TV Shows Watched: Devil May Cry- S1E1 (Netflix) with audio description, The Bondsman- S1E1 (Amazon) with audio description, Happy Face: S1E3 (Paramount Plus) with audio description,Will Trent: S3E12 (Hulu) with audio description, Invincible: S3E7 (Amazon) with audio description, Number One On The Call Sheet: Part One (Apple Plus) with audio description, Dying For Sex: S1E1 (Hulu) with audio description, Survival Of The Thickest: S2E2 (Netflix) with audio description, The Masked Singer: S13E8 (Hulu) no audio description, the rookie: S7E12 (Hulu) with audio description, and Abbott Elementary: S4E20 (Hulu) with audio description
Best Episode (tie): Abbott Elementary and Number One On The Call Sheet- I definitely wanted to recognize Number One, as it is technically in this grouping due to Emmy eligibilities. The two part nature of this documentary, makes it almost like a series, just a really short one. But, in some ways, it also doesn’t feel like a true episode, so I also wanted to recognize the best of the multitude of other shows, and I would give Abbott the edge. Number One is very much an important documentary about the opportunities black actors and actresses have had to actually be the lead of their films, and features interviews with a ton of heavy hitters, from Denzel Washington, Kevin Hart, Morgan Freeman, Idris Elba, Michael B Jordan, and many others. A truly interesting and important project. Abbott just featured another fundraiser, which brought us a little bit closer to having Ava back.
Runners Up: The Bondsman and The Rookie- Of the new shows I started, I enjoyed the Bondsman the most. Kevin Bacon’s horror series has him playing a recently resurrected bondsman who now works as a bounty hunter of sorts for hell. Kevin Bacon does some fun work, and the series had the strongest pilot of the three brand new shows. I also really did enjoy The Rookie for the first time in a long time with their insane April Fools episode that saw what the cast would be like if they had to fight The Purge.
Best Audio Description (Tie): Devil May Cry and Invincible- The animated action shows rule the roost this week as they offered quite a bit of opportunity for excellent audio description. Invincible was reliably strong, but Devil May cry actually had to introduce new characters in a pilot episode, ones that people might be familiar with from the video game, and did a pretty good job of doing so.
runner Ups: the Bondsman and the Rookie- The Bondsman had horror description in its favor, and this might be the best described episode of the Rookie in quite some time.
Best performance: Kevin Bacon (The Bondsman)- He’s already played a very similar role to this, with Death Sentence under his belt, so he has this badass on a revenge tour thing working in his favor. But, he basically is the show, and has to be uniquely strong to carry the weight. there’s a supporting cast, but this is all about the Bacon.
Runner Ups: Annaleigh Ashford (Happy Face), Michelle Williams (Dying For Sex), Nathan Fillion (The Rookie), and Janelle James (Abbott Elementary)- Ashford has been mentioned for every episode of Happy face so far. she deserves to be here. Michelle Williams is really blending drama and comedy quite well in dying for sex. Nathan Fillion is reliably good in The Rookie, but this week was given a new boot that supposedly was almost done training, but felt like he had none at all on a day when everything went to hell, and James usually gets this for being funny, but she actually had a moment at the end of the episode that was probably the most down to earth Ava has ever been. she let her guard down for a second to give an honest answer, and it really made all the difference.
Best Moment Of Audio description: Enter The Rabbit (Devil May cry)- Really, the opening sequence to the show, featuring a bunch of expendables and a rabbit with a sword. no need to explain that.
runner Up: the purge (The Rookie)- I’m going to specifically tag when Bradford and the others are sweeping the interior of a complex after reports of a mass casualty event. From clearing a bathroom, to being attacked in the haze of a fire extinguisher, to walking into an office stepping on broken glass, and seeing cubicles that are still actively on fire, this entire sequence was very well described for a show that sometimes gets it wrong. Please do more of this.
Special Achievement in Nostalgia: devil May cry- I gotta say, if you had asked me, when we were sitting down for a nice brunch, ‘hey, john, what do you think they will pick for the theme song of Devil May cry?”, i never could have guessed this. I was pleasantly taken aback, all the way back to high school, when I heard Limp Bizkit’s Rollin’ Rollin’. I wasn’t sure I needed that, so thank you?
Worst Of…- Only one show without audio description, the Masked Singer. even if it had it live, FOX doesn’t port audio description to Hulu from a next day air. Technically speaking, Number One On the Call Sheet had the worst audio description. But, the format is such that it was never going to have much. The best we can really hope for, is “who is talking?”, and while these are leading men, and I recognized their voices, i can also recognize that not everyone who watches this consumes as much pop culture as i do, and perhaps at least a more concerted effort to name the men, even renaming them throughout as it jumps around from who is speaking, would have helped. That would be my biggest note for any of those shows.