Yesterday, I talked about the renewal of one show and realized that I completely skipped over another renewal, which was Imperfect Women on Apple TV. This surprised me because it really isn’t a show that needs a second season, and it falls right in line with the ongoing trend of making me wonder why we even bother labeling things limited series anymore. It was a limited series, and now it has a second season coming, so it’s not very limited, is it? Apple has ordered a second season of Imperfect Women that will focus on Kerry Washington’s character, Eleanor, continuing her story from the first season. Whether or not anybody else from the first season will pop in remains to be seen, although Elisabeth Moss is staying on as an executive producer. I can’t imagine this resulting in the same quality as the first season, but they’re putting a lot of faith in Kerry Washington, so we’ll see. Also, remember that my shows are now listed more in order of recommendation instead of the order I actually watched them. Anything could be at the top now. It could be the last thing I watched, it could be somewhere in the middle of the day. All bets are off. Although yesterday the top show was the first show I watched, and honestly, that is repeating itself again today.

Once again, the best thing I watched was also the first: East of Eden, season one, episode two, which is on Netflix with audio description produced by Descriptive Video Works, written by Liz Gutman and narrated by Paula Hoffman. In the second episode, we explore much more of Florence Pugh’s Cathy Ames, where she came from, her backstory, how she has interacted with men in the past, and the groundwork for where this character is headed. She’s a complex character because I feel like I should always believe women and root for women, but Cathy makes it really hard to do so. The way the show is structured makes it seem like there’s something lurking beneath the surface that just isn’t right about her, even though we also see her endure some really terrible shit that would understandably cause her to become innately distrustful of everyone around her. There’s also something almost gleeful about the way she enacts revenge whenever she gets the upper hand. The second episode gives Pugh considerably more to do than the first, and after just this one episode, I immediately felt like she’s headed toward a Golden Globe nomination. This will still be fresh in people’s minds, and I would assume she’ll also be in the conversation for the Actor Awards and eventually the Emmys. She’s all over this episode, and it’s a terrific performance. I still really like East of Eden. It’s engaging and interesting for a period drama, with all of these different male characters coming at the story from different perspectives and making me curious about exactly what John Steinbeck was trying to explore. I didn’t read the book, so everything is fair game for me as someone unfamiliar with where this story is headed.

Coming in second place, and in a completely different format, is Jeopardy! Masters, season four, episode eight, which featured the final semifinal matchups and brought us down to the final three. This does have audio description on Disney+, and the audio description here is better than Celebrity Jeopardy!, although still not quite as good as Pop Culture Jeopardy! We are moving in the right direction. There are times when the description actually identifies what needs to be read on screen and gives me information that is genuinely helpful. Not always, because it still misses a few things, but it’s way better than what I heard on Celebrity Jeopardy! during its last cycle. They’re either using a much better synthetic voice or this is actually being described by a human, because it sounds considerably better. My gut still says Disney and ABC wouldn’t pay a human for the relatively small amount of description needed for Jeopardy!, especially considering how much they’ve been leaning on synthetic voices. Since there aren’t any audio description credits at the end, though, I can’t validate anything, not even the company responsible for the track.

In third place, I’m giving it to Lioness, season two, episode three, “Along Came a Spider,” which is on Paramount+ with audio description from Media Access Group. I’m still catching up because I never watched the second season, and there’s something writers do that makes me want to punch people in the face. When you’re working with a limited group of characters and this isn’t based on previous material or an actual person’s life, you have the creative ability to choose literally any name you want. Yet somehow, in a series where the lead character played by Zoe Saldaña is named Joe McNamara and constantly referred to as Joe, they decided to introduce Captain Josephina “Josie” Carrillo, played by Genesis Rodriguez. So now we have Joe and Josephina having conversations with each other. It makes me hate you. This is an original concept. There is absolutely no need for this. Josephina could have been named literally anything. There aren’t even that many female characters on the show, so aside from six or seven names, the world was their oyster, and they settled on Joe and Josephina. It is maddening. However, plot-wise, story-wise and acting-wise, this is where Lioness belongs in the rankings. The audio description from Media Access Group is also consistently solid, especially on these Taylor Sheridan shows. So I appreciate all of that. But, yeah, this character-name thing is driving me insane.

In fourth place is one of the two new shows I started, Sterling Point, whose pilot I watched on Prime Video. This is a series that was very quickly picked up for a second season, and Amazon clearly seems determined to find another The Summer I Turned Pretty. They’re throwing quite a few young-adult shows at the wall, and even some that don’t seem to be registering quite as strongly are getting swift renewals because they fit the demographic Amazon is obviously chasing. The audio description here isn’t a problem. It’s just that Sterling Point itself feels so generic, and I feel like I’ve seen this story a thousand times before. Annie Jacobson, played by Ella Rubin, and her twin brother Connor, played by Keen Ruffalo, discover that their estranged grandfather has died and left them an island in Canada. Their adoptive father has apparently done everything in his power to keep this part of their late mother’s family away from them, but Annie decides to go against his wishes and head to Canada to see what the hell is going on. She gets to Sterling Point, meets some more teenagers, has some fun and discovers, oh my God, she might have a half-sister. I was kind of bored. I also felt similarly while watching Every Year After, another attempt by Amazon to replicate the magic of The Summer I Turned Pretty. Sterling Point does feel inherently different from The Summer I Turned Pretty, it’s just nowhere near as interesting and the characters are kind of boring. In this same general realm, Off Campus was a better swing for them. They’ve even let shows go, like The Runarounds, that at least felt more unique in terms of targeting a young-adult audience. Sterling Point feels like something that would have aired on The CW or The WB 20 years ago and been canceled after 13 episodes. Yet it’s already been picked up for a second season, which remains mind-boggling to me.

At the very bottom, I have American Horror Story: 13, which is on Hulu and Disney+ with audio description. I haven’t seen every single season of American Horror Story. I’ve dabbled throughout its 13-season run. I did watch the first season in its entirety, and I thought Murder House was great. The audio description here is done by Sri Gordon, and I didn’t really have a problem with the description. It’s fine. There was maybe one glitch where I swear she said “directed by Ryan” and then just didn’t give him a last name. It is, in fact, Ryan Murphy, who directed the premiere, so I’m not crazy. The show itself, however, is currently sitting somewhere in Webster’s Dictionary under “lack of nuance.” That’s not one word, but maybe we should invent one specifically for Ryan Murphy. This is one of the worst season premieres I think I’ve ever seen. If you watched this episode as a drinking game and took a shot every time somebody said the number 13, you’d be dead before the end credits. He’s trying so desperately to make sure everyone understands that 13 is a superstitious number and this is season 13 and therefore everything must revolve around the number 13. One character is obsessed with 13, another is terrified of 13, and you’ll never guess what number keeps coming up. This episode isn’t even very long, a little over half an hour, and it still felt like it was beating me over the head with its themes. Jessica Lange has some truly awful dialogue, and then we get a hospice worker being told to clean out the urethra of a catatonic man before having to stick a finger up his ass to clean him out. I’m sorry, but that’s not horror. It’s gross, certainly, but it would be gross in literally any genre. There’s also such a campy quality to the way Lange approaches some of this dialogue that it almost feels like she knows what she’s been handed is ridiculous. She’s leagues better than this, and I don’t understand why she keeps working with Murphy when this is what he’s giving her to do. If I keep watching, I feel like I’m just going to become increasingly disappointed by the way Ryan Murphy continues to attract some of the best actresses alive and then gives them some of the worst material imaginable. I don’t think I’ve seen a truly great Ryan Murphy series since Pose. This is the guy who once gave us Nip/Tuck, brought Glee to life, directed The Normal Heart, and oversaw those first two stunning seasons of American Crime Story covering the O.J. Simpson trial and the assassination of Gianni Versace. Those were well-directed, well-written, well-acted and well-produced shows. Then I look at so much of what he’s been doing lately, and it just feels like trash. Even Murder House was an excellent first season of American Horror Story. This is not. I don’t want to watch any more of this. I thought it was terrible.

Ranking purely on audio description, East of Eden is the best, hands down. There was a choice Liz Gutman made in this episode that I thought was incredible. There’s a scene where Florence Pugh reaches out as though she’s going to touch someone, and the description compares the movement to tentatively reaching out toward a wild animal, that feeling where you’re not entirely sure whether you can safely pet a stray dog. It’s so specific that I feel like almost everybody understands exactly what that movement looks like. Last time, I commented on Liz using “a stone’s throw,” which was another interesting choice, even if technically a stone’s throw means something a little different depending on how far somebody can throw a stone and how big the damn stone is. Here, though, we’ve all tentatively reached toward something before, and it was such an interesting way of describing that movement that it stuck with me. That’s what keeps Liz constantly at the top of her game. She finds interesting ways to communicate an image instead of repetitiously relying on the same words and structures everyone else uses. At the bottom, technically, is Jeopardy! Masters. It’s probably the least substantial description of these five shows, and the fact that I’m still not 100% convinced it’s even human pretty much solidifies its position at the bottom. I would love to put American Horror Story down there after what I just watched, but the audio description isn’t the problem.