TV Shows Watched: Wednesday: S2E2 (Netflix) with audio description, Chief Of War: S1E2 (Apple plus) with audio description, The Buccaneers: S2E3 (Apple plus) with audio description, Hitmakers: S1E1 (Netflix) with audio description, countdown: S1E7 (Amazon) with audio description, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire: S4E3 (Hulu) with audio description

Wednesday: Frankie Corzo is doing a great job narrating this season. I think her tone matches this quirky horror comedy quite well. It’s still a great track. the second episode feels really long. I almost wonder if Wednesday wouldn’t benefit from having more episodes with shorter runtimes? It does feel like Wednesday tackles multiple storylines in the same episode, and that can feel very cramped. Still, she’s out to find her stalker, and we see some new things being introduced like Slurp the zombie, and an invisible super fan of Wednesday’s who could become a great ally. Who doesn’t need an invisible friend from time to time? Meanwhile, Bianca is getting a lot to do as Buscemi’s new Principal dances into villain territory, blackmailing her to use her siren powers on people she doesn’t want to. Still got a Pugsley problem. He really just doesn’t fit into this show right now.

Chief Of War- Let’s muse. I’m very much pro-authentic representational casting when it comes to audio description. It’s a weird road to hop on, because I don’t want to get into a “sounds like” debate, so I feel like I just have to mention it when applicable, or if I’m certain that the casting is not.There was a film, Fancy Dance, which was Apple, and had a near 100% indigenous cast, and even was endorsed by the Cherokee nation in front of the film. It did not have an indigenous heritage narrator. There are narrators who have this background, so the casting was lazy. I like the narrator who was given the job, but wish they had passed on the project. Here, authenticity is weird. This is another indigenous culture, and Hawaiian is a language. If I remember correctly, it’s actually on Duo Lingo. But, the show is also not in English, which Fancy Dance was. The show is shot like Shogun, where there’s a majority language used, requiring dubbing, while a handful of characters can speak English. If we really truly wanted to be representational of this culture, we’d create likely the first ever Hawaiian AD track, meaning those who spoke the language, would get the audio description in their own language. As it stands, if you do speak Hawaiian, you have to listen to a dubbed version of your language to get audio description to get it. Like, here, if you speak the language anyway, you still can’t choose audio description and your language, you must listen to English narration. Shogun was the same way in America, but I can’t speak to how they consumed it in Japan. Why am I bothering with any of this…? Because while Shogun’s dominant language and cast is not American, Chief of War’s is. Chief of War is like doing a show where the cast speaks Navajo. even though these languages are not spoken by all, they are inherently American languages. But, we’re still fighting for a world in which everything gets English Audio Description, though I think in a perfect world (which we seem to be running from as fast as humanly possible), the simple idea of a Hawaiian AD, or Navajo AD, for shows is an interesting prospect. For anyone who has Netflix, for example, you can see these International titles and how they come here with their original language, and their original audio description track. that way, if you do speak the language, and are blind, you don’t have to listen to someone describe it to you in English. Sadly, we’re so far behind in the equality of audio description, that we’re laser focused on just getting the most widely spoken American language, and don’t really have the bandwidth to convince Apple they should invest in a track for this minority audience. yet, this is the same audience whose culture Apple has no problem mining for our entertainment. It’s like watching the snake eat itself. To be clear, the English Audio Description track for chief Of War is fantastic. It is. But I can’t help think about things like this, and how this culture we’re so quick to throw up on the screen using their authentic language, doesn’t actually have access to audio description in their own language. The best way for someone who fluently speaks the languages in chief Of War to get their own representational version is to watch it without audio description. I think because so many Americans aren’t bilingual we don’t think of how utterly weird it is to be fluent in one language, but have to listen to the film dubbed in another language you speak just so you can have audio description. Imagine if the only way you could watch Superman with audio description, was by listening to it with Spanish Audio Description, and the Spanish cast dubbing over the English that is your first language. Our accessibility is so very weird.

The Buccaneers- I feel like, after that, what is there to say? This was fine. Nan and Theo are now on the outs, but it looks like someone else might like Theo. Also, the dowager has a potential male suitor.

Hitmakers- this is almost exactly like a series NBC had a few years back where established songwriters wrote and pitched a song to an artist, and the artist picked one to record. John Legend is the first artist. Unless the next couple episodes shake things up, this is a knockoff.

Countdown- It leaves us with the chilling notion that somewhere out there… nukes are in trucks. And they don’t know where, or how to stop them. My god. Also, I love Eric Dane. You don’t realize how much you enjoy someone’s onscreen persona until you won’t have any new projects from them anymore. Kind of like the bittersweet feeling I now get when i watch something with bruce Willis.

Who Wants to Be A Millionaire- Spoiler Alert! They promoted this episode as being stars from Community, but they were able to fit in the total runs for both a duo from Community and Severance. one of them does NOT do well. I won’t spoil which one. One of them does go above the guaranteed minimum, while the other… does not.