TV Shows Watched: Outlander: Blood of My Blood- S1E2 (Starz) no audio description, Platonic: S2E2 (Apple Plus) with audio description, The Summer I Turned Pretty: S3E3 (Amazon) with audio description, And Just Like That: S3E11 (HBO MAX) with audio description, Dexter: S5E10 (Paramount Plus) with audio description, Pop Culture Jeopardy: Still semifinals (Amazon) with audio description, Ballard: S1E6 (Amazon) with audio description, Breaking Bad: S2E6? (Netflix) with audio description

Outlander: Blood of My Blood- Not much else to say since yesterday. It’s still a show that needs audio description. It’s bizarre how inaccessible Starz is, yet they’ve been around forever. It feels intentional. However, the first two episodes are essentially pilots, having to set up the world, and introduce the characters, so a well done pilot without audio description has a much better chance of being understood than later episodes. And both episodes are essentially pilots, as the first episode focused 95% on Jamie’s parents, and the second focuses 95% on Claire’s. They do a smart thing by having Claire be born already, so anything could happen to her parents. They don’t ever have to come back. I don’t know how long I’m sticking with this, but the music is gorgeous, and I love the new theme song as well.But traversing a romantic time-travelling adventure series without audio description is a hard sell.

Platonic: Trouble is in the air, as the fallout from the engagement reception hits. Still a very funny series. Not a lot of audio description, and even for a show with a lot of dialogue, it felt like it was somehow less than expected? Like, when the couple is in bed, and the husband is watching Jeopardy, she freaks out when she realizes her husband has (if I remember correctly) the pet Bearded Dragon in bed with them. but, the audio description to support that was basically non-existent. It felt like a physical comedy moment, and I was a little lost.

The Summer I Turned Pretty: The audio description is fine. The episode ends with a couple revealing their engagement, to the utter shock of everyone else in the cast. We’ll see how that plays out.

And Just Like That: I liked the description of Rock’s dress. I think the series finale will be at Thanksgiving, with Carrie moving back to Brooklyn and her old apartment. That seems to be where we are headed. the title for this episode was Forget About the boy, which is clever, since Carrie is moving on from Aiden, (and I guess her neighbor), but it is actually a reference to Rock’s song they sing when they are in thoroughly Modern Millie for a few seconds.

Dexter- I’m not crazy about Lumen, and as we get closer to the end of Season 5, everyone who has told me she’s the worst thing to happen to Dexter, unless something truly nuts is ahead, I’m going to go with a hard no. Also, the audio description here is solid. Paramount Plus just released more audio description for Showtime shows, like The Borgias and I’m Dying Up Here.

Pop Culture Jeopardy- That Final Jeopardy question was hard. the guesses were all over the map. One group got it right, so kudos. I didn’t. The audio description here is fine, and not intrusive.

Ballard- I guess… unless there’s some truly insane twist, we’re committed to letting John Carroll Lynch actually play a good guy. I was expecting him to turn out to be connected, but at this point, so much of this show wouldn’t make sense if he was. I didn’t like how the rapist suggested that no one would believe her because she’s now friends with Ballard who “cried wolf”, when she didn’t. She just couldn’t prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. the AD is fine, and realy comes in handy for the last five minutes. Like, that was an interesting way to use a tampon.

Breaking Bad- Walt finds Jesse, who is still shook from the previous episode, and they work on expanding their empire. Jesse’s original dealers become “Prince’s” who need to recruit foot soldiers under them to sell meth. Skylar gets a job, with a guy who she’s clearly attracted to, and who is attracted to her. hank is on mission in El Paso when a turtle causes everything to go bad super fast. Hank is going to have PTSD for a long time.