A really well described, close quarters, combat sequence that was even intercut with the running clock of Kingpin’s corrupt task force getting closer.
Runner Up: Death by A Thousand Cuts (The Wheel Of time)- In the least spoilery way of describing this, there is a character who experiences many potential deaths for them in a sequence with rapid fire succession.
Worst Of: The Walking Dead: Dead City- So, we need to talk about the importance of a quality check phase, as well as the narrator having simple access to the project they are narrating. In this show there is a character who doesn’t have a name so much as a title, so we are tracking “the Croad”, and if your screen reader just read that to you, you got the way the narrator is choosing to read it. However, in the series, every character is clearly pronouncing it as “crow-Ad”, so it becomes more than a little annoying when you hear someone say his name, but then the audio description seconds later has no idea how to pronounce it. This, to me, shows a complete lack of a quality check phase. Someone would have caught that.
