New, Improved Oscarcast: Appalling, Thank You

The 81st Academy Awards suggested how, as an annual TV event, the Oscars could become extinct — and frankly, it doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.

And it wasn’t just that, from Hugh Jackman’s opening number, to the interminable tributes by past winners that preceded every acting award, to the shockingly bad production numbers, nothing — nothing — on this telecast worked.

The real problem was that the people who put together this year’s show ended up coming across as contemptuous of what they were doing. Parody can be the most loving of tributes. (That’s why Carol Burnett’s parodies of golden age Hollywood are considered affectionate and perceptive film criticism.) The Oscars have always kidded the nominated movies.

But it’s one thing for Billy Crystal to come out in a Dr. Lecter mask and joke his way through a parodic melody — it’s quite another to open with a number in which a movie about an assassinated gay politician is represented by a routine that looks like the campiest sort of gay bar theatrical.

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