Why Does Anyone Want the Job of Hosting The Oscars?
Monday, February 25, 2013 at 12:29PM All That (85th Oscars) Jazz
The Big Night: Fun Arrivals, Winner's List, Jennifer Lawrence in the Press Room
The Look Back: Funniest Tweets, & Season Finale Podcast
The Fashions: Fifteen Men, The Ten Nominated Ladies, Goodbye Glamour
The Opening Monologue
As today's reviews will surely attest, Seth MacFarlane bombed badly last night in the unenviable host position. Why anyone would want the job is beyond me. Occasionally someone will get 'good job' reviews (Hugh Jackman, Billy Crystal, etcetera) but those positive reviews almost never come directly after the show but later in context once they're sized up in memory against newer worse hosting gigs. Nearly everyone gets mixed to negative reviews in the moment. Fact: people love to hatewatch the Oscars. To his credit (eep), MacFarlane understood this and even attempted to get out in front of the criticism by mocking it. In his interminable opening monologue (18 minutes!) he was visited from the future by Captain Kirk (William Shatner) - a joke more suited to the Emmys which he'd be a better host of given that he's a television personality -- who showed him the headlines from the next morning.
It was funny because it was true. But the gag continued. As the monologue progressed his reviews improved until he got somewhere around "mediocre". It wasn't funny because it wasn't true. [Editor's Note: The "worst" part isn't true. That title will obviously and forever belong to James Franco who couldn't be bothered to show (in spirit) though he undoubtedly cashed the check.]
See, Captain Kirk was right. His jokes were "inappropriate and offensive" and we all DID wish it were Tina & Amy hosting instead (a weird shoutout to the Golden Globes, which were without question the highlight of this awards season as televised events go though Oscar Night usually plays "no comment" on that precursor). Worse than MacFarlane's fratboy jokes though was that the humor seemed entirely centered around HIM, as if we were watching The Oscars to send 3½ hours with MacFarlane and not with the biggest movie stars in the world. Oops. Somehow doesn't know why people tune in to the Oscars.
Each year the media and the producers and even the general public play a little complicit game of "OOOH, ____ IS HOSTING AND NOW WE'RE EXCITED". But it's never the hosts. It's the movies and the movie stars! Mostly the hosts do best when they show up for brief intervals and make a funny but stay out of the way so we can gawk at stars and remember the year's most celebrated pictures and, for the less devoted, make a mental grocery list of movies we want to see now.
Perhaps Captain James T Kirk can tell us if any future Oscar Producers and Hosts figure that out.
The three most terrible moments:
- That joke about Quvenzhané and Clooney. I've since blocked it out but I have a vague memory of being offended.
- Flight reenacted with sock puppets. (Somehow there was a lot of laughter in the Dolby. Please tell me that was a laugh track and not actual enjoyment)
- That weird flying nun / seducing Sally Field skit.
So as not to be a total downer -- I enjoy the Oscars even when they're lame! -- here were a few things I think worked about Seth's performance.
- He sings well. His love of musicals was obvious and gave us fun expected moments like Charlize Theron (originally a dancer) and Channing Tatum dancing together and even a kickline with Joseph Gordon-Levitt & Daniel Radcliffe who both have a song & dance man inside of them.
- As stupid as that "we saw your boobs" number was -- it would have been much funnier if it were shorter -- the actresses who filmed reaction shots were good sports with solid comic timing and the Kate Winslet punchline was great. (Oh shut up, I bet she laughed from home). In an evening full of dumb jokes, inevitably some of them will land.
- Later in the show when he wasn't taking up so much space he was better. His introductions were sometimes amusing (loved the Channing Tatum / Jennifer Aniston intro) and I especially enjoyed the "needs no introduction" introduction for you know who, didn't you? I mean, she doesn't!
Do you have against-the-grain kind words for Seth MacFarlane or are you already making a mental list of 500 celebrities who would have done a better job last night? (If so care to share a few of them?)
And why does anyone want the job of hosting -- beyond the cash -- given that it's rather like having a worldwide target on your tuxedo'ed back?
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Reader Comments (64)
I don't think Seth's job was to be "good" as much as it was to ensure people talked like crazy about the ceremony the next day, and in that case, job well done. Next year, I want Helen Mirren. Second choice: The Muppets.
I was pleasantly surprised by Seth's hosting. I was fully expecting to not like it, and while he didn't do a great job, he was still pretty good. I don't know why people were so offended by his jokes, but that might just be me. I don't remember laughing out loud so much during an Oscars broadcast. "They remember when this place was just cocaine trees as far as the eye could see." Brilliant!
I thought he did well overall. The boobs song was my least favorite part of the show and the opening was too long. The Sally Field skit just showed what a good sport she is and a facile comedienne but it too went on too long. What surprised and pleased me the most was what a good singer he was, hadn't known that he could even carry a tune. The Charlize & co. dance routine was great but that should have been it! What the hell did we need to see scenes from Chicago, Dreamgirls etc. for? They could have cut that crap and half his intro and made space for the humanitarian awards to actually be presented rather than trotting out the winners in the audience like a dog and pony show.
Give Anne Hathaway another go with Joseph Gordon Levitt this time, or Emma Stone, with anyone or alone.
TBE -- okay, i'll admit. I did laugh once out loud during that Flight Sock Puppets skit and that was exactly then ;)
I keep insisting that Kevin Spacey would be the best possible choice for an Oscar host, but I doubt it will ever happen.
I thought Seth did fine. And remember, we got Seth because everyone else turned the job down. Heck, hasn't Tina Fey turned it down in the past too? It's such a thankless job. I didn't love everything Seth did last night but I'm starting to feel nothing but sympathy for any Oscar host (even Franco)
And actually, I thought the most uncalled for joke of the evening was the one about Jean Dujardin being irrelevant. It's only been a year, man. Give the guy a chance. You could have said the same thing about Christoph Waltz a year after his first win, and look at him now. Dujardin will be starring in two of next year's potential Oscar heavyweights (Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street and George Clooney's Monuments Men), so I think it's very clear that he's far from irrelevant.
^ I have to agree about the Dujardin joke - and I'm not even a fan of Dujardin's. Next to the Adele joke, it seemed like the most mean-spirited (and clueless, as @Edwin points out) of the night. (And Dujardin looked rather confused by it.)
What Victoria said.
Edwin -- and even if he wasn't he was totally worthy winner for The Artist, whether or not people agreed with the Best Picture win. He kept that thing soaring.
The sock puppets "Flight" but was hilarious: And more enjoyable to watch than the middle third of the movie.
I don't know how anyone could not be offended by that Adele joke. That was just mean. It's more than OK to be edgy, but when you're just vicious for a laugh--that is NOT OK. The subtext of the Denzel joke was pretty disgusting too. I thought he was terrible in general. Those who hired him had to know what they were getting. But I even thought he was smart enough to tone it down a bit for the Oscars. But he wasn't.
But he can sing, I'll give him that. He won't be back, so that's a saving grace.
The only people that complained about the Clooney joke were people that already entered the broadcast decided to hate MacFarlane no matter what he did.
The joke was obviously on Clooney and everyone in the audience seem to have understood it, everyone I knew understood it, except of course some TV and cinema critics. He never implied they were dating, and anyone with a brain realized that.
I am not a fan of his really (I haven't even watched Ted), but, while MacFarlane wasn't spectacular, he wasn't a disaster either; the terrible, terrible show ruined his chances of being a great host, but he could have been much worse. But I'd take him over more Billy Crystal any day.