What did you say?

Just about a month or two ago I found myself sick with strep throat and my doctor highly advised that I take a couple days off work. The primary reason was probably the fact that I was contagious. Once the antibiotics had 24 hours to work though, it was more a matter of getting my rest.

Far too many times I have seen my wife (who used to get strep several times a year) think she is feeling better after the initial dose of antibiotics, only to realize she overdid it and ended up adding an extra day to her recovery.

Although I felt fine, I decided to follow the doctors orders and take it easy. I had just finished watching Echo on Disney + so I was looking for something new to watch. Somehow I settled on The Gentlemen on Netflix.

I think "Snatch" is one of the greatest movies ever made, so I am definitely familiar with Guy Ritchie's stuff, but I am not familiar with the movie "The Gentlemen" which he also made and though not tied to this show admittedly happens in the same "universe".

It didn't take me long into the first episode before I was hooked. There are certain things that Ritchie does really well. The setting, music, and dialog all slap so hard in this show.

I finished the first episode and I was ready to start the second when I realized that @mrsbozz might enjoy this show. I had to abstain and wait to watch the first episode with her again.

Fun fact: It was just as good the second time.

She agreed it was something she might be interested in, and we just finished the first season this past weekend. It was fantastic, I highly recommend it.

As much as I love telling people how great this show is, it's not really the reason I am writing this post. The real reason ties back to a news story I saw a few months ago talking about subtitles and how more people are using them despite not having a hearing impairment.

It was about halfway through the first episode of The Gentlemen when Suzie Glass was talking to her brother and I realize I couldn't understand half of what they were saying. That UK accent (I'll let you break down the region yourself) was just too heavy and too much for me to take.

If you think Americans have a lot of slang words, you probably have the UK to thank for that. It's just lousy with slang over there, "innit"?

We ended up watching the entire first season with subtitles on and I have to admit, it made the experience so much better.

Back to that news story... It appears there are a number of reasons that viewers are turning closed captions on these days. Part of it has to do with dialog. Things like slang and "low talkers" (hands up if you got the Seinfeld reference) have become more the norm, so a lot of times things get missed.

Additionally, studios don't always have the budget to provide top notch audio. Maybe they are short of funds, maybe they decided to spend more money on the video effects than the audio, who knows, but in some cases, the audio is just lower quality. That makes captions almost a necessity.

I never really thought about it, but it's actually a delicate dance trying to get dialog, music, and sound effects mixed properly in any given scene in a movie or tv show. It makes sense now that I say it, but I just never would have imagined before.

This fondness for captions has also ushered in a new market for being able to viscerally describe stuff via the written word. Take a look at the story I linked above to learn more, but basically captions have to come from somewhere. Eventually AI might fully take that part over, but until then, it takes real people using the proper words to elicit the emotion that a particular scene means to convey.

I was talking to my father in law and my brother in law about captions the other day. My brother in law made the comment that his step daughter watches everything on TV with the captions on. He wasn't sure why, he just knew that she did.

Apparently, she is not alone. I'm not saying I am going to start watching everything with captions on, but I'm definitely going to feel a little less embarrassed in the future when I have to switch them on.

I can't imagine half the stuff I would have missed in The Gentlemen if I hadn't broken down and flipped them on. My wife appreciated it too.

Have you watched The Gentlemen series on Netflix? What did you think? Did you need the captions? Do you often use closed captions when you watch TV/Movies?

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All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or @mrsbozz unless otherwise sourced