Kicking off the Small Screen Diaries for the day, I can announce that Amazon is sticking with the totality of the Jack Reacher franchise, with Reacher being renewed for a sixth season while Season 5 is still in production. Its spinoff, Neagley, was also just renewed for a second season. So, at this point, the anchor for Amazon is clearly this franchise, and likely Reacher will go on for however long Alan Ritchson wants it to. He continues to star in projects that are both streaming exclusives as well as theatrically released titles, and until he feels like he’s firmly anchored himself into the A-list, I can’t see him stepping away from such a massive hit television series and role.

The first show I watched was one I’ve been looking forward to, Netflix’s East of Eden adaptation, starring, at least from this episode’s perspective, Christopher Abbott as Adam Trask and Mike Faist as his brother Charles, with a dash of Florence Pugh as Cathy Ames. Zoe Kazan’s adaptation has been a high-profile project leading up to its release, and it seems well positioned to do nicely in future limited-series awards races, particularly the Golden Globes and likely the Actor Awards, the newly renamed version of the Screen Actors Guild Awards. I did not read the book, but watching the story of these two brothers who don’t really get along, only to start getting along by the end of the episode before an incident is suddenly thrown in that could very easily shake everything up and turn them against each other again, was interesting. The performances here are solid across the board, and I was never unfocused by this period drama. It held my attention, and I appreciated its structure and approach. The audio description track here is from Descriptive Video Works, written by Liz Gutman and narrated by Paula Hoffman, and it’s kind of exceptional work yet again from this team. I did think it was interesting that Liz chose to describe a grave as being “a stone’s throw” from something. That’s obviously a common expression, but it also means different things to different people. Not that I think the specifics of this gravesite being a few feet closer or farther away, depending on how you interpret a stone’s throw, would dramatically change anything about the series. It was just an interesting choice. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone use “a stone’s throw” to describe distance in audio description before. Here, it’s used for something benign where even if one person interprets it as being closer or farther than the next person, I don’t see how it could possibly matter to the storyline. But in another situation, “a stone’s throw” might be used somewhere where the distance does matter, and then you have an air of ambiguity to it. Take a bunch of people outside and have them throw stones, and every stone is going a different distance. I think that’s the idea.

I followed that up with Ride or Die, Season 1, Episode 7, so I’m almost done with the first season. This had our season-long villain finally coming face-to-face with Debbie and revealing that her plan may not necessarily be to kill Debbie, but that she has a very different and potentially more nefarious way of getting back at her one-time assassin friend. Certainly, in this moment, I thought Hannah Waddingham and Octavia Spencer both did nice work. This is a good show, and I’m still angry that Amazon canceled it, considering everything I’ve read continues to suggest it was doing just fine in the ratings. I keep waiting to hear news that this show has been picked up by somebody else, especially considering it was produced by Paramount Television. But that hasn’t happened yet. Maybe canceling a Paramount-produced show in the middle of a merger puts the future of the show a little bit in doubt, but that is unfortunate. The audio description here, once again, was solid, and I would still recommend Ride or Die. I have another episode to go, but it’s looking good for a recommendation.

I jumped into Adults, Season 2, Episode 2 on Disney+ with audio description that is uncredited. I like this comedy. I think it’s worthwhile. The gang basically deals with fake IDs and the idea that once they were done with theirs, they passed them down, meaning their fake identities are still floating around out there. Now they feel some sense of responsibility for the next people who have taken over those IDs. The audio description is fine, and I would be surprised if Adults didn’t keep going, especially since its ratings are up for the second season.

I broke into Season 3, Episode 1 of The Comeback on HBO Max, so I’m finally caught up to the current season of The Comeback, which I’m still watching very late. And, oh my God, you guys. For real. The audio description is actually good. Something magical happened. 3.60 came along and didn’t just say, “Hold my beer” to whoever did the first two seasons. They took the damn beer bottle, broke it over their head, stabbed them with it and said, “We’ve got this. Everything is okay now. We slayed the monster.” There’s actual audio description in the third season. Actual attempted audio description that connects scenes together, marks transitions and finds the places where it needs to fill things in. It’s actually normal, functional audio description. Even though, in no way, shape or form could I say this is the best audio description I’ve heard this year, it kind of feels like it is because the bar was so low for the first two seasons of this show. The fact that somebody came along and wrote even a decent track for this is just amazing. I feel like I could cry. Thank you for taking the time to actually put effort into this and not just release a third season of hot garbage. The Comeback is now off my shit list. As for the third season itself, honestly, it might be its least funny season so far, but it was interesting to see how they took a turn and threw Valerie Cherish into the Broadway production of Chicago, which is notorious for letting just about anyone who wants to make their Broadway debut play Roxie Hart for a few weeks.

I also knocked out That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, Season 1, Episode 4 on Crunchyroll, which still doesn’t have audio description, and that’s actually the whole reason why I can watch it. Crunchyroll has a glitch right now that prevents me from moving forward on any of the shows I’m watching that actually have audio description. I’m waiting for the next patch because I did report the issue, and they just haven’t released an update yet. So the only show I was watching that didn’t have audio description was this one, and therefore I watched another episode. I would argue that, of all the shows you could possibly try to watch without audio description, this one functions a little bit better because Rimuru has a whole lot of inner thoughts that are constantly being vocalized, which explains a lot of what’s going on. It’s almost like one of those shows with a built-in narrator telling you about the story as it goes along. It’s not actual audio description, obviously, but it does bring a lot of context, and this show basically does that within its own structure. There’s also a movie, and I just need to know more about the anime before I watch the movie because the movie does have audio description.

Lastly, I ventured into The Paper, Season 2, Episode 3 on Peacock, with audio description by Iyuno, narrated by Dave Wallace. Again, I still love the audio description here because Dave’s performance is amazing, but the episode itself went in a couple of different directions. There was an overly long conversation about Hearst and his girlfriend that perhaps gets obsessed over a little bit too much toward the beginning of the episode. Then they throw in a conversation with HR. We see that the relationship between our quasi-Jim-and-Pam pairing is still trying to figure out exactly what it is while being followed around by a documentary crew. Then there were two B-plots, one involving a reporter who was making up quotes and suddenly having to face the horrifying reality of actually approaching people to get real quotes, and the other involving Oscar and his Mr. Digits column potentially being bought. That leads to all the financial back-and-forth around the offer, while two of the others try to take advantage of the situation by creating their own knockoff version that is vaguely racist.

The winner for audio description today is a very tough call. You might think I would pick East of Eden or even The Paper, but I kind of want to toss this one to The Comeback. I have done nothing but shit on that show’s audio description for two seasons, and the fact that HBO went with a different company and a fresh narrator made all the difference in the world. It’s like going from zero to 100. There may be other cars driving around out there that are faster, but just the feeling of getting tangible, decent, functional audio description on a show that absolutely deserves it was so wonderful that I’m going to stick it at the top. It may never get here again, but thank God it’s even in consideration. At the bottom, none of the shows I watched that actually have audio description had bad tracks, so I’ll take the easy way out and say That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime on Crunchyroll, because it doesn’t have audio description. Also because Crunchyroll’s app is currently messed up and won’t allow me to watch the shows I have been watching that do have audio description. So perhaps if Crunchyroll fixes its business, I can finally return to the shows I was in the middle of watching.