TV Shows Watched: the Studio: S1E7 (Apple TV +) with audio description, Andor: S2E5 (Disney Plus) with audio description, Midcentury Modern: S1E5 (Hulu) with audio description, Happy Face: S1E8 (Paramount Plus) with audio description, Milion Dollar Secret: S1E8 (Netflix) with audio description, Etoile: S1E2 (Amazon) with audio description, #1 Happy family USA: S1E3 (Amazon) with audio description, and Jeopardy Masters: S3E1 (Hulu) No Audio description
best Episode: The Studio- I just had a blast watching Seth Rogen and his predominantly white gaggle of studio executives try to figure out just how racist their Kool Aid movie is, or if it even is, and what is the appropriate level of… only to find their entire thing thwarted by an even bigger villain. AI.
Runner Up: Etoile- Another fantastic episode. Amy Sherman-Palladino is really exceptional at being able to shape these shows in a perfect light right off the bat, so you can be quickly invested instead of wondering who all these people are.
Best Audio Description- Andor- A pretty clear victory, even if most of Andor really is political machinations.
Runner Up: Etoile- Once again, the runner up is this new dance series, which is doing a lovely job of balancing its ensemble, while giving us flickering moments of dance. I still await a full out dance like we would get on So You Think You Can dance or dancing With the Stars… but better because these people are professionals.
Best Performance: Seth Rogen (The Studio)- really, everyone delivered, but Rogen was in every scene, trying desperately to walk whatever fine line he thought was there, and figure out how to make a film that would offend absolutely no one.
Runner Up: Annaleigh Ashford (Happy Face)- it’s my last time to throw her that appreciation she so rightly deserves. The series overall was just OK, but her performance was exceptional, layered, and drove the series when it couldn’t drive itself, or was sinking under the weight of a desperately miscast Dennis Quaid.
Best Moment Of Audio Description: did The Cereal make That Milk blue Or… (Andor)- I spent way too much time thinking to myself “would I drink blue milk?”, because of Andor. really, because of a scene where Cyril is eating some cereal, with blue milk. What animal has blue milk? If I were to drink blue milk, would it be blueberry flavored? We do have strawberry milk, so is blueberry that weird?
Runner Up: The Winner Is… (Million Dollar Secret)- I gotta say, the final moments, when they have moved the boxes around and we don’t know who just won a million, the audio description capturing just their reactions, really didn’t reveal immediately. It isn’t supposed to, but it allowed us to have that minute where we can just look at everyone’s initial reaction to their box and judge. I actually thought maybe someone else was the winner, which is kind of the point, because we all might react differently to being the winner.
Worst Of…- Sadly, if audio description aired live for Jeopardy Masters, it did not port next day to Hulu,. I watched this last night, and there was no other audio track option for me to even change to. So, the one loser has to be the show I suspect had audio description. What is more sad is that this is par for the course for Hulu, who struggles with this next day air porting of shows that are all under this broad Disney banner anyway. The even sadder thing was I was led to believe that they were taking this kind of thing seriously, which would mean putting someone on the task that would prevent something like this from happening. Perhaps they just don’t run live audio description for Jeopardy Masters. i kinda have a feeling that isn’t the case.
