The Oscars has always been an overwhelmingly obnoxious event. While the Golden Globes has booze to make things interesting and the Emmys has the inferiority complexes of television actors to keep it honest, the Academy Awards is so steeped in its own importance that it could probably make its own fancy-ass tea (it tastes of ego and the tears of a bitter Leonardo DiCaprio). But heck, even the most elegant of circle jerks can be fun sometimes (trust me, I once had a sex dream about Larry Hagman, Elaine Paige and Bob Hope), which leaves last night’s spectacular dud of a telecast with no excuse. Seriously, what a pile of garbage.
It started out promising enough. Host Ellen DeGeneres came on stage unintentionally dressed as a member of One Direction and delivered a monologue that, while not laugh out loud funny, was edgy enough to maybe kid us into thinking that she was taking a page from the Golden Globes and going a little darker with her material, but two hours of Samsung-sponsored selfie jokes later (and still with hours of the show left to go), we realized how false our hopes were. It was a night of few surprises and risks and — apart from the heartwarming win by Lupita Nyong’o — a big ol’ waste of time that I would have gladly turned off in favor of watching clips of blackhead extractions on YouTube. That said, I kept watching because I was required to by work so excited to see who the winners were from this years AMAZING batch of films. Also, I wanted to loudly heckle the real life Philomena.
Hate-watching can be the greatest, but unfortunately, this year’s Academy Awards was more boring than loathsome. Instead of “We Saw Your Boobs,” we got a bunch of jokes about Jonah Hill’s dick, which — I’m sorry — HE DIDN’T EVEN REALLY SHOW IN WOLF OF WALL STREET. It was a prosthetic so let’s stop pretending that he gave the Citizen Kane of cock performances already. (That award goes to walking cock Matthew McConaughey. BOOM. NAILED IT.)
If you noticed early in that no one seemed to be getting played off stage when their speeches ran over, that’s because NO ONE got played off stage when their speeches ran over. This year, they let winners go on and on for as long as they like. Sure, we all like to complain about how mean the orchestra conductor is when he or she starts playing off the winner of Best Sound Editing before he can even thank his own mother, but did we ever stop to consider what life would be like when he or she didn’t do that? It’s horrible! It also turns out that if you give Jared Leto can award and a microphone, he will talk forever. On a related note: plugging 30 Seconds to Mars during your Oscars speech should be a capital offense.