TV Shows Watched: The Walking Dead: Dead City: S3E4 (AMC Plus) WITH audio description, Unconditional: S1E8 (Apple) with audio description, The Westies: S1E7 (MGM Plus) with audio description, Avatar: The LAst Airbender: S2E6 (Netflix) with audio description, The Rookie: S8E10 (Disney Plus) with audio description, and The Five Star Weekend: S1E2 (Peacock) with audio description
The Walking Dead: Dead City- I’ve suspected in the past that AMC Plus uses synthetic voice, and I’d still buy that here. They tipped their hat previously when the narrator couldn’t pronounce the name of a character, so I operate as if this was synthetic. That being said, after telling me there was AD, only to find out there wasn’t for three weeks, it was lovely having audio description on Episode 4. There’s this whole thing with flashbacks, and Maggie’s ring, which would be lost without AD. AMC Plus and Disney using synthetic are not the same conversation. One is just barely starting to dip their toes in, and I don’t want to scare them away, and the other loves to talk about how accessible they make everything, which is an entirely different conversation. Synthetic sucks, but let’s get some more AD consistently on this streamer before blowing their minds on quality.
Unconditional- Really glad I saw this. The finale has a big twist to it, and I was worried, but the series lands itself perfectly. She needs to slap the shit out of her daughter. I know it’s called Unconditional, but at certain points, slaps were warranted. I felt like Gali had no idea how to function as a human being. The AD is lovely. Apple uses the same team for their International projects, deviating from using Pixel Logic on basically everything else.
The Westies- One of the Irish gets picked up by cops, and then Jimmy’s deal with Gotti becomes a problem. Meanwhile, our Irish lass, and her IRA counterpart continue their potentially unnecessary subplot. The AD here is fine, but The Westies seems stuck.
Avatar- Ang turns into a whiny bitch, pushing away his friends after losing Oppa. Zuko also starts his good guy arc. DVW, Connor DeWolf, and Ross Minor did some more lovely work in episode 6.
The Rookie- Zombies! Poorly explained zombies! We’ve made it to the zombie stage of The Rookie, but more like 28 Days Later, where they are infected with something that causes them to lose their minds. Nolan has the kid on a ride along, but most of the cops end up pulled into this, with Chen being the unfortunate one to go on leave after killing a zombie that was trying to kill her. Wesley also finally gets a break in his case, only to realize his witness is mentally disturbed. The AD here wasn’t terrible. There are a couple of jump scares, and I thought it did fine. The series has ceased to make sense. Like, they find one uninfected survivor, and instead of asking her any meaningful questions, they just move along. God forbid we learn why these people are acting a fool up in here. I just wrote that sentence. Yes.
The Five Star Weekend- An audio description track that is the best/worst thing in the market. People who don’t like those interpretive moments are going to lose their fucking minds, but people who also love great actual description, will go nuts for this. It does both. There’s this scene with Gigi upstairs looking through things, and it stopped to tell me how her hair was parted. This isn’t even her introduction. It was just another scene with her, but we got a refreshed update on her look. Love it. I don’t mind the interpretive stuff here, but I know other people will. This series is like if Lifetime was a movie. Not if Lifetime made a film, but if someone took the essence of Lifetime over its existence and made a series from that.
Best- Tough call. I’m going with The Five Star Weekend. it has some truly rich moments in it, and it is really doing a lot.
Worst: The Rookie- Some inconsistancies. The man who attacks Chen, is described too basic, and we could have more about how he was acting since his state of mind matters, and I’m pretty sure the AD did a poor job of explaining how the knife went from being against her neck, to inside his chest. So, The Rookie loses.
