I wanted to have something positive, and apolitical here up at the top today, so even though I don’t cover Industry, HBO did renew the series for a fifth and final season.

TV Shows Watched: The Traitors: 04E11 (Peacock) with audio description, Bridgerton: S4E6 (Netflix) with audio description, School Spirits: S3E2 (Paramount Plus) with audio description, the Mighty Nine: S1E3 (Amazon) with audio description, The Greatest Average American: S1E1 (Disney Plus) with audio description, The Masked Singer: S14E7 (Disney Plus) no audio description

the Traitors- No spoilers. None. I’m glad who won, won. That is all. I shall not reveal anything further.

Bridgerton- As the Cinderella plot plays out, I’m starting to not love the direction it’s taking. Too many people keep telling our bisexual Bridgerton that he can’t marry Sophia, or can’t love her, because she’s beneath his station. I’m really hoping they get their happy ending, because she deserves it. In an episode that returned Anthony and Kate, it reminds us that love is unexpected. It also reminds us that they apparently will never get Reggae Jean Page back, but Jonathan Bailey, whose career has infinitely exploded past Page, had no problem returning. After doing Jurassic and Wicked, picking up awards nods for his work as Fiyero, and also for his work on Fellow Travelers, he’s still not too big to make an appearance. I like that about him. Always stay humble. And hopefully, Benedict and Sophie can get their stuff figured out.

School Spirits- Xavier is trying to get info from the ghosts at the hospital, while things are afoot at the school. I love me some queer representation, but there’s a very clunky reveal here, where someone looks like they might be a villain, until it is revealed they were just hiding their gender identity. I think, there’s probably a better way to handle that in the third season of this show. It felt like a fools errand, just to give us more representation in a show that already has representation. But, it didn’t really harm the show, it just felt like a weird side track we went on for a minute, the kind of things we do at the front of the season, before we lock in on the big mystery and barrel toward the finale. Having a holding pattern plot like this in episode 2 doesn’t surprise me so much, but I also wish we had done it sooner, and not forced a character to out themselves out of fear of being thought of as a villain. The AD here is pretty good, especially in some of the ghost depictions, like the kid impaled by the sign.

The Mighty Nine- I’m struggling with this. It just isn’t Vox Machina, and not every spinoff works. That’s always true. So many failed ideas out there. but, I think I’d enjoy the Mighty Nine, if I hadn’t seen Vox Machina. So while it isn’t bad, it just feels it because the thing that came before it was better.

The Greatest Average American- the new game show on ABC, which is a little like Family Feud, without families. Nate Bargezi hosts, and there is such a negligible amount of description here. It matters most in certain parts, but even in the parts where we could use it, I felt it wasn’t clear enough. As an example, I was unclear how Nate’s free throw was going, because of how it was described. I’m not sure how many shots he took, or how quickly he got to 9. I don’t know if it was unintentionally jumbled, but that was the right moment to answer the call, but the call was fumbled in the process.

The Masked Singer- When the eliminated contestant said it had been a tough year, and especially this past week, it made me think when does this show tape? Because, I’m not sure why the contestant there had a bad week, but based on when this episode aired, I wondered if Rebecca gayheart hadn’t snuck in on this show, perhaps to surprise her husband Eric Dane, who would have passed before seeing her reveal on TV. The timing of bad past week, along with some clues that could have lined up I went with Gayheart. For example, there was this superhero clue they kept leaning in on. Eric Dane was in X-Men the Last Stand and played a mutant, technically a superhero in the comics. He also voiced that character I believe later on. But, somehow, all these clues pointed to… well… not Rebecca Gayhert.