Unfortunately, we have to start off the Small Screen Diary for today with a sad bit of news. Not really, because I gave up on the show after the first episode, but I’m sure someone out there cares. Netflix has canceled Sweet Magnolias, which really indicates to me, following the cancellation of Ransom Canyon, that there’s a very specific audience that has either abandoned Netflix or that Netflix is looking at abandoning. And if I was a fan of Virgin River, I would be afraid. I would be very afraid. I mean, I am casually a fan of Virgin River, but also, if that show gets a final season announcement, I’m not going to cry myself to sleep. Sweet Magnolias had five seasons and isn’t being given a proper finale, so Netflix clearly doesn’t believe every single program needs to have a conclusion.

That being said, onto the diary for today, which kicks off with Stuart Fails to Save the Universe, season one, episode nine. I believe we’re one episode away from the season finale. I realize these episodes are super short. I think this episode was something like 17 minutes, which feels almost like an Adult Swim program at that point, but I am still very much enjoying the show. It’s a lot of fun, it’s very irreverent, and it manages to utilize its excellent audio description from Elliott Schiff in new ways every single time, particularly because of the opening credit sequence. In this week’s episode, not only do we get another cameo from Mayim Bialik as Amy, but we also dipped into corporate synergy by having our comic book heroes end up inside a comic book, specifically a DC comic book, since they’re already living under that Warner Bros. umbrella and can actually benefit from using those characters. So The Flash actually made an appearance, which was a lot of fun. We’re also learning a little bit more about where this show is headed. It’s already been picked up for a second season, so I’m excited to see them go on more adventures while continuing to fail to save the universe.

I followed that up with Trying, season five, episode two, as our main characters continue to explore interesting scenarios and answer questions like: What am I supposed to do when my daughter’s birth mother returns to her life? Am I just supposed to trust that she’s not going to get her back into her old ways? And also, what happens when your husband is supposedly rowing across the Atlantic Ocean, but really isn’t? Because, come on. Did anyone actually think that man was going to be able to row across the Atlantic Ocean in the first place? Trying has always been a charming and very underrated show. I’m surprised it has made it this long, but pleasantly surprised. Please give it a look from the beginning if you haven’t started watching Trying. It does have audio description. I’m not going to just assume it’s Pixelogic, because I assume Apple does occasionally hire a company that is not Pixelogic to do audio description.

After that, I watched another episode of Mating Season. I’m not really sure which episode, but it dealt heavily with orgies, so if you’ve already made it through that episode, you should know exactly what I’m talking about. I’m enjoying this show more than I thought I would, considering I wasn’t a huge fan of Big Mouth or Human Resources, and this comes from the same creative universe. The audio description tries to do the most that it possibly can. It’s the same narrator who does Rick and Morty, and he seems to understand adult animation very well. So kudos to the team here because, even though they can’t possibly describe everything that needs to be described, they do try to get most of the humor in there. If I have one note for season two, it would be this: What animals are these people? I do not know. I guess they’re not people. They’re animals. But what animals are the animals?

Then I followed that up with The Shards, season one, episode five, I believe, where another character bit the dust, although not a major one. I find this show occasionally intriguing when it gets into the ‘80s vibe of it all, but then it has this weird serial killer plot and these bizarre deaths that it feels compelled to throw in, almost like it’s shoehorning another plot from another story into this one. So it doesn’t quite work for me as a show. The audio description is fine. This time I actually was able to let the credits play out, and I realized there aren’t any audio description credits. No one is credited with doing the audio description for the show. No company, no narrator, no writer, nothing. What the hell, guys? Twelve seconds. That’s all we’re talking about. Not only does it help those of us in the blind community know who to complain to if something goes awry, but it’s also the best advertising tool any of these audio description companies and performers have. To lose that because a studio is telling you to lose the credit is basically allowing yourself to be marginalized even further within a form of accessibility that is occasionally legally required, but certainly not always.

After The Shards, I moved into The Traitors: New Blood, which is sort of like the first season of The Traitors, back when they actually still had regular people on the show. It’s nice to see Alan Cumming coming back. I don’t know who any of these people are because they’re supposed to be random people off the street, and in the first episode he chooses two Traitors and sets them up with the premise that they will have to choose a third. But the twist this time is that they’re going to make offers to two individuals to join them, and those two will compete in some kind of challenge in the next episode to earn the approval of the current Traitors. They’ll choose one to become a Traitor, and the other one will be murdered. So somehow these two have to choose two people who could viably be Traitors but whom they’d also be perfectly comfortable murdering. It’s an interesting twist. Personally, I would pick two people I liked, figuring I’d probably be picking strong players anyway. Then whoever loses is simply a strong player who isn’t there anymore. It’s the first elimination. Nobody really has alliances or friendships yet. The first murder is actually the easiest.

The audio description here has been given a shot in the arm since the previous season of The Traitors, when Peacock actually invested in human audio description and got rid of that text-to-speech crap they had been using for their highest-rated Emmy contender. Oddly, this is being billed as The Traitors season five on my watch list through the TV app on my iPhone, even though it’s technically titled The Traitors: New Blood and there’s another season with celebrities coming in the spring. But hey, I’m perfectly fine with getting two cycles of The Traitors every year. I miss it when it’s not here. The international versions on Peacock aren’t audio described, so they’re much harder for me to follow.

Lastly, I checked in again on Dancing with the Stars, and it still does not have audio description for night one of the men. I went ahead and finished the episode because I’ve been slowly pushing my way through it, even though it doesn’t have description and I can’t understand the dancing. Also, who are these guys? Most of them are not celebrities. I don’t know where these people came from. I think one of them is on something called the Savannah Bananas, and I wish I knew what that was. We’ve apparently moved beyond reality-show contestants and into “I guess he’s a social media sensation?” territory. I don’t know. But the elimination made me feel bad. I won’t spoil it, but I felt bad for the pro.

Anyway, onwards and upwards. The best audio description of this group was Stuart Fails to Save the Universe. It had some interesting material to describe with the comic-book nature of how this particular episode starts, and I really appreciated what the team did with it. At the bottom, the lack of audio description on Dancing with the Stars in season 35 is unfortunate. I think they may add it at a later date, but I’m still trying to figure out exactly what’s happening there and whether they’re continuing to provide audio description this season. So I’m tentatively locking Dancing with the Stars in at the bottom because I didn’t dislike any of the actual audio description tracks I heard. You can’t really beat a track that’s missing entirely.