TV Shows Watched: the Buccaneers: S1E2 (Apple Plus) with audio description, Overcompensating: S1E5 (Amazon) with audio description, Nine Perfect Strangers: S2E3 (Hulu) with audio description, Tires: S2E1 (Netflix) with audio description, Love, Death, and Robots: S4E4 (Netflix) with audio description, Destination X: S1E2 (Peacock) with audio description, The Narrow Road To The Deep North: S1E3 (Amazon) with audio description, Ransom Canyon: S1E10 (Netflix) with audio description, Jeopardy Masters: S3E8 (Hulu) no audio description

Best Episode: Overcompensating- I think the show starts to hit its stride once the cast is established a bit, and all on their own paths. Benny kind of hits a bit of a wall in this episode, as he realizes he’s been totally wrong about something. Meanwhile, Carmen also starts to judge the choices she’s made more recently, putting these two people who shouldn’t be together seemingly back on track.

Runner Up: Nine Perfect Strangers- Some shrooms got the cast tripping in interesting ways, but the best we got was out of our Nun, whose entire reason and backstory was explored, and it is honestly heartbreaking and terrific at the same time.

Best Audio Description: Love Death and robots- As the de facto science fiction entry, it had a lot of things to describe with no real basis on this earth, while other shows were current, and had a bit of an easier task at hand. The difficulty is a bit higher here, and it delivers.

Runner Up: Overcompensating- that being said, I was impressed this week with Overcompensating which had everything from costumes to sexual encounters to navigate through. It had to pick up on signals, mixed or otherwise, and keep it all from revealing how this episode ends. Nice work.

(P.S..- I could tell in Nine Perfect Strangers where a line was re-recorded and put back in. The balance actually had a few things Tansy said a bit louder than the rest of the track, which is unusual.)

Best Performance: Dolly Deleon (Nine Perfect Strangers)- I’m no stranger to the wonderful talent that is Deleon, who last year gave a beautiful performance in Ghostlight, and almost got an Oscar nomination before that for Triangle Of Sadness. I was worried Agnes would get buried as a stiff Nun character, but right up at the top we pull back the layers of her past to understand what she feels she needs to atone for, and why she’s here. Dolly’s work is simple, fragile, and honest.

Runner Up: James Brolin (Ransom Canyon)- As I close the door on the first season of this Virgin Yellowstone, and i admit it has a level of mediocrity to it, I want to at least take a moment to acknowledge that I enjoyed James Brolin, the elder statesman of the cast who offers this show much what Tim Matheson offered Virgin River. Wisdom and experience. While Duhmale has never lacked in charisma, he has never truly been expected to Cary anything dramatically, and Brolin ended up picking up a lot of slack in Season 1. So, he’s the best reason to watch, if you’re thinking about starting.

best Moment Of Audio Description: The Cabin In The Woods (Overcompensating)- what starts as being a shocking leap for two of our characters becomes something else entirely, and a nice gag on what is actually going on.

Runner Up: Following The Gun (Tires)- In what is ultimately a predictable joke, the audio description track follows the gun Shane decides to bring to work. Was that guest star Jon Lovitz? I miss him. Someone put him in a show.

Worst Of…- The audio description didn’t make it to Hulu for next day air for the first of the two Jeopardy Masters episodes from Wednesday. This follows how 911 was missing audio description yesterday. While I could hear the patching in Nine Perfect Strangers, the episode was still well written, and the sound quality was better than The Narrow Road To The Deep North, which is written well, but not mixed or balanced well. Still, I feel like AD quality aside, Hulu seems to miss the mark a lot.