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We’ve seen this show before

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Nice, but not enough.

Really, the only reason anybody watches the Oscars is so they can carp about it the next day, or text clever remarks during the show itself. I’m no different. I had my laptop out and was trying to run with the best of them, but I gave up after about an hour. There was just nothing ridiculous enough, or outrageous enough, or even interesting enough to inspire much reaction. Yes, I noted J-Lo.’s areola, Angie’s pale leg, and Sascha Baron Cohen’s urn full of ashes, but that’s thin gruel for a four-hour show.

There’s one other good thing about the Oscars, and that’s reading what the pros write about it later. I’m no pro, so I won’t compete. The best summary I’ve found is this one, by the Washington Post’s Hank Stuever. His second graf sets the tone:

“Billy Crystal … seemed to be overseeing a cruise ship dinner show designed to appeal to the over-50 travel club. Early on, it hit the rocks and started to list. Almost everyone drowned.”

Yep, that sounds like the show I watched. There was one exception: The Wizard of Oz focus-group sketch was pure gold. How I love to see the Best in Show crowd back together again, if only for a few precious moments.

The rest: Not so precious. Maybe because I was watching it alone. I don’t want to sound as jaded as everybody else, but what struck me most about the show was the sameness of it. And the overall pointlessness. Tired jokes aside, at least a third of the show’s running time always consists of people endlessly thanking other people we’ve never heard of. The other two thirds is just preening celebrities — which is less compelling than it used to be, back before cable and the Internet.

I don’t know. The show’s 84 years old. Too old for reinvention, probably. And maybe past time for retirement.

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Comments

  1. Joan says

    It’s hard to enjoy a show about awards that are given to films that I also find it hard to enjoy. I turned it off and read a book. I was glad to hear that Meryl Streep was honored. She has real class and real talent.

  2. TrishC says

    Brian and I were going to watch the awards last night. Instead we watched a DVD we have called The Illusionist for the second time. Sounds like we made a good choice. The Illusionist is an old but awesome movie.

  4. Paul Jefferson says

    It’s weird how such a crowd of up-and-coming, seemingly ultra modern, rich, without mores or morals crowd of “swells” get upset with a post-modern humorist like Ricky Gervais (who stands in for us hoi-polloi) and can instead prefer the safer musings of a Borsch-Belt comedian that Billy Crystal seems to have morphed into.