Monsters of Television

“This seemed like a better idea in rehearsal.”

I feel I should be clear up front: There’ll be no discussion who won, who should’ve won, what people were wearing, etc. It’s outside the scope of this blog. Instead, I’ll be talking about how the Oscars worked as a television event (it didn’t), one that is regularly hyped as a major audience gatherer (don’t know yet if that worked), and whether or not ABC really needs to keep airing this monstrosity (it probably should ask to keep enough time to air an episode of Desperate Housewives right after so the evening isn’t a complete waste).

Things didn’t exactly get off to rollicking start, and indicated the muddled tone the telecast would invoke throughout the night. A song-and-dance number by Neil Patrick Harris done on the pseudo-MGM superspecial set was lacking in interest or fun. As a result, I hoped for Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin to come out and just knock my socks off.

Sadly, I had to remove the socks myself.

The monologue was essentially a one-man monologue done by two men, comprising of the “Hey! Look! It’s so-and-so! [insert joke about them here]!” variety, something I hereby declare cannot be used in the 84th Annual Academy Awards (I’m generous, giving you a year to figure it out and transition). Clearly Martin and Baldwin have chemistry with one another, but between the writing and the format, both were bombing horribly. Their one decent joke (“In Precious, Gabourey Sidibe is told she’s worthless, nobody likes her, that she has no future. Hey, I’m with CAA too!”) was probably a little too inside-baseball for the wider audience the telecast was aiming to get.

And, boy, were they aiming for a wider audience. The 10 Best Picture nominees were already an indication of Oscars attempt to draw in more (read: younger) viewers, but the telecast itself strove to keep people happy. A tribute to John Hughes had my Twitter feed drowning in the misty, nostalgic tears of all the Gen-Xers I follow (it’s true that no one my age really uses Twitter…) while I sat there like an old fogie, wondering why, if these films were so great, why is only Jon Cryer getting a steady paycheck these days?

The telecast’s tribute to horror pictures was perhaps only valuable in that it’ll make a great clip montage to show in a genre class and discuss which of the films shown were horror pictures, and which were thriller or suspense films. Tellingly, only lipservice was paid to horror films made before 1980 (those damn Gen-Xers strike again!), indicating the type of audience they want to reach.

The rest of the evening was a quagmire of boredom, from Ben Stiller’s painfully unfunny Na’vi make-up job (which might’ve been funnier if James Cameron had a sense of humor; I can’t imagine that Sacha Baron Cohen being there would have improved the sketch) to the hosts floundering about between awards (or in a Paranormal Activity gag) to Robin Williams’ unfunny balls joke. (I’m sorry. “Unfunny” was probably redundant there.)

And then there was the dancing. Oh geeze, the dancing. Adam Shankman, judge of So You Think You Can Dance and director of various bad movies, clearly wanted to bring his mark to the show by having dance routines set to the nominees for Best Score. It flat out didn’t work. Yeah, maybe for Holmes and Avatar, but a guy doing the robot for Up? Michael Giacchino should’ve asked Shankman to explain himself when he accepted the Oscar.

Shankman also needs to explain his complete lack of smart direction. Weird camera angles abounded throughout the telecast, including the Race Cam, a camera devoted to catching the reactions of any African American actors to whenever Precious won anything. Subtle, Shankman. Someone else needs to explain editing to this group. Tyler Perry’s explanation wasn’t right, since cutting to different shots of the auditorium wasn’t actually editing, but someone saying, “Cue 45.” That’s cinematography, but we wouldn’t know that since we didn’t get any clips about cinematography.

The show was a complete mess, with some exceptions. Waltz’s speech (“Oscar and Penelope. That’s an uber-bingo.”) was a stylist laundry list. And then there was the excellent presentation from Tina Fey and Robert Downey, Jr. for the screenwriting awards. It was the only bit that felt on, and that the audience didn’t have to pretend to enjoy. Those shining moments aside, it was a bit of a slog. Tom Hanks rushing on stage to announce Best Picture pretty much summed up the on-the-fly approach this entire telecast seemed to have.

And the worst part? It’ll probably still win an Emmy.

FINAL THOUGHTS

• While I’m aware of anti-fans, and certainly I’m an anti-fan of Avatar, the experience was considerably lessened by having nothing to root for (no way in hell was Up or Inglourious Basterds going to win Best Picture). I need something to root for in place of, otherwise it’s just pointlessness hate, and that leads to the Dark Side.
• The only thing keeping me awake was the excellent live tweeting that was going on. So before she deletes it, start following all the people on this list that Kelli Marshall made for the occasion.

EDITIED FINAL THOUGHT

• A few Gen-Xers are providing corrections. Yes, the Brat Pack still works, just not in the high profile extent to which they were accustomed in the ’80s. They’re left to coast on the nostalgia, cameos here and there. Maybe this is their chance for a career renaissance? (Except, maybe, Judd Nelson.)