TV Shows Watched: Man On Fire: S1E7 (Netflix) with audio description, Your Friends And Neighbors: S2E8 (Apple) with audio description, Tales Of The TMNT: S2E9 (Paramount) with audio description, The Bear: S5E6 (Disney Plus) with audio description, Daemons Of The Shadow Realm: S1E7 (CrunchyRoll) with audio description, The Audacity: S1E5 (AMC Plus) no audio description, and The Rookie: S8E7 (Disney Plus) with audio description

Man On Fire- Finished. Fully intend to review. Excellent work by IDC, Steven Christopher, and Sri Gordon.

Your Friends And Neighbors- I give Amanda Peet a lot of shit sometimes, but she’s very good in this episode, where Mel finally seems to reach her breaking point, and our lead is kidnapped. Don’t worry, the show is coming back for a third season, so the actual tension behind it is nullified by the realization Your Friends And Neighbors would never kill off Jon Hamm. I rolled my eyes instead. I’m sure they’ll justify it next episode, but no one actually believes he’s in danger. The AD here is pretty good. I believe it’s Pixel Logic. When Coop has these fourth wall breaking moments, talking about the things he’s stealing, the AD has a moment to shine as the way they present the item has a fantastical quality to it.

Tales of the TMNT- The Turtles fight their greatest foe, Scratch. I didn’t realize Scumbug had a gender. Ha. This one, incidentally, is also IDC, written also by Steven Christopher, but with a new narrator. Why does it sound degraded in quality over other IDc tracks? I know Paramount hates the Turtles, cancelling this before Season 2 even premiered, but it sounds not up to IDC standards. Just saying. The writing is great, and I’m sure she’s fine, when the track isn’t in mono or whatever.

The Bear- People start entering the restaurant, Marcus reaches a breaking point, Richie apologizes, Jimmy sells a watch, and I’m really wondering if they truly thought this was the best way to send off the Bear. This is what happens when you start to believe your own hype. The Bear does have terrific audio description, not just because Roy is narrating, but like when Sid comes down and follows Marcus outside, she bumps into something hanging down off the awning. It doesn’t do anything except make the experience richer, since it has no relevance to anything, but the attention to detail is appreciated.

Daemons Of The Shadow Realm- TTS, but the company does hire some terrific writers. I feel like this is stuck in world building mode, as we just move on to meet yet another person in the Katamuri clan, but does it serve the season’s arc, or the overall series? I don’t know. It feels like it does a lot of explaining, without advancing the story. Witch Hat is the stronger anime from this year, IMHO.

The Audacity- Three of the Five episodes have had audio description on AMC Plus. I’m grateful they have started to include it, but it is so weirdly pointless right now. I came back around to it when I realized one of the most interesting breakthroughs from last year, Everett Blunk, is in this. He was the star of The Plague, and also did a lovely job in Griffin In Summer. He’s the next Mason Thames, who was the next… Nick Robinson?

The Rookie- I don’t know how, after their building burned down, they are back to things as they were. But OK. Bailey is gone. Harper and Chen travel south and go undercover, while one of the Rookie’s learns he needs to get some sleep. This show used to be much better, but I applaud them for mostly maintaining their ensemble for eight seasons. I believe Harper came in Season 2, so we still have five actors from Season 1, Nolan, Bradford, Chen, Lopez, and Grey. Wesley also appeared in Season 1, but wasn’t a regular yet.

Best AD? Man On Fire. There’s just so much that happened in the finale. One of my favorite underrated directors, Michael Cuesta, was brought in to close the series as Steven Cable Jr (Creed II) had opened it. So it is bookended by some true talent. Cuesta directed one of my favorite films, LIE, before moving on to create Homeland. I did love the track for The Bear, but the action in Man On Fire is a lot.

Worst? No AD versus TTS? I gotta throw the axe at The Audacity. Randomly describing some episodes, or having someone in charge of uploading, who half heartedly cares about doing their job, is not worth rewarding. At least I can say Daemons has well written description. I can’t even say that when there is no AD at all.