I do typically now avoid continuing to platform shows without audio description, but I have to say that watching The Daily Show and Jon Stewart’s tribute to his dog that passed the day before was very moving. While I do not currently have a dog, I have had them before, and I miss them very much. It is so odd in life that we as humans chose long ago to pair ourselves to creatures that do not have an average lifespan remotely near ours, always setting us up for some kind of grief. No matter what you feel about Jon Stewart, that man clearly loved that dog.

As I moved into the second episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender (Netflix), I’m trying to pay close attention to aspects like character description. As I mentioned when talking about the first episode, I felt like it was avoiding certain aspects of a person. This could be for a myriad of reasons, but it is likely coming from Netflix, and is not the fault of Descriptive Video Works. However, I would still encourage those who continue to believe leaving out certain aspects for blind people in audio description is somehow appropriate does not actually bridge any gap. Sighted fans instantly can tell what a character looks like, from hair color and style, to height and weight, and skin tones and ethnicities. For an adaptation like this, which is technically the second live action swing at this franchise, sighted users get to scrutinize the casting choices versus the character they’ve seen in previous iterations. When you direct audio description companies to leave that out of the narration, those chunks put a wedge between us and our sighted friends, as we largely end up having to ask questions. That is exactly what I had to do with this, was ask a sighted friend who was also a fan of Avatar what his thoughts were. I know we can’t get a perfect description, because we don’t have that kind of time to ever just sit and stare. However, if this world truly cared about the experience of the blind and visually impaired communities, perhaps we would have an audio companion introduction, something that would take the time before the series even starts to give us full breakdowns of these characters, and maybe even regularly used locations, or any other strong elements of the production design. That way, instead of the narrator having to introduce us constantly to things within a production, they can focus even more on the nuances of the performance, from facial expressions to movement. There’s a lot to think about here, and Avatar doesn’t have bad audio description. It is at least better than Percy Jackson. But with these major titles adapted from treasured properties, we could be doing so much more.

Mr. And Mrs. Smith (Amazon) had a moment in the shows 5th episode, the one with special guest Ron Perlman, that really tripped me up. Normally, this description is pretty strong. There’s one scene where John and Jane, along with Perlman’s character, have to jump from the roof of a building. I felt that whole scene was underdescribed, from how far the fall or jump was, to where characters were standing, or even how visible they were to those chasing them. It was almost as if the audio description didn’t know what to do in a rather pivotal moment. for example, Perlman’s character says something to the effect of “I can’t make that.”, which would indicate perhaps that there’s a gap he would have to jump. But, John’s resolution doesn’t involve there being a gap, which leads me to wonder more about this one particular scene. It was so odd, because the rest of the episode was fine, and honestly this series has above average to great audio description. But this one scene just seemed to elude the writer as to what and how to describe it.

Tracker (Paramount Plus) still has one of my favorite narrators now behind it. Coming right out of Lawman, which had one of the best audio description tracks of 2023, Tracker is off to a mostly strong start. We could be doing more with character descriptions, but, since most of the characters are only in one episode, and this is a very action oriented, detective adjacent show, a lot of the description has to follow a whodunit style, because we are trying to follow Colter on his journey of finding the thing that has the bounty and is missing. Largely, at least so far, that has involved uncovering clues. Here, character descriptions are important when they are really integral to that answer of “whodunit”, otherwise, we have to stay really focused on the clues. I think Tracker has a well balanced track right now, and if this is Andrew Thatcher like some have guessed, he does a fantastic narration.

Lastly, a show i considered dropping after the first episode, The new Look (Apple plus) has honestly grown on me with each episode. It is not my favorite series on Apple right now, neither in terms of quality or audio description, but it the concept of Coco Chanel involved in espionage intrigues me. One thing i stand by is that you can’t have a series with Coco Chanel and Christian Dior, and not talk more about the fashion in the show. While the show isn’t directly about their fashion careers, those two are prominent lead characters in this, and are known for fashion. There is an expectation that comes along with watching something about those characters, and what people are wearing is always at the front of my mind.