TV Shows Watched: American Idol: S24E2 (Disney Plus)Offensively Still Without Audio Description, Runaway: S1E4 (Netflix) with audio description, Shrinking: S3E1 (Apple) with audio description, Shifting Gears: S2E8 (Disney Plus) with audio description, The Daily Show: Monday (PAramount Plus) no audio description

American Idol- Disney managed to still pretend like they don’t know how to make this show accessible, while also electing a new CEO. Considering Iger keeps getting older, perhaps this one will stick. I wonder if the changing of the guard will… of course not. I’m sure the new CEO is as unbothered by the presence of content that isn’t accessible as his predecessor was. That being said, the first girl is phenomenal, and Hannah’s String Cheese should be recorded immediately and sent to radio stations for it to chart.

Runaway- Man, I just don’t find Harlan Cobin’s stuff to be appealing. it is like he was influenced only by storytellers who thrive on twists, and is incapable of character structure. The show is randomly violent for no apparent reason, and features bizarre plot twists. Run away indeed.

Shrinking- I cried. If Michael J Fox doesn’t get an Emmy nomination, we should cancel the whole damn thing. The AD sucks this season by the way. There were so many little visual cues missed, and the AD doesn’t know how to support Fox’s performance. it does help land the gut punch at the end, but there were too many missed moments throughout the episode with the other characters, where they would clearly mention something a sighted audience would pick up on, but the description doesn’t have time for. I’ll curve back around and say, the show has a difficult structure to it, as it relies a lot on dialogue, but that means we need smarter writers on more challenging projects, not to just be OK with mediocre because it is the best we can do.

Shifting Gears- Dave’s tone, perhaps for the first time, was at odds with him. He has this bright optimism that never leaves his voice,which even in his greatest effort to underscore the emotional intensity behind the break up scene between Allen’s and Elfman’s characters never really lands. I’m one of his biggest fans, and this didn’t work. it just feels like some of the other moments where he describes a character thinking before delivering a punchline. It oddly still sounded like he was smiling, continuing to propagate the sitcom sound, which was clashing with that. It is the first time I think I haven’t liked his performance in Shifting Gears, and maybe one of the only times ever across his career. That scene just didn’t work. Sorry.

The Daily Show- Taking politics aside, watching Stewart break down the lone use of his name in the Epstein files was funny. it would be funny regardless of your affiliation, because it does poke fun at the absurdity of how likely so many pop culture references ended up in the files, and since they are searchable, you can probably find so many random mentions. Stewart finding out that he was mentioned in an email exchange by Epstein was priceless.