TV Shows Watched: The Buccaneers: S2E5 (Apple Plus) with audio description, Twisted Metal: S2E4 (Peacock) with audio description, Tires: S2E12 (Netflix) with audio description, Mindhunter: S1E8 (Netflix) with audio description, The Summer I turned Pretty: S3E5 (Amazon) with audio description

The Buccaneers- So much drama! Nan returns home from Ginny/Guy, to her Duke Theo, who has been in the sheets with Lizzie this whole time, but Lizzie is about to get married herself. Of course, no one can get divorced, and Ginny is trapped by a wolf of a husband who is seemingly magically not abusive all of a sudden. So Nan needs to be a Duchess, but she doesn’t really want to keep Theo or herself unhappy, so she pitches Theo the idea that they stay together until the law is passed, for Ginny’s sake, and then she’ll live somewhere else, and they can have separate lives, and she’ll just retain the title, but Theo can do whatever he wants. Which is great for Lizzie… but Lizzie doesn’t want to be a tramp her whole life, and there’s this guy who can provide her security… but Theo is all like “Girl… don’t just marry him for security. You can’t live with me and be my mistress, but you shouldn’t marry someone who makes you unhappy”. And I was all like… OMG. I need to recap all shows like this from now on. The AD was great.

Twisted Metal- So I have this fear as a blind person that I’m going to eat something I shouldn’t. Rotten, expired, with bugs on it, take your pick. Something I’d clock with my sight, but somehow I wouldn’t until that thing was in my mouth. And, it isn’t even so much about eating that thing, digesting it, and dying of old timey dysentery like I’m on the Oregon Trail. It’s just the way food gets when it isn’t food anymore. The repulsion of it. The fact that you have chosen something you initially wanted, and something you liked before, but some parasitic thing has happened to it that has turned it into a piece of shit. In other words, Twisted Metal is the food I like, and Difffuse is the piece of shit attached to it that ruins my meal. There are multiple kills here that are not even attempted at being described. Sweet Tooth gets a cape that somehow kills people when he swings it around, but I have no fucking idea how, because NBC/Peacock decided it was more important to save some money, and hire the floating turd that is Diffuse to produce the audio description for this show, so the series has deeply inadequate, persistently so, audio description. If I wrote the description for this show, I’d take a long walk off a short pier… but I’d have someone from Diffuse write the audio description for it, so it would be as if it never happened.

tires- Tires had a better second season than a first season. I think a lot of that had to do with Thomas Haden church, who seems poised to return for the already renewed third season. Dakota Green’s audio description here isn’t necessarily industry leading, because this is a show that is driven by verbal punchlines. Shane Gilles is a stand-up comedian, so his comedy isn’t physical, it’s dialogue driven, and he needs to mostly thrive around that, and bounce off an ensemble ready for that style of comedy. Green does a great job of maximizing the time for description, and making the smartest and best choices she can. I just realized I’m assuming Dakota’s gender, and I don’t know how long I’ve done that. Regardless, the track for Tires is well produced, narrated, and written. it is just on a sho that doesn’t give many opportunities to describe a wide arrray of wild visuals, which plays perfectly into the audio description, and the time the show has. I’m being a little bit extra since this was the Season Finale, and I’m not feeling a full season review for Tires. Part of me wants to so I can have a pull quote that says “came for Shane Gilles, left with Thomas Haden Church.”

Mindhunter- It is well written audio description, and I know it is one of the older Netflix shows, but it feels like TTS to me. This narrator voice is too flat. I’m sure it’s not, so I’m just randomly insulting someone for something they did like ten years ago. But, for a serial killer drama created by David Fincher, it should feel like there are some stakes, and the narrator choice just doesn’t do anything for this. It is old, and I’d like to think we make better choices. The thing about AD right now is that these companies are dying to use AI, and eliminate as much of the human paycheck elements as they can. The best way we can prevent that, is by calling out the stuff that doesn’t work, figuring out how to make exceptional, not just functional, audio description every time, You want the blind and low vision people so hooked on human AD they can’t possibly imagine a world without it, because when the voice actors go, then the human writers, the human QC, the human engineers, everything becomes an AI powered application. voice actors often have to read multiple takes. If you hear something that isn’t working, give narrators notes, and re-record. Some of these narrators ARE voice actors, and are used to being asked to do more than one take. I may be harsh, but my goal in life is more audio description, and more human audio description, and the best way to do that is to focus on what is working well, and make sure we do that all the time. When your kid gets a home run in baseball, they don’t want to just keep feeling the strikes, or the on base hits. They want another home run, every time.

The Summer I turned Pretty- It’s just a show about young people who basically can’t figure out who they love, because they’re young, and they all seem to love each other. Honestly, Taylor is the most interesting character, because she’s like the Brooke of the show. A character that isn’t necessary, but also really is, because the rest of the cast is so incestuous otherwise. This show has perfectly fine AD, which focuses a lot on the looks these actors are giving each other. Sometimes, they are in an interesting location. Most of the time, they are emoting.