I feel like I consistently come in here with bad news all the time, and apparently we’re opening with bad news again. Ride or Die, the Prime Video series starring Octavia Spencer and Hannah Waddingham, has been inexplicably canceled after one season. This is particularly surprising considering it outperformed other Prime Video shows that have already been renewed. I’ve seen the trades breaking down the viewership data that is available and lining it up against shows like Off Campus, Elle, and some of the other younger-skewing series Amazon has picked up, and Ride or Die was ahead of several of them in those metrics. It was basically one of their breakout hits of the summer. So it’s bizarre that they canceled it. Paramount Television Studios is shopping the series around, which immediately makes you wonder why Paramount+ wouldn’t just pick it up. The problem is that this is an action series starring two women over 50, and good luck selling that demographic to a streaming service in 2026. You almost have to find a streamer that needs a hit and can absorb Ride or Die. Obviously, Peacock could use more scripted successes, but creatively I actually think Ride or Die makes more sense on Apple TV. Based on the content, the stars, and the production value, I could see it fitting there rather nicely. Maybe Ride or Die could even become the first real Apple TV rescue. Amazon, meanwhile, is apparently cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

And Disney has also pulled the plug on Daredevil: Born Again after its upcoming third season. There will not be a fourth, so however this story finishes is how it finishes. Hopefully that doesn’t mean the end of these characters, and we continue to see Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Elektra, Echo, and whoever else Marvel wants to pull into this corner of the MCU appearing in other projects. At least Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist are already part of the final season, so Marvel clearly understands that there is still value in these characters. Both cancellations are disappointing, but the ratings for Daredevil: Born Again’s second season weren’t great, so I’m not terribly surprised that this one is happening. Ride or Die still makes no sense to me.

The first show I actually watched was Lanterns, season one, episode six, on HBO Max, with audio description from International Digital Center, written by Dakota Green and narrated by Ren Leach. I continue to enjoy the series and the audio description, although there were a couple of things that frustrated me in this episode. Notably, we seem to have reached a point where John’s father needs to enter a nursing home, but Bernadette still sounds like she’s 30 years old over the phone. Perhaps we could age that voice up a little bit? There is something to be said for the work Lea Thompson did in the Back to the Future franchise, where Lorraine was constantly at different ages and Thompson actually attempted to make her voice reflect that. Bernadette should sound like some time has passed. This episode also featured Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner, officially strengthening that connection to the larger DC Universe and reminding us that Guy is already operating as a Green Lantern while John Stewart is still finding his way there. Meanwhile, we’re still investigating who killed Hal Jordan, which I don’t consider a spoiler at this point because his death launches the entire series. I really do love this audio description track. The one thing I might have tweaked here was the size relativity of the cube. If you know, you know. I wasn’t entirely sure how big this thing was compared to a human being, and that matters. Sometimes audio description has to forget some of the old rules and simply ask the practical question: if someone can’t see this thing, do they understand how big it is?

I followed that with The Shards, season one, episode six, which has audio description through Hulu on Disney+, although I still have no idea who is providing it because there are no credits at the end. The description itself is pretty decent, although it certainly seems to enjoy narrating the murder scenes more than anything else. There’s something intriguing about Bret and how he is being used to investigate the Trawler at the same time that Los Angeles is also dealing with the Night Stalker. Bret remains convinced that Robert Mallory, the mysterious new student who appeared at his school, is connected to the Trawler, while he is also still trying to process what happened to Matt Kellner. In this episode, that leads him to visit Matt’s father and reminisce about their past together. The more I watch The Shards, the more I realize that what I enjoy most is the 1980s atmosphere, something Ryan Murphy has always been particularly good at, including on Pose. Blending this story with the serial-killer material pulls it down a little for me because it occasionally becomes more interested in shock and awe when it could simply be an interesting exploration of these characters, this particular moment in time, and what happens to a friend group when someone new and mysterious enters it. Since Bret Easton Ellis essentially wrote himself into the original novel, there is also this fascinating pseudo-memoir quality to everything. But I’m fairly certain Bret Easton Ellis was not investigating a serial killer while he was still in high school. Blurring fact and fiction that aggressively isn’t entirely successful for me. I don’t completely hate The Shards. I also don’t love it.

Then I moved on to Tires, season three, episode two, on Netflix, with audio description by International Digital Center. This show continues to make me grateful for Thomas Haden Church, who remains an immense bright spot in a series that gives me very mixed feelings depending on whatever jokes Shane Gillis decides to make in a particular episode. Sometimes they land. Sometimes they make me cringe. Thomas Haden Church, however, continues to understand exactly what show he is in, and I appreciate him for it.

Then I segued into DMV, which I am hilariously still trying to finish, with season one, episode 13 on Paramount+, featuring audio description from the Media Access Group. This is the episode where our characters are interacting with high school students, and I continue to think DMV was a much better show than CBS was willing to give it space to become. I don’t know why this didn’t come back for a second season. It needed room to breathe, and I don’t think it was necessarily the right show to follow The Neighborhood. Maybe with better marketing it could have become a streaming success instead. CBS has always skewed older anyway, so they are accustomed to shows that don’t dominate the 18-to-49 demographic, which usually makes predicting what they will cancel somewhat difficult. Comedy seems to be stumbling there right now, and even though I’m talking about DMV, I’m also a little worried about Ghosts. It received a multi-season renewal that carried it through this upcoming sixth season, which is already a decent run for a sitcom, but I don’t know whether CBS will keep it going beyond that. Right now it’s paired with Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage, which feels like somebody drew two show titles out of a hat. CBS also has an enormous number of NCIS shows floating around, and after watching them abruptly trim the FBI franchise, we know they’re willing to prune a successful brand when they decide there are too many branches on the tree.

I’m also casually catching up on Best Medicine on Netflix. I don’t remember which episode this was, but it’s the one where Martin is basically forced to perform surgery to save someone’s life in the back of an ambulance while everyone is simultaneously trying to find him something to vomit into. I still do not conceptually understand how this man has made it this far in life with such an extreme aversion to blood. I thought it was bizarre in the previous episode that his own father apparently had no idea he had this problem, and I don’t think the show has done a particularly good job explaining how we got to this point. I’m trying to get into Best Medicine because people seem to love this show, but I also don’t think it’s nearly as great as some people think it is. You guys deserve better. It’s fine. It’s certainly better than I initially thought it was, but it’s also not the second coming. The audio description is deeply disappointing because it sounds synthetic. If it somehow isn’t synthetic, then something has gone terribly wrong with the mixing or processing because it sounds incredibly robotic, and not even like particularly good synthetic narration. It reminds me of some of the older synthetic voices Amazon was using when it was trying to rapidly increase its accessibility numbers. At least Best Medicine has audio description on Netflix, I guess. If I tried to watch the season two premiere through Disney+ with Hulu right now, I wouldn’t necessarily expect the same accessibility because Fox shows have historically been terrible about carrying their accessibility along with them from platform to platform.

Lastly, I watched Sunday night’s episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, which did not have audio description because I am impatient and the described version tends to arrive later. This episode mostly focused on UnitedHealthcare after Oliver returned from the show’s break. He covered a couple of topics up at the top for roughly five minutes before dedicating most of the episode to UnitedHealthcare, its enormous footprint within the American healthcare system, and the concerns surrounding just how much of that system one company can touch.

Best audio description goes pretty easily to Lanterns. Even with my complaint about size relativity and that mysterious cube, there is simply so much more for the description team to work with on Lanterns, and the episodes actually give them the space to describe it. That combination allows the track to do more than simply fill gaps in dialogue. It can actually help construct the world.

At the bottom, Best Medicine takes least favorite audio description. It sounds synthetic, and that alone is enough for me to put it there. If it somehow isn’t synthetic, then the processing or mixing is doing the narrator absolutely no favors because it sounds robotic enough that I assumed it was. Either way, when Lanterns is sitting at the top showing how much personality and useful visual information a strong audio description track can provide, Best Medicine is an unfortunate reminder of what happens when accessibility starts sounding more like a quota being filled than part of the creative experience.