The PAramount/Warner Bros merger is a travesty. Ideally, WBD would just stay their own company, but any corporate consolidation should give us pause, but when David Ellison is able to purchase to media corporations in a calendar year, perhaps more people should be concerned with the how and why. This would give Paramount control of not just a wide array of franchises, from Harry Potter, Game Of Thrones, DC, Looney Tunes, Scooby Doo, and decades of classic Warner Bros films, but also control over Warner’s cable channels and brands like Cartoon Network (Paramount already owns Nickelodeon), CNN (Paramount already owns CBS News), HBO (Paramount already owns Showtime), and the Turner networks, adding to Paramount’s already impressive slate from Viacom. This is good for no one except the people who funded it, David Ellison, and the international backing he secured from three Middle Eastern countries.

TV Shows Watched: Starfleet Academy: S1E7 (Paramount) with audio description, Bridgerton: S4E5 (Netflix) with audio description, St Dennis Medical: S2E5 (Peacock) with audio description, The Wonderfully Weird World Of Gumball: S1E13 (Disney Plus) with audio description, Malice: S1E1 (Amazon) with audio description

Starfleet Academy- The CW Presents Star Trek has one of its more pointless episodes, if that’s even possible, as nothing really happens except bonding between the leads, in split storylines with mixed messaging. How did genesis stand out in Episode 6 to be recommended for the command track to begin with, only for it to not matter at the end. Utterly pointless episode. At least the AD is solid.

Bridgerton- I love the description here, the dance scene trying to add some small descriptors in for various dance partners, including dress patterns and colors, one boy being tall, another girl being black. Attempts being made. But the real home run is at the end, when two lovebirds just can’t get enough of each other, and Lose Control, while a string version of Lose Control by Teddy Swims plays. The AD there was fantastic. Bridgerton meets Cinderella has been an interesting season.

St Dennis Medical- Alex is about to go on leave, so she has her old boss come back, the one she credits with being her inspiration, only to find out her mentor is just a bully, and Alex was wearing some heavy rose tinted glasses. I love this show. the stuff with the guy who keeps passing out was nice, but Bruce always brings it home with his own absurdity. The AD is fine for the format.

The Wonderfully Weird World Of Gumball- Darwin is dating something from the underworld, to which he can’t say I Love You, or it turns her into an angry monster. Hot take. This show is wonderfully progressive. There’s a little gag here that is so innocent, but I’m sure some parents saw as indoctrination, when the show makes the gag work, never suggesting it was more than what the show needed it to be in that moment. The AD is also lovely. it has been a minute since I watched an episode of this.

Malice- An Amazon show I’m playing catch up on. Amazon/MGM has had more than a few shows in the last few months that just didn’t work for me. I couldn’t get into Steal, not a fan of Jesse Williams’s Hotel Castero, the Harlan Cobin Lazarus is underwhelming, and even The Mighty Nine is not as good as Vox Machina. hell, even BatFam pales in comparison to the film it came from. I’m not even getting pulled into Cross like I badly want. Malice is one more amazon show struggling. The premise is solid, as a character with revenge on their minds sneaks into a family dynamic, determined to disrupt and destroy from the inside. Some scenes are more effective than others, including the one involving the young son jumping into the water, but the plot can be muddled. The cast is solid, led by David Duchovny, Jack Whitehall, and Raza Jeffrey. But, ultimately, it just isn’t structured in an interesting way, which seems to be a recurring problem. Nice ideas, mediocre execution. The AD seemed Ok though.