TV Shows Watched: High Potential: S2E4 (Disney plus) with audio description, Chad Powers: S1E3 (Disney plus) with audio description, The Chair Company: S1E1 (HBO MAX) with audio description, House Of Guinness: S1E5 (Netflix) with audio description, the Runarounds: S1E7 (Amazon) with audio description, Only Murders In the Building: S5E7 (Hulu) with audio description

High Potential- A new captain is in the building… at the end of the episode. How will this shake up the show? hopefully not much, because this show isn’t broken, and it doesn’t need to be fixed. Change can be good, but it can also kill the momentum of a sophomore drama. Prodigal Son is a great example of a Sophomore Season gone horribly awry, even though the big cast addition was Catherine Zeta Jones.

Chad Powers- I think this might be the funniest new show of the year, possibly of the last few years. I really need to stop watching this while walking. It’s going to get me hurt. I laugh out loud so many times. This show is so quotable, and Glen Powell is just pitch perfect. It reminds me of how great his comedic timing was on Scream Queens.

the Chair Company- Tim Robinson is an acquired taste, and part of that is why I struggled with Friendship. His problem in doing long form, is that with both Friendship and The Chair Company, he plays a character supposedly somewhat normal until they are changed by an inciting incident. However, he absolutely refuses to play a character straight even for ten minutes. His character is already insufferable, and the inciting incident in both projects means nothing. In Friendship, he’s already a dolt before Paul Rudd, it just amplifies it. the problem is, he’s married and has a job. What do those people see in him? Same thing here. Before the chair inciting incident, he’s so well respected here by his job that he landed a sweet gig over others, and his family adores him and seeks his thoughts on things. However, he’s playing the role like a manic nightmare from the beginning. the inciting incidents are throwing accelerant on an already burning fire. What is the point? And from an audience perspective, how can you not see the fire is burning? He’s so intensely unlikable and idiotic early on the transition means far less than it would if we saw him spiral. It’d be like if Stanley Kubrick told Jack Nicholson to start the Shining with his “Here’s Johnny” level of crazy, and tried to build from that. the film would work a lot less, and his character’s arc would be muted. I’m not a fan of this show, but I will watch a few more episodes for review purposes. However, that doesn’t mean I didn’t appreciate Dave Wallace’s attempt at helping this show be funny. The audio description is solid. It comes closer to what he’s doing on The Paper, but I’m not sure anything can be topped by The Paper. I think Dve might be my favorite narrator working (hot take, sorry), because more than any voice working right now, he’s so performative, eh feels like he’s personally fighting TTS/AI prominence by pushing the other direction of what audio description can be when the marriage between the AD narrator and the project are in full symbiosis. Of course, he has to be supported by great writers, but he makes such distinct vocal choices, and knows his lane, I have no qualms. As long as Dave doesn’t start trying to do this on films like The Zone Of Interest, or the upcoming Hament, where there are no jokes, and I need a serious and somber voice. Most of the stuff I can think of that he’s done is right up his alley.

House Of Guinness- I’m mildly interested. Since this is fiction, and just based on the concept of the rise of Guinness, I’m not sure it needed to be this long. I think this is a limited series, not seeking a second season, and at times it feels like it is stretching for content. It can’t maintain the energy for the runtime, which means it should be given the grace to have varied runtimes if the episode count matters more. Not every episode needs to be approximately 50 minutes.

the Runarounds- A wannabe scout working at a label discovers The Runarounds, and pitches them as they go viral. But they need to prove they can go viral again, so with a record deal (and Charlie’s house) on the line, the break the law for the most epic rock concert of their lives. Will it be worth it?

Only Murders In the Building: Returning guests Keegan Michael Key, Renee Zellweger, Christoph Waltz, and Logan Lerman are back as our podcasters start to believe Bash might be the killer, and seek to get the information they need by going to his house in the middle of nowhere, where they get trapped in a game night. Was this worth the trip? Do they know who the killer is? I think this episode revealed something major, and it certainly had me looking at someone I had already crossed off who wasn’t in this episode.

Spoiler Guess: If Lester had been saving up his whole life to move him and his wife into the building, then why was she struggling to keep her house? Why was she having to sell things off? Shouldn’t there be a bank account of this saved earnings? perhaps he found out someone didn’t really want to move into the building after all, and also that the building itself might not even be there. What if Lester was running because in a moment, his whole world collapsed? I think we have two killers for two different reasons.