And we’re back, looking a little bit more normal than usual, I guess, with a few more shows on the list and starting to work my way back to normalcy. As far as life updates go, Best Buy is actively trying to rectify the issue. YouTube is not. And Amazon, from which I have a package I’ve been waiting for and watching them continuously push back for seven days, multiple times, has now just listed it as delayed. After making me wait all the way until their drivers stopped delivering at 10 p.m. to let me know it wasn’t coming yesterday. I don’t know why Amazon is incapable of knowing at least a little bit in advance that a package listed as not shipped isn’t going to make it to my house.

So I started off yesterday by watching an Amazon series, which is the deep irony here, as I moved into the second episode of Ride or Die with Octavia Spencer and Hannah Waddingham. It still isn’t letting me watch the credits, so I’m still not sure who is doing the audio description. I would guess Media Access Group, but I don’t want to take a swing at identifying the voice. The audio description here is fine, and I’m enjoying the series, even though it doesn’t entirely make sense. There’s this entire conversation that Octavia Spencer’s character has in this episode that I think no normal human being would ever approach the people she approaches to have under any circumstances, save perhaps one of those films where somebody’s five-year-old kid is missing and everyone is desperately running around trying to find them. But in her situation, I can’t imagine she would have just waltzed right up like that. It took me a little bit out of Ride or Die, which is supposed to be this amazing new hit for Amazon. We’ll see about that. I like the leads, and that might be good enough.

Then I moved on to starting the third season of Tires on Netflix. I can’t believe I’m actually watching a third season of this show, but it occasionally is funny, and the thing that sealed the deal for me here is Thomas Haden Church joining the cast officially. He’s now in the opening credits. He was such an injection of life into the second season, and his brand of humor comes through in every scene that he’s in. He’s the best reason to watch the Shane Gillis show. The audio description here is fine. It’s fighting its format, like most half-hour comedies do, but it actually gets quite a bit in regarding the physical humor that Shane brings, especially in a scene where he tries to pretend like he’s injured himself. I actually laughed a little at the tag at the end of the episode where Shane is talking to one of his coworkers, and it’s clearly a January 6th joke. It was a very solid one, and I appreciated it. I thought it was funny. For someone who is an intentionally divisive comedian, it definitely makes me wonder what his thought process was in throwing that in there because he didn’t need to. It’s not really part of the episode. But it was obviously a gag he wanted to film and throw in there, so they just tossed it at the end of season three, episode one of Tires.

Then I did season one, episode seven of Tomb Raider King on Crunchyroll, which was the first episode of this series to not have audio description. I’ve run into this problem with Daemons of the Shadow Realm, which had one episode that didn’t have audio description. It’s so weird. I’m assuming the next episode will, but I powered through this one believing that when they get around to the next episode, much like Daemons of the Shadow Realm, the audio description will return. But I’m not happy. This doesn’t necessarily make me jump for joy that Crunchyroll has these weird episodes that are simply missing audio description.

Following that, I started Golden Axe, the new adult animated comedy on Paramount+ with Matthew Rhys among the voice cast. The best thing I can compare this to is The Legend of Vox Machina on Amazon, but toned down a little bit. It’s still maybe not for the whole family, but it’s not so adult that you couldn’t get through it with teens. It certainly isn’t one of those shows like Big Mouth where the style of humor can make you kind of uncomfortable to sit through. I look forward to more episodes and finding out whether Paramount+ plans on doing more of this, or whatever exactly is going on with them and their service.

Then I moved on to season one, episode three of The Doomies on Disney+, which reminds me a little bit of The Sisters Grimm that ran on Apple last fall, and another show that I remember being on Hulu about teens investigating something in a graveyard in New Orleans. I vaguely remember that show. If anybody has any idea what I’m talking about, it’s kind of the vibe of The Doomies. However, I feel so awkward doing this. I do not like what this narrator is doing. For people who are big fans of flat, detached narration, we have a winner. But for me, this would be a no. I would not choose him. There’s nothing here. It brings nothing to the track. I think there are better audio description performers out there, which is really awkward and hard to say because I know this is an actual human being. After the first episode, I didn’t stay for the credits and assumed it was synthetic because it was so exceedingly dry and bland. Then after the second episode, I heard the Pixelogic credit with an actual narrator’s name attached, and now I can’t shake the feeling that I’m giving direct criticism to a human being. But I also have to say that the struggle here for me is the narrator in the audio description. Not the writing, not the production, not the show itself. Sometimes when someone just has nothing happening in their performance, it can be more distracting than you might think for people who enjoy engaging audio description.

To that point, I also know people who don’t like performative audio description and would absolutely love this guy. They’d be all over this. So is there a place for him in the industry? I wish there wasn’t, but there is, because there are people who don’t like the other end of it. My argument on this, and why I think I win, is that narrators like this are easier to replicate through synthetic voices because there’s not much happening here. The more emotive a human narrator is, the harder it becomes to replicate that, because a synthetic voice can’t truly respond emotionally to what’s happening in a script. It’s text-to-speech. It’s reading what was written. So if a human is also just reading what was written without interpreting it at all, they’re not really doing much that a synthetic voice can’t do.

And with the way synthetic voices are encroaching, especially on Disney+, where they proved this summer that they were willing to remove human audio description from shows that had it and replace it with synthetic audio description in their new seasons, the conversation should be: How do we set up a system that retains human narrators? Because as much as this guy probably needs work, at the same time he may be his own worst enemy. If he is introducing a performance that is easily replicable by a synthetic narrator, then he could be helping build the very pathway toward something that replaces him and prevents him from getting more meaningful work or retaining a longstanding career in the industry. Instead of taking feedback and trying to figure out how to deliver a more engaging performance, if someone continues putting out this level of flat, indistinguishable narration, it’s almost like building an invisible bridge forward for companies that eventually want to rely solely on artificial intelligence to cut costs.

That leaves the people who run the companies and own the software making the money from audio description without using any of the talent that has worked so hard for so long to provide the accessibility that we need, and it serves companies looking to race to the bottom and cut costs instead of treating human audio description as the highest-quality standard in the industry. So I’m not trying to be an asshole, but I really believe that when I hear this type of narration, if you run too close to what synthetic technology is already able to replicate, now is not the time to be giving these voices a lot of space in this industry. Not until we have safeguards in place that prevent synthetic voices from encroaching all over the place. It’s great if you want to toss some audio description onto your YouTube video. It’s not great for projects that cost millions of dollars and are backed by major studios.

Lastly, I rounded out the day by watching the fourth episode of Jeopardy! Masters season four, and I’m still looking forward to seeing who wins this thing. I have the exact same feedback I had with the previous episode, which is that as the rankings become more important and we’re trying to eliminate people and work our way down, it might be beneficial for the audio description to actually say, at least at some point, who is at risk of elimination or who is ranked higher. This time I didn’t get anything at the end either. It’s much better description than we’ve gotten from ABC in the past for Jeopardy!, which makes me believe that in some part they were influenced by the far better audio description on Pop Culture Jeopardy!, but that doesn’t mean there still isn’t room for improvement.

The winner of the day on my end is probably Ride or Die. In terms of action sequences, character descriptions, facial expressions and really building that bridge so we can understand what’s happening, I think Ride or Die was probably the best example of audio description today. I just can’t confirm who does it. I know who I think does the audio description, but I can’t actually confirm it. And then at the bottom, it’s pretty hard, even after my long rant on The Doomies, not to put Tomb Raider King there, sort of saving The Doomies from that spot because it’s not fun to skip an episode. I’m not going to endorse that and give it a thumbs-up, just as I routinely ended up throwing The Walking Dead: Dead City at the bottom for not providing audio description at the time of release for its episodes. Providing the accessibility in the first place is still the bare minimum.