A day where I watched a lot of TV, but surprisingly none of it reached the top grade level. And at least one show has totally lost my interest.

1) Stranger Things (Netflix)

English Audio Description?: Yes

I don’t know what it says that the 3rd episode of the season, the slowest so far, and my least favorite, still managed to rank at the top of all the episodes. I watched a very odd batch of TV, most of it let me down in some way. That ending though. All I can say is, don’t you fucking dare. Don’t you do it.

Episode Grade: A-

2) The Girl From Plainville (Hulu)

English Audio Description Available?: Yes

in the 6th episode of the limited series, Michelle’s trial starts, and we finally get to see that fight between Coco and his father. I’ve met Norbert Leo Butz before, and he’s a tremendous actor. one of my favorite broadway actors, and his performance in this episode was fantastic. He’s not a very threatening person, so this transformation was scary good. And, Chloe Sevigny continues to do some really solid work. I have one problem with the case overall, and that’s the fact that she’s being charged as an adult simply because it took so long for them to get her to the trial. Technically, when this event transpired, she was 17. She turned 18 after, and when she’s on the stand in this episode and is asked her age, she responds 20. I don’t believe our legal system should treat kids as adults just because it takes them forever to get to trial. But that’s just me. Doesn’t mean I sympathize with her, but with a system that moves this slow, you could be 15 at the time of your crime, and then be 18 when the trial begins, and they charge you as an adult. It just doesn’t sit with me.

Episode Grade: A-

3) The G Word With Adam Conover (Netflix)

English Audio Description Available?: Yes

Adam takes on banks, the FDIC, and bailouts. There was this thing he did with the FDIC where he walked through a bailout and the process, and obviously it wasn’t a real bank, and those were actors, but his decision to act like it was threw me off a bit.

Episode Grade: B+

4) Atlanta (FX/Hulu)

English Audio Description Available?: No

Not for nothing, but we’ve now had two episodes that didn’t feature our main crew. Out of four. I don’t know what Donald Glover is trying to do this season, and I understand this season was delayed a lot by the pandemic, so maybe he wrote stand alone episodes like this as a result. Glover always has something to say, and there’s so much on both sides that it’s hard to see which angle he’s coming at in this episode. A white businessman’s life is upended when a black woman comes into his life with a lawsuit claiming he owes her reparations personally for his great great grandfather having owned her great great grandfather as a slave. So, she wants 3 million. I have a lot of thoughts about how serious Glover is with this concept, but I also don’t know why he would choose to make fun of it. I’m not really sure what to do with the content of the episode, which feels so out of place as the 4th episode of this season. Is it well written? Sure. Funny? At times. Is it Atlanta? I’m not sure.

Episode Grade: B+

5) Pachenko (Apple Plus)

English Audio Description Available?: Yes, with dubbed dialogue.

This Japanese/Korean drama started to bore me a bit in the second episode. There are things I like about this show, but there are also a few parts where it just feels like it’s dragging. And it’s so hard to get involved when not all voice actors are created equally. I wish these actors who were hired to do dubbed voiceovers were good, because listening to some of them is quite a chore. If I finish this season, I’ll be surprised.

Episode Grade: B

6) Jeopardy (Syndication)

English Audio Description?: No

Ryan logged his 15th win, and I got my groove back with 27 correct answers.Ryan is the anti-Jeopardy James, instead of trying to earn the most money in a single episode, he’s playing it safe all the time, keeping his daily double bets conservative, as well as his final jeopardy and that’s why he keeps winning. It’s more important that he answers the most questions and keeps the others from answering, and by doing so, he’ll earn money. Maybe not 75K an episode, but after 15 wins, he’s proving his strategy works.

Episode Grade: B

7) Close Enough (HBO MAX)

English Audio Description Available?: Yes

In the 2nd episode of Season 3, I got half of the episode that made me laugh. The first half was fine, but it was capped off by a hilarious pancakes for dinner, and the unintended consequences of breaking the rules.

Episode Grade: B

8) All In The Family (FreeVee)

English Audio Description? No

After watching the pilot with my mom the other day, I figured I’d check out more of this “groundbreaking” sitcom. You know, oddly this sitcom (with a few changes) would work today. There are people out there still very much like this, who wouldn’t get this joke. In this episode, the household wrote two competing letters to the President. Nixon, by the way. Because that’s how old this show is.

9) The Golden Girls (Hulu)

English Audio Description?: No

A rerun based around Rose thinking she saw a UFO that leads to Blanche getting mixed up and believing there was some guy out there that wasn’t interested in her, and she becomes committed to trying to woo… but of course, it’s not what she thought it was. It never is.

Episode Grade: B-

10) Frasier (Paramount Plus)

English Audio Description Available?: No

You know, this was probably my least favorite episode in a while. It started with kid versions of Frasier and Nile’s (and ends that way) and spent a lot of time in an English Pub in Seattle with Frasier competing against daphne in Darts. They’ve had better.

Episode Grade: B-

11) Anatomy Of A Scandal (Netflix)

English Audio Description Available?: Ys

I no longer care. I wanted to stop after the first episode, but then that one guy got raptured or something at the end of the first episode, leaving me to wonder where the fuck this show was going. Then it came back, only to bore me to tears with a whole been there done that thing again. I don’t like these people, these characters, their story. I’m not invested. And I’m also done.

Episode Grade: D+