TV Shows Watched: Bet: S1E3 (Netflix) with audio description, The Studio: S1E10 (Apple plus) with audio description, overcompensating: S1E3 (Amazon) with audio description, Devil may Cry: S1E8 (Netflix) with audio description, the Pitt: S1E4 (MAX) with audio description, Krapapolis: S2E19 (Hulu) no audio description, The Rehearsal: S1E5 (MAX) with audio description, Jordan Klepper Fingers America (Paramount Plus) no audio description, The Four Seasons: S1E5 (Netflix) with audio description
best Episode: Overcompensating- today was really close, but I love watching a show hit its stride, which I feel like Overcompensating is doing. Some shows hit with a banger pilot, and others grow. Sometimes, having a killer pilot makes it hard to live up to, but a solid pilot gives you room to grow and impress. In the third episode, it is truly about Overcompensating, as our lead stresses not just about being found out, but now getting into a secret society, so much so that he has to try and get Carmen an invite as well. Carmen, meanwhile, is on an anniversary of a really bad day, and probably didn’t need this, but did it anyway. I liked how this episode wrapped everything up nicely.
Runner Up: The Studio- Still a dozen hilarious moments, but I feel like there were missed opportunities in this finale. I don’t think they got quite the slam dunk finale they deserved, but rather just an extremely competent one already riding a wave of goodwill and casting.
Best Audio Description: Devil May cry- I’ve thought this anime has had consistently great audio description the whole run. I didn’t love the show as much, but I don’t need to in order to recognize quality audio description with great attention to detail and depth of description in things that have no real presence on this earth. Great shows can also have mediocre or bad audio description, it is a separate spectrum.
Runner Up: The Pitt- I haven’t really had the opportunity to recognize this yet, but there were a few small moments, from one of the doctors getting peed on by a patient, to a very somber moment bookended by capturing a cartoon lizard on the wall.
Best Performance: Zoey Kravitz (The Studio)- She’s playing herself, and allowing herself the comic freedom to represent a version of what it would be like for her to be incredibly high. The whole exchange between her and Catherine O’Hara about how high off the ground she was hit nicely.
Runner Up: Molly Brown (Overcompensating)- As Carmen, she got to play the range of typical college freshman against the reality of what day it was to her, and not knowing how to recognize or celebrate it. We’ve all lost someone, and we’re not always sure just exactly what to do to commemorate that loss when the anniversary comes around, and Carmen was certainly feeling that, while still emerging from adolescence herself.
Best Moment Of Audio Description: First Blood (bet)- I liked the sequence, the mention of a few hairs lost, and how confidence lost ultimately to a better understanding of first blood and how easy it is to draw it.
Runner Up: that lizard (The Pitt)- i did really love that mention. i think it’s because hospitals design rooms to not feel like death is looming around every bend, so even when it does, the walls aren’t painful reminders of what just happened. And despite loss, there’s a cartoon lizard on the wall that just keeps smiling.
the Worst- I got nothing here. I got a screener for a movie on embargo that I can’t talk about until June 2nd, which didn’t have audio description. So, the lack of audio description on something I can’t review for two weeks would win I suppose.
