Wishing everyone Happy Holidays. Or, if you so choose, a lack thereof. In which case, Happy Tuesday. Just like any other day.
TV Shows Watched: Dune Prophecy: S1E6 (MAX) with audio description, What If: S3E2 (Disney Plus) with audio description, No Good Deed: S1E6 (Netflix) with audio description, This Is Not Hollywood: S1E3 (Hulu) with audio description, The Diplomat: S2E3 (Netflix) with audio description, and The Lincoln Lawyer: S3E8 (Netflix) with audio description.
Movies: The Santa Clause Trilogy (Disney plus) all with audio description, The Wizard Of Oz (MAX) with audio description, and Sweethearts (MAX) with audio description
Best Episode: The Lincoln Lawyer- Honestly, of all the episodes, watching Mickey do his thing in court was more interesting and rewarding than anything else.
Runner Up: I would tie it between What If and The Diplomat. Nothing fully popped out today, but those were decent episodes.
Best performance: Keri Russell (The Diplomat)- Watching her navigate a show that I feel like rests so much on her shoulders is impressive. Unlike other politically minded shows, I don’t think the ensemble around her is nearly as fleshed out as they need to be, and doing short seasons is only going to keep boosting Russell (and to some extent Sewell) but not really her staff, the way West Wing or Designated Survivor had flush ensembles.
Runner Up: Lisa Kudrow (No Good Deed)- In a rather bland day, I haven’t had the opportunity yet to shoutout Kudrow, whose work on the show has been solid. She had some nice moments with her brother in law in this episode.
Best Audio Description: What If- Just the spectacle of the musical number that goes on would be enough, but there’s a fairly high level of difficulty in a show that has so much that doesn’t have any basis in reality.
Runner up: Dune prophecy- Which is why, this is also a runner up. There was excellent science-fiction audio description this week as well.
Best Moment Of Audio Description: Dune Prophecy: Lots of gory moments, and I could pick several from this episode. I’m choosing to go with the spoiler laden one that involves a blizzard like landscape. If you know, you know. But, several really well described scenes.
Runner Up: What If- Within the musical number, there’s a reference to a facial expression as a character slides under a bunch of ladies in dresses, which was a good choice to bring out. They didn’t need to mention his reaction at all, but doing so added a bit to the scene, and the understanding of his character. Plus, appropriate for a show kids might watch (though the season premiere featured a reference to Apocalypse Now, so I’m not sure what Marvel thinks is the target demo).
Worst Episode: Dunee Prophecy- I’m glad this series is behind me. I don’t care if they continue it or not, I’m not sure I’d watch a second season. Great audio description, but a rushed story, that wanted to expand the world and limit it at the same time.
Worst Performance: The male lead in Sweethearts is terribly forgettable. i know it is a movie, but he was such a weak link it bares mentioning.
Worst Audio Description: I didn’t watch anything that lacked audio description. But, I wasn’t a fan of the audio description for Sweethearts either. I’ll tackle it more in my review, but I felt entire scenes passed where I didn’t know where they were, and there were jokes that had audio description, but I didn’t conceptually understand how we got to this joke. There’s a crude scene, for example, that leads to Kiernan Shirpka being urinated on, and while audio description existed, I didn’t feel like I had a grasp on that scene. It would have been an interesting QC for me.