One woman tells another, standing last night at a newsstand on the Upper West Side, that this year’s Oscar telecast was a good show. Earlier the same day, Cindy Adams reports on a party in Hollywood where the post-Oscar crowd pretty much agreed the show was “boring. Boring. Bo-ring.”
So which is it?I guess I’d go with the folks who thought it was less than the sum of its parts. There was a pacing problem from the start. Don’t get me wrong. I like Neil Patrick Harris. I’m thinking of naming my pillow after him. He’s adorable, and he was great on the Tonys and…then didn’t he even show up on the Emmys? But the Oscars? I thought he was oddly out of place, as was that musical number. By my count, the show started three different times.
The hosts should have been allowed to host. They needed a bit more air time, and I think I know where to get it—cut the God-awful, poorly choreographed salutes to the musical scores and lose the horror movie retrospective. Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin could have used a bit more time…and we could have used one or the other, probably. I’m not sure they worked particularly well as a team. But it was worth a shot.
In the end, I’m not sure this show can be saved. It’s just so looooooooooooong. More people watched this year, which is good news for ABC. But the direction seems to be done in some sort of defensive crouch, as if the people behind the telecast do not want to offend anyone. So they wind up entertaining us less than they might.
Still, my unhealthy relationship with Oscar is likely to continue. I cannot quite say the show matters to me the way it once did. But I find it very hard to give up on it altogether.
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