TV News: Friendly reminder that Only Murders In The Building Season 4 premieres today (Tuesday). but, on the news side, I think this might have happened a while back, but I just learned of it, and never got a chance to post on it. So, Amazon has cancelled American Rust after rescuing it. This is actually disappointing on two levels, as the show gained audio description thanks to Amazon, but also the second season is stronger than the first, IMO, allowing for a creative expansion of sorts. But, I kind of thought saving the show the first time was weird. So, this kind of makes sense. Not every show deserves to be saved, but it is So weird that no one has picked up Halo. Really?
TV Shows Watched: Unstable: S2E10 (Netflix) with audio description, Wyatt Earp: S1E2 (Netflix) with audio description, Daryl Dixon: S1E2 (Netflix) with audio description), and That 90’s Show: S3E7 and S3E8 (Netflix) wit audio description.
Podcasts: Hasán Minaj Doesn’t Know (feat Stacy Abrams), Conan O’Brian Needs A Friend (feat. Walton Goggins), Next Question with Katie Couric (feat. The creators of Hacks), and Offline with John Faverau (A discussion on the 80’s movie Wargames)
Youtube: none
Movies: None
So, I came in hot yesterday, appropriately so. But, hot. Part two of that conversation is not hot, but actually more of the “so is the audio description for Daryl Dixon any good?” And the short answer is Yes. My Netflix is all about the binge, and I don’t know where the credits are, but I’ve missed now twice the opportunity to sit there and listen for the narrator/company. But, as part of who I am, and my personal journey, I’m a big Walking Dead fan. I’m a big enough fan, at least in my prime, my friends wanted me to try and get on Taking Dead as the fan they have ask a question.
I’m well aware of what Daryl looks like, and his character’s journey up until this point. In the first episode, the audio description mentions his scarred back, which has its roots back with things that happened in the flagship series, so even though you don’t have audio description for The Walking Dead, you might have still picked up on that little detail, and it is still a part of his character. Another thing I noticed, and really liked, is how gory the details can be.
In the second episode, there’s a lot of gore. Not only is there a birth scene, but there’s also a community where they have decapitated walker heads on pikes, which I found as a very interesting and chilling contrast to something Daryl experiences in The Walking Dead. There’s a rather iconic, pivotal moment where some heads are on pikes, and it is a bit of a jaw dropping moment. So, I’m sure in some ways this is an homage to that. This is also fully a visual detail, and having watched this the first time without audio description, I missed this detail. I have it now.
i also really appreciated the detail of the gore, when Daryl is fighting a certain character, and things go horribly wrong and walkers are upon them pretty quickly. Daryl is able to dispatch his walkers fairly well, but the other guy is entangled, and he gets just brutally torn apart with some truly gory detail.
But it isn’t just the gore. It is the context given to characters. For Isabelle, we show her in a club early on pre-apocalypse and while we don’t get the art of her pick pocketing ability, we do see her open her purse, and the description tells us that her purse is essentially full of other people’s crap. This scene gives so much color, because previously we only saw her as a nun, and episode 2 is as much about who Isabelle is as this show is about Daryl.
I like this narrators voice, and i really want to commit her name to memory. She did get sucked into ViTechs substandard audio description last year for ABC, but some of those programs did get better. So, the answer to the initial question or thought, is that the audio description is worth being angry over in a good way. like, this is a good track, and it shouldn’t have been hidden from the world.