Since it’s Sunday morning, let’s start by looking at a couple of shows coming up this week that you may be interested in. From what I can tell, one of the biggest premieres is War, the new HBO Max legal drama starring Dominic West and Sienna Miller, which has a lot of buzz around it and drops on Thursday. That’s the same day as East of Eden, Zoe Kazan’s new adaptation starring Florence Pugh, which premieres on Netflix. We also have some returning favorites this week, including Scrubs on ABC, plus the Animation Domination block with The Simpsons, Grimsburg and Universal Basic Guys, along with the live-action Animal Control. The Amazing Race is returning for another season, marking 25 years of The Amazing Race on CBS. LEGO is getting in on the One Piece action with a special on Netflix, and if you got yourself all caught up on Adventure Time: Side Quests, the second season is dropping on Hulu. In terms of movies, Tyler Perry has a new movie on Netflix because of course he does, and Soulm8te, the M3GAN spinoff, is hitting Hulu, which is baffling because it’s produced by Universal, who apparently is trying so hard to distance themselves from this movie that they won’t even send it to their own streaming service. Good luck hoping that thing premieres with audio description.

The first show of the day yesterday was the Season 2 premiere of Leanne on Netflix, with audio description done by VSI. While I was rotten on the first season, I’ll admit that the Season 2 premiere felt more polished than anything they did in Season 1. The writing was tighter, and the jokes felt more organic and less forced, although the opening gag about Leanne turning 60 felt like they were beating a dead horse because it went on for so long. The rest of the episode was mostly charming, and I’m kind of interested to see if this shorter 10-episode second season can end up surpassing the much longer 16-episode first season. I don’t know why Netflix reduced the episode count, but they must not love Leanne quite as much as we think they do. The audio description here is pretty normal for a sitcom, doing what it can in the limited spaces between all that dialogue.

Next up, I jumped into the second season of Adults on Disney+ with Hulu. This episode also has audio description and features the same sort of uphill battle of trying to describe comedy in and around a ton of dialogue. This one might actually have slightly above-average description for the genre, finding enough room to contribute without stepping all over the jokes. I enjoy Adults, and I’m happy it came back for a second season. I think it has a lot of potential, and it reminds me quite a bit of Happy Endings. With the show seemingly building its audience in Season 2, I’d be surprised if it doesn’t get a third season. It’s a show worth investing in if this is your type of comedy.

Next on the list was Golden Axe, which I’m actually only on Season 1, Episode 2 of on Paramount+. Media Access Group does the audio description, and it’s pretty excellent when they’re able to fit stuff in. They are fighting the format here, especially because this is fantasy, so occasionally the description can feel a little underwhelming simply because there isn’t enough time to explain everything that’s flying across the screen. When Gilius and Hampton were trying to pick out which creature they should ride, I felt like some of those creature descriptions were a little weak. They weren’t given a lot of time, and ultimately most of those creatures didn’t matter because they weren’t selected, but I still wanted a little more there. That’s a minor complaint about what is otherwise a strong track. If you like The Legend of Vox Machina on Amazon, I think you’ll probably like Golden Axe.

Fourth on my list was, yes, another episode of The Five-Star Weekend on Peacock, which has excellent audio description from Iyuno. This is one of the more verbose audio description tracks I’m listening to right now, and I am absolutely here for it. The friend circle finally has to have a come-to-Jesus moment with Hollis, played by Jennifer Garner, and let her know the truth about Gigi, played by Gemma Chan, right at the end of the episode. So we shall see what happens in the next episode, because they leave you hanging as to exactly how Hollis is going to react to Gigi and the revelation about her relationship with Matthew. However, based on the general warm, loving, TLC vibe of this show, I have a feeling Hollis and Gigi are eventually going to hug it out and become besties. Maybe not immediately, but this does not exactly feel like the kind of show where Hollis is going to throw Gigi off a cliff.

Then I continued with my catch-up of Breaking Bad. I know I’m almost at the end of the season because the next episode is “Face Off,” and Walt and Jesse are clearly painted into a corner here. Netflix has the series with audio description by Descriptive Video Works, narrated by Diane Newman, and the audio description is always great. It’s fascinating watching Walt and Jesse trying to figure out how they could possibly outsmart Gus when it feels like there’s no hope left. What’s interesting is the suggestion that Walt’s death could be on the table, because how do you convince an audience that Walter White might die at this point in the series? It’s nearly impossible to do. There are just some characters in certain shows that you know cannot exit, so every time they are placed in peril, it becomes incredibly difficult to sell the idea that the show might actually take them out. A lot of the shocking television deaths we remember come from adaptations where those deaths were already written into the source material. Game of Thrones and The Last of Us are obvious examples without getting into specific spoilers. Breaking Bad isn’t adapted from anything, and it needs Walter White to move its story forward. So while I’m appreciating all of this tension, buildup and direction, at no point do I actually believe Walt is in danger of being permanently removed from the series, even if I didn’t already know how the show ends. It’s a really difficult trick to pull off. At this point, they have a better chance of convincing the audience that Jesse could exit than Walt.

Finally, at the end of the day, I hit the second episode of American Hostage on MGM+, also with audio description, and I like this track as well. It’s a good track that tries to maximize what is essentially an extended conversation between two people in two different locations. Giovanni Ribisi’s performance as Tony Kiritsis is just off the chain. I really enjoyed the film Dead Man’s Wire, where Bill Skarsgård played Kiritsis, and I thought his performance was tremendous as well. But Ribisi is really working overtime here to remind people to cast him because he is an extraordinary actor. Maybe Tony Kiritsis is simply one of those roles that gives an actor a ton to work with, because we’ve now gotten two fascinating performances out of the same real-life person. Jon Hamm, for what it’s worth, is also solid here as radio newsman Fred Heckman, and watching Hamm and Ribisi play off each other, despite their characters largely communicating remotely, is what makes the show so juicy. The fact that they’re able to take a story that was condensed into a movie and stretch it into an eight-episode limited series while keeping it engaging, at least through these first two episodes, is kind of an amazing feat in and of itself.

So, at the top of these six shows, all of which had pretty strong or solid audio description, I would have to put Breaking Bad simply because that audio description track is always so damn good. I don’t really have a bottom show this time. The only thing that disappointed me at all was a couple of the descriptive choices in Golden Axe, but the track itself is absolutely not a bad track. I just wish they had made a couple of different choices in that second episode. I don’t even want to use the word “worst” here, because nothing I listened to deserves it. But if I absolutely had to rank these six tracks from one through six, Golden Axe would land at number six. Sometimes somebody has to be at the bottom even when everybody showed up ready to play.