TV Shows Watched: Where’s Wanda?: S1E5 (Apple Plus) with audio description, High Potential: S1E5 (Hulu) no audio description at time of viewing, American Sports Story: S1E7 (Hulu) with audio description, and Hysteria: S1E5 (Peacock) with audio description
Podcasts: None
YouTube: Chris Stuckmann (Review: ginger Snaps)
Movies Watched: None
I was a little busier than usual, like on Monday. So, a relatively low day with few options. So, let’s talk about all of them!
Where’s Wanda?- when I think about all the international content out there, and how very few titles get audio description, i don’t think we make nearly enough praise for Apple for continuing to produce audio description for all its titles, regardless of country of origin. I’m enjoying this, and this episode ended on a strong cliffhanger. The audio description and dubbed vocal performances are pretty good. It’s a mystery about a girl that goes missing in Germany right at the time of this festival that celebrates a mythological creature that abducts girls. Weird, but oddly compelling, not very heavy considering its theme, and the balance of humor and thrills are what make this intriguing. And I love that I get to see it. As a critic, I was just offered a screener for one of this years movies in contention for the International Feature race, and it doesn’t have audio description, nor does it have dubbing. It is just in its original language. It is being distributed by ca company notorious for being sketchy on audio description, yet they do have audio described titles, and they could describe something they were elevating to FYC status. but they don’t want to. Meanwhile, Apple just has this random German show, while also running the French La Maison, and the Spanish Midnight Family. They just wrapped the Korean/Japanese Pachenko. All four series were audio described. It’s time to celebrate not just the audio description companies, but a brand that has actually stuck to its commitment in audio description for *all* of its original content. not just its English language, or American, content.
High Potential- Meanwhile, over at Hulu, my next day watching of this once again lacked audio description. I’ve heard it twice over five episodes. The relationship between ABC and Hulu this year seems to be strained. This is one of the fall shows I’m continuing to watch, like Matlock, and I’m pulling for this to stick around. The cast is solid, the premise is cute, and I just need consistency in next day pass through of audio description. It literally cannot be that hard. They aren’t making these episodes right up until the last minute. Likely, this was all filmed and completed weeks to months ago, and the audio description done way back then.
American Sports Story- I’ve grown tired of Ryan Murphy this season. Between this and Monsters, he’s not at the top of his game anymore. He’s starting to sympathize with characters in really uncomfortable ways. Lay episode 7, the balance here is just so off, because he’s tried to show Aaron Hernandez as this guy with a messed up childhood who was afraid to come out of the closet, as if that’s the reasoning for him to kill someone. I wonder, if there was no history of Aaron having this closeted backstory if Ryan would have even bothered with this series. the fact that this isn’t American Crime Story is really an indicator of how he feels about Aarons “guilt”. The audio description has been good the whole way through, and I think this has had zero problems with the next day pass as I believe I’ve seen every episode the next day with audio description.
Hysteria- My least favorite episode, though, arguable the most important. Without spoiling it, this really focuses on specific supporting characters, as well as flashing back in time to give backstory and context. truthfully, I kinda hated where this went, and that these episodes are so long, and that we didn’t really spend any time with our series lead. As good of an actress as Anna Camp is, I didn’t need this. The audio description was fine, but I was struggling to not just skip the episode. Had I not felt like this was all pertinent information, I would have. Hysteria S1E5 is the opposite of what Grotesquery’s game changing S1E7 was. One of those things was a big brilliant swing, the other was an over explanation and unnecessary backstory of characters you don’t like.
