Well, to start off my Friday, of course I watched the season finale of Stuart Fails to Save the Universe on HBO Max with audio description narrated by Elliot Schiff. The finale, “Spoiler: Filmed Before a Live Studio Audience,” of course has people divided, but the one thing we shall not be divided on is the excellent audio description that Elliot has provided all season long. I actually liked this show way more than I thought I would when they conceptually announced that there would be yet another Big Bang Theory spinoff. I figured it would continue to deplete the original source material, but there’s something uniquely offbeat and quirky about Stuart Fails to Save the Universe. Even though it takes four characters I don’t think many Big Bang Theory fans were necessarily demanding to see again, Stuart Bloom, Denise, Bert Kibbler and Barry Kripke, and creates an entire series around them, it’s a great example of how even the smallest recurring characters can suddenly be propelled into their own series if given the opportunity. If you have a great premise, that’s all you need. A lot of the hot takes around the season finale lean toward there not being a clear segue into Season 2. My bet would be that they didn’t know exactly where things would stand when they made the finale, so they shot this as something that could function on its own and are probably as pleased as we are that HBO Max renewed the show for a second season. The finale is extremely meta, and I appreciated it.

I followed that up with Trying, Season 5, Episode 3, “The Mousetrap,” on Apple TV, where Nikki finds out what mousetraps actually do and becomes horrified by it, setting out on a mission to get the mousetraps out of her job before they can kill any mice. That’s basically the plot. Yes, Jason is still pretending to row across the ocean and some other things are happening, but the mousetrap situation takes up a significant chunk of the episode. Nikki is also still worried that Princess’s birth mom is going to cause trouble, but there wasn’t much advancement of that particular storyline in the third episode. I love this show. I wish more people were watching it, although the fact that it has made it to five seasons means that somebody is watching it. I just don’t know any of those people. Maybe you’re one of those people. Do you watch Trying?

Third on the list became The Gentlemen, Season 2, Episode 1, “The Road to Kingdom,” on Netflix, as I jumped back into Guy Ritchie’s crime series. While the show remains entertaining, I will say that as a season premiere, it didn’t do much to remind me what happened in Season 1. I kind of missed having a substantial catch-up, especially because I had just experienced a great one a day earlier with My Life with the Walter Boys, which made me feel like I didn’t even need to rewatch the second season and could just jump right into the third. The Gentlemen basically said, “Hope you remember this,” and kicked me into the show. Perhaps the takeaway here is that streaming services should actually be investing more in recaps at the beginning of new seasons, especially when Netflix’s shows can disappear for years between seasons. I’m not saying I completely forgot The Gentlemen Season 1, but a lot of the intricacies and subplots? Let’s be honest, I watch a lot of television. Could I tell you every single thing that happened in Season 1? Absolutely not. Did I need a recap that gave me that extra jolt before running into Season 2? Definitely. Is Guy Ritchie, for some reason, making better television right now than movies? Yes. Unequivocally.

Fourth up was The Traitors: New Blood, which I’m only on the second episode of, and this was brutal because it essentially featured three eliminations in one episode. We got to see the two original Traitors commit their first murder, sending Kim home. They then selected two potential new Traitors who were tasked with spending the remainder of the episode trying to impress them enough to become their third. There was a Round Table vote that sent another Faithful home, and then the final selection of who would become the remaining Traitor, which effectively sent the person who wasn’t chosen home as another murder. All in one episode. Then again, this is New Blood, and they’re airing it on linear television, so it’s possible they’re trying to move at a quicker pace than they would on Peacock. But even Peacock’s last season only had 11 episodes, so you don’t have to dead sprint toward the finale. I think, especially with unknown contestants, it takes us a minute to get acclimated to everyone.

While we’re on the topic of reality shows on NBC, what the hell happened to the second season of Destination X? NBC renewed the Jeffrey Dean Morgan-hosted reality competition back in March, but at the time the network said production would begin later in 2026. I had assumed we might see another summer season since the first one aired during summer 2025, but obviously that didn’t happen. So where is Destination X going to land on NBC’s schedule once they actually get Season 2 made? Who knows? I actually enjoyed the first season, so hopefully we aren’t waiting forever to find out.

Then I knocked out The Shards, Season 1, Episode 6, “Homecoming Part One.” After a certain scent appears on one of the students, Rhonda becomes convinced that person was their captor when, of course, they weren’t. So, with that misdirection in place, we also have Bret confronting who he believes is the Trawler, and the two of them having an interaction that very much suggests, “Stay out of my way.” The episode ends with the not-so-shocking reveal of the decapitated head of a character we’ve assumed has been dead for quite a while now. The audio description here is fine. It’s just that there are no credits to tell me who did any of it, which remains frustrating.

Lastly, I watched the Season 2 premiere of Celebrity Weakest Link, “Reality Villains,” which doesn’t have audio description, but I caught it on Disney+. There’s also this weird glitch now on my version of Disney+ where shows coming off broadcast television that would normally have had a commercial break suddenly repeat the first few seconds after every break. I’m on an ad-free tier, so instead of actually getting the commercials, I apparently get this weird little hiccup every time the show returns from where the commercials would have been. Kind of obnoxious. The episode itself wasn’t particularly interesting to me because it was entirely reality stars. If you love reality TV and wanted to see reality TV villains, this might be up your alley, but it also felt like we were stretching a little to find eight people. Monica Garcia, for example, was only on one full season of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, but apparently became iconic enough as a reality villain to be standing there alongside people like Tom Sandoval, Omarosa, Richard Hatch and Tiffany “New York” Pollard. I’m just not feeling it. I knew as soon as Big Ed started describing his collection of fart jars that he was going to get eliminated. Who wants to deal with that? Meanwhile, everybody seems to understand that New York is not exactly the strongest trivia player in the room, so there appears to be a concerted effort not to eliminate her. Why would you? If I were one of the other seven, I’d want to face New York in the finale too. So suddenly Celebrity Weakest Link becomes The Race to Face New York.

In terms of audio description winning, there were a couple of good tracks here. Basically, anything that actually had an audio description track was solid today. However, with the mechanics of the Stuart Fails to Save the Universe finale and everything Elliot Schiff had to navigate, I have to hand the win to Stuart once again on the way out the door. The obvious loss here is Celebrity Weakest Link, which did not have audio description on Disney+. FOX does provide audio description for some of its programming on broadcast, but the larger problem remains how inconsistent those tracks are about making the journey over to Disney+ for next-day streaming. It’s another opportunity to point out that this remains an epic fail in the symbiotic relationship FOX has with Disney+. Send your audio description with your show. How hard is that?