Oscars Recap: Great Host, Bad Bits, Terrible Sound, and Shockingly Little Politics
Give me all of the Conan O'Brien movie sketches, but maybe upgrade the microphones before next year.
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The 98th Academy Awards took place last night, and so far most of the reactions I’ve read have focused only on the most evergreen of Oscars telecast gripes. It was too long, it was boring, the speeches were too preachy, they raved about movies I haven’t seen, and blah blah blah. They could’ve all been pre-written. It is with a heavy heart that I must announce that the celebs are at it again, and so forth.
As some dweeb in the New York Post wrote, “Entertainment for the viewers at home often got the brush in favor of repetitious politics. A lot of the speeches were finger-waggy without any emotional oomph beneath them. Call me old fashioned, but I’m a big fan of: Let your work speak for itself and don’t go over your allotted time.”
I am not familiar with “got the brush” as an idiom, but “finger waggy?” I can remember exactly one person saying something explicitly political the entire evening: Javier Bardem, who led his presenter bit with “No to war and free Palestine.”
12 seconds! Does that seem finger waggy to you? It was tasteful, succinct, and correct, if you ask me.
Overall it was a shockingly apolitical ceremony (minus some oblique references to fascism and a few Jimmy Kimmel jokes about Melania) given that it took place just weeks after the outbreak of a new illegal war in the Middle East. You might say it was even a little disappointing in that regard. Certainly this year’s ceremony lacked anything like Michael Moore getting booed for opposing the Iraq War in 2003. As a commenter wrote here a few days ago, “I don’t think this war has penetrated the collective consciousness a tenth as much as Iraq did in ‘03, so I won’t be surprised if Hollywood has no problem ignoring it altogether.”
That certainly seems to have been proven broadly correct. Though I have to think there was also an element of calling this war out as a folly seeming redundant, and being outspoken about it seeming a little pointless. If Trump and his buddies didn’t care about public opinion enough to even make a case for this war before they started it, why would they care what the public thinks now? Broadly it was a little disappointing, but I can also understand just wanting to enjoy your one shining moment of professional recognition at the pinnacle of your career.
As far as surprises go, they were few and far between. The live-action short Oscar ended in a tie, Michael B. Jordan took a surprise(ish) victory over Chalamet in the best actor category (the opera singer/ballet dancers’ revenge!), and Sean Penn did end up winning supporting actor (his third Oscar), though he didn’t bother showing up to accept it.
“Sean Penn couldn’t be here tonight… or, didn’t want to, and so I’ll be accepting the award on his behalf,” said the presenter and last year’s winner, Kieran Culkin.
That was a nice little moment, though I sort of wish Culkin had done an entire acceptance speech in character as Sean Penn. Why didn’t Sean Penn attend the Oscars? According to the New York Times, he was in Ukraine. No word yet on exactly what he was doing there, but I look forward to a guest-written article in Rolling Stone in a few months about how he farted on Volodymyr Zelensky.
Elsewhere, many of the winners took the opportunity to remember people who had helped them along the way, or departed friends and family who were particularly important to them. Paul Thomas Anderson (whose film, One Battle After Another, won six awards) dedicated his first Best Director Oscar to his former AD, Adam Somner, who died in 2024. “I share this with a friend of mine on the other side of the shadows. His name is Adam and he is having a gin and tonic and is so happy for me and our crew,” Anderson said in his acceptance speech.
In a weirdly funny turn of phrase, Anderson said later, during the same speech, “I want to thank the Academy for finding my work worthy of this highest honor. And my classmates: Chloé, Ryan, Joachim and Josh, I couldn’t ask for a better class. It’s an honor to be counted amongst you guys. There will always be some doubt in your heart that you deserve it, but there is no question at the pleasure having it for myself.”
I’m not entirely sure what that means, but I mention it mostly as an excuse for me to repost this meme:
In terms of memes that will be hilarious for exactly 12 minutes and never again, nothing can touch awards season.
PTA’s editor, Andy Jurgensen, meanwhile, followed suit by paying tribute to his film archivist aunt:
That was a sweet moment, I thought, and not the only one. And mostly, that’s what you get out of the Oscars: a handful of sweet, genuine moments swimming in a sea of sort of dull, obligatory ones. It’s an awards show! What else do you want out of these things?
Jurgensen’s speech came after one of the show’s lowest moments, a DOA bit between Bill and Lewis Pullman, trying to wring some humor out of nepotism. From the parts of it you could actually hear and parse, the gist of it seemed to be something like, Hey, we’re both movie stars. Isn’t that crazy?
It went on too long, wasn’t a great bit to begin with, and was marred by a notably terrible sound mix, as was most of the ceremony. The ambient sound was way too loud throughout the evening, the presenter mic seemed to have been chosen more for aesthetics than usable audio, and muddy sound stepped on bad jokes mostly all the way through. This phenomenon came to an ironic head when the cast of Bridesmaids reunited to muddle through an overlong bit while presenting two Oscars for achievement in sound. The telecast spent three full minutes on this!
Benicio Del Toro’s reaction, giving them the “wrap it up” sign and tapping his watch, kind of summed it up.
So yeah, bad audio made all the weird parts of the Oscars (of which there are always many) feel even weirder. But hey, I don’t envy anyone whose job it is to make 50 drunk, occasionally very old celebrities try to stay a consistent distance away from a communal microphone, at a simulcasted live event/live telecast. There was a brief, thrilling moment there where it felt like the entire thing might devolve into the Barbra Streisand Weird Stories Hour, with Babs inexplicably competing with way-too-loud tinkling pianos.
That was fun, and yet: hard not to be a little annoyed with a ceremony that devotes three full minutes to remembering Bridesmaids, but then brutally cuts off one of the writers of K-Pop Demon Hunters (for best song) inside of 60 seconds. (That video is, unsurprisingly, not available to embed here).
All those issues aside, Conan O’Brien clearly cemented his place as an all-time great Oscars host. Is there anyone else in the world more suited to this nearly impossible task?
Where Kimmel and Seth MacFarlane’s bits sometimes felt like they were clowning the Oscars for being the Oscars (or pandered to the probably non-existent type of person who doesn’t normally watch the Oscars but could be persuaded to through Family Guy-style jokes) Conan just sort of used movies as a jumping off point for some silly sketches. Good jokes, for people who watch movies. That feels like the right tone for these things. Sterling K. Brown should’ve won a best supporting actor award for this Casablanca sketch:
“World War II? That’s the Hitler one, right?”
I also really enjoyed the Jane Lynch Tactical Flashlight bit:
And if you made it all the way to the end of the telecast, past One Battle After Another winning best picture (deservedly so, and I will brook no counter-arguments here), you were treated to another cameo from SNL writer Jim Downey, who had all the best bit parts in 2025 (from Happy Gilmore 2 to The Chair Company).
This time around Downey reprised his role as one of the Christmas Adventurers in One Battle After Another to present Conan O’Brien with his new corner office and title of “Oscars Host for Life.” The video is sadly not embeddable, but suffice it to say, it ends with Conan being gassed, cremated, and his office name placard being replaced with Mr. Beast.
Mmm, good bit! This Conan O’Brien kid is going places, I’m tellin’ ya.
1. I think the lack of politics was threefold: the war started close enough to the telecast that rewriting jokes wasn’t possible, there’s a legit fear of retaliation from the Trump Regime and studios terrified of the Trump Regime, and a general feeling that Hollywood types talking about politics is actually counterproductive.
2. I thought the funniest Trump joke was Conan’s, “welcome back to the Has-a-small-penis theater. There, let’s see him put his name in front of THAT one!”
3. Conan has a rare inherent decency that makes him able to say something like his earnest belief in cooperation via creativity that doesn’t make my eyes roll back in my head so hard I can see the back of my skull
4. I thought the Oscars mostly got it right. I personally would have voted for del Toro and Byrne, but I’m not mad about who won.
5. Holy shit, how charming is GDT?! Frank got nominated for best screenplay? There were some good things about that movie. The script wasn’t one of them.
His riff on F1 being followed by CAPS LOCK had me stupid cackling.