TV Shows Watched: Prime Target: S1E4 (Apple Plus) with audio description, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man: S1E3 (Disney Plus) with audio description, the recruit: S2E4 (Netflix) with audio description, Paradise: S1E4 (Hulu) with audio description, Celebrity Bear Hunt: S1E1 (Netflix) with audio description.

best Episode: Paradise- After causing my interest to wane a bit in episodes 2 and 3 after a really strong pilot, episode 4 came back with a vengeance, proving to be really interesting, twisty, and fleshed out a show that was starting to not make sense, by wrangling some things back together. Now, I feel like I’m back in a great mystery, like lost.

runner Up: Everything But Celebrity Bear Hunt- They were all about equal. Each one had a predictability problem with that specific episode, where a twist came, and we were supposed to be shocked, but I knew every single twist was coming. Paradise, on the other hand, actually ended with a twist I didn’t see coming. So, it won. Trying to avoid spoilers as much as possible… yes, Prime Target was engaging, but I never thought that would be a good place to work, and the final twist after the phone call was poorly telegraphed earlier. The Recruit showed us, surprise!, that a character just randomly thrust into the show two episodes ago wasn’t who he said he was, but I never thought that character was who he said he was, and the episode started dropping heavy hints ahead of the reveal. And then, in Spider-Man, did you really think Peter was just going to walk away and that would be the end of that storyline? Come on now.

Best Performance: John Beavers (Paradise)- Episode 4 was all about Billy, for better or worse. And he dominated my brain, helping to push the Episode up to win, and also it will win another category down below. but, Billy proved to be a complex character we seemingly got a wealth of knowledge about only to find out… well, he’s an effective way of dropping exposition. We learned so much more about this world and these characters because of Billy, and our world is forever changed, but considering how Billy was presented with two polar opposite personalities, I’m really impressed by this performance.

Runner Up: Coleman Domingo (Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man)- I didn’t recognize his voice right away. After the first episode, i mentioned that they got someone who sounds vaguely like Willem Defoe, and then in the second episode, I kept hearing something, but I wasn’t sure. Finally, episode 3, Norman has a lot of talking, and I can picture Coleman Domingo, and lo and behold there he is. What a cool casting choice. I’m also pointing this out, because of the intentionality behind this casting. This animated version intentionally, much like previous live action versions, or the Spider-Verse films, chosen to imagine a different ethnic background for its characters, which is blatantly obvious to the bitching trolls online, but left out of the audio description for blind people. i don’t understand why I’m treated as a second class individual consistently by Disney, who like to push diversity boundaries for sighted audiences, but decide that none of that representation matters for blind audiences… I guess because it would be bad for a young black kid to see themselves in Norman Osborne, a highly intelligent billionaire, who in this iteration is helping Peter, and hasn’t come out as a Green Goblin yet. It’s black history month. representation matters.

best Audio Description (Tie)- Prime Target and the recruit- Two action packed shows, both had pretty consistent needs to ratchet the tension throughout. However, they also found really important smaller moments. Like In the recruit, there’s a moment when Owen is about to swipe his own ID badge, but it stopped. It actually mattered that we knew that. Prime Target made a good use of telegraphing the presence of security cameras, which played in nicely toward the end of the episode.

Runner Up: Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man: That fight scene though.

Best Moment Of Audio description: You’ve Got Something In your Throat… (Paradise)- In a rather surprising moment, Billy really takes someone up on an offer to step up, and I would say probably far surpassed that individuals expectations based on what they were asking. that is the least spoilery way I can describe this. If you know, you know.

Runner Up: Boss(es) Fight (your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man- this battle was done really well, especially once Peter gets an assist, and figures how how to fight these random villains of the week.

Worst Of…- So, I haven’t mentioned celebrity Bear Hunt. Now I am. The description here, for a competition reality series is fine, and actually in many ways puts The Traitors to shame. But then again, we also have a host (Holly) who offers color commentary, and Bear who talks to the audience a lot. So, for blind people, this show is much easier to follow. It faces the same problem as The Traitors, and most reality shows. ‘celebrity”? Maybe to the UK population, but I don’t know the majority of these fuckers. Like, Mel B is in danger of being eliminated after the first episode, and I’m like… she’s by far the biggest name here. You can’t cut her out first, no one would finish this show. Especially in America. You’re really banking on Bear doing this to people we don’t know (Yes, I know who boris Becker is as well), but the audio description didn’t even tell us where we should know these people from. A couple of them mumble that they are doing something, like a model, or the one woman who says she likes to stay connected to the news. The Traitors has a bevy of reality rejects and gave us the show for about two of them, and Celebrity Bear Hunt maybe told us where 3 of them came from? One is a rugby player, one is a TV chef, and there was at least one more. Some of them self identify in just a well edited character intro, but this is a group of people who are like D-list Brits. Americans are gonna struggle with at least half this cast. Like I said, it is far better than the Traitors in terms of audio description, but someone needed to be a bit more realistic about using the UK audio description track here in America, where I’m fairly certain a lot of are going to struggle. As far as its life span on these lists of mine, I swear I’m dipping when Mel B gets the axe, if she does, because I have no idea who anyone else is except Boris, who i don’t care about.