With Ratings in the Toilet, Are the Oscars Doomed?

Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture. [Manage newsletters]( [View in browser]( [Image] with Kevin Fallon Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture. This Week: - Still angry about the Oscars! - Bridesmaids turns 10, as does my Rose Byrne obsession. - The Gwyneth Paltrow nightmare GOOP cruise. - The week’s best demonic, possibly haunted puppy. - Britney makes a sandwich. The Oscars, Forever Making the Wrong Decisions I’m so old I remember that [the Oscars were this week](. Our distracted brains have moved onto other pressing matters in the circus of entertainment, such as [Kourtney Kardashian]( making out with Travis Barker and why [Zac Efron’s face look like that](—admittedly ridiculous (though very real) preoccupations that have eclipsed any mainstream interest in what is supposed to be the most important and definitive event in the year of pop culture. Now, Nomadland is but an afterthought far gone in the zeitgeist’s rearview mirror. There are more impactful matters to discuss; please, tell me everything about what the [MyPillow Guy said on Jimmy Kimmel](. [Alternate text] This is not exactly a surprise. Not only do we tend to move on from news story to news story with the zagging interest of a fly in a pigsty, but it was, as bellowed in headlines with doomsday horror, the [lowest-rated Oscars telecast]( on record. The numbers are shocking at face value, down almost 60 percent from last year. But I’m less worried about that, a statistical consequence of a pandemic year and across-the-board freefall of live ratings, than I am about the lessons that future producers of the show may take from this faint whisper of interest moving forward. Especially given the aspects of the show people did actually talk about. It’s been nearly a week, and I still can’t get over that final-act Best Picture/Best Actor catastrophe. Not even the way it ended up: instead of an emotional climax, an indifferent shrug; a televised flatlining. It’s that it was even planned in the first place. In the aftermath of Sunday’s ceremony, an [ABC exec admitted]( most of us assumed: Deciding to swap the category order and present Best Picture before Best Actress and Actor was a “calculated risk” in the hope that the late Chadwick Boseman would win the latter and the night would end with the world in tears. On its own, not saving Best Picture for last bordered on blasphemy to Oscar purists. Even casual viewers probably felt a tinge of sacrilege guilt—or at least thought they had somehow blinked and missed the actor and actress categories when Rita Moreno walked out to present Best Picture with a half hour still left in the show. But there was something crass and cynical about it. This idea that, in lieu of lending the climactic gravitas deserved by the movie the Academy voted “best,” it was more important to manufacture a moment that capitalized on Black pain and the trauma of Boseman’s widow...all in the name of good TV? It’s so gross to me, a repulsion that has intensified as the days have passed. In a year when there were nerves over whether people would care about the Oscars, that was the solution? It was a dumb gamble because, as the ratings show, the prospect of Boseman’s win didn’t draw in the grief-porn lookyloos to whom producers were pandering. If what they wanted was a viral moment, I’d venture that, had Boseman won, it would have happened regardless of when in the telecast it came. Not only did the “calculated risk” not pay off, but it disrespected Best Picture-winner Nomadland, grotesquely commoditized Boseman’s legacy, and slighted actual winner Anthony Hopkins, who was the target of a vile backlash by those who felt deprived of that Boseman moment producers had built up to. Boseman’s family has even [had to come to Hopkins’ defense](. That could, of course, have been avoided if Hopkins was allowed to deliver a speech, but producers wouldn’t allow the 83-year-old actor, who wouldn’t travel in a pandemic, to deliver one via Zoom. It’s a mystifying choice given how seamlessly the other remote speeches worked during the telecast and, of course, how gracious and charming [Hopkins has been]( in [videos posted]( since Sunday night. As an Oscars fan, the grown-up kid who used to sit crossed-legged in the living room rapt by each year’s show and who would memorize trivia about Best Supporting Actress nominees the way that other boys retained baseball player stats, the snafu has me worried about the fate of an institution that is already facing skepticism over its continued relevance and influence. I genuinely thought that the show, up until that idiotic calamity, was great. It struck the appropriate tone in extremely difficult times that would have beckoned scrutiny had it veered toward too self-celebratory or relied on its traditional grand spectacle. But the backlash towards the Best Actor misfire combined with the low ratings will likely brand this year’s ceremony a failure, which means all the great things about the telecast will be ignored as future producers retreat in the opposite direction. It was the rare year where you could argue that every Best Picture nominee deserved to be there. But with viewership so low and an audible discourse about how most people weren’t interested in the nominated movies, are we facing another return to ostentatious acts of desperation like a [Best Popular Movie category](? Those of us who watched and who have seen the movies—and who appreciate it when an award show actually feels like an award show, tedious as handing out 24 trophies can seem—loved that the winners were given space to deliver longer, more meaningful speeches. But when the only post-show buzz is centered on whether Glenn Close’s “Da Butt” moment was staged and the most talked-about speech moment is Youn Yuh-jung’s Brad Pitt opener, to the point that [she rolled her eyes]( at how much she’d been asked about it when she finally sat down with Korean media, it makes an awards purist nervous. Are we going to go back to rushed, panicked, 30-second speeches before an executioner storms the stage to behead rambling winners, or floating the idea of moving technical awards out of the ceremony, all in the name of giving more space to overlong Will Ferrell bits and endless movie montages? This year’s ceremony failed to reel in curious viewers and, after a solid start, ended by pissing off movie fans and Oscars loyalists. There’s nothing more rewarding than watching a big event on TV and actually liking it. Now I worry that won’t ever happen again. Where Is Rose Byrne’s Oscar? When I think of Bridesmaids, a perfect movie in every way that I have watched probably 37 times (during this pandemic), there are certain scenes that immediately flash through my mind, like a visceral montage that has imprinted into my brain, or maybe even my soul. [Alternate text] The airplane sequence when [Kristin Wiig]( tries to infiltrate first class while on a sedative, mistakenly calling Steve the flight attendant “Stove,” and claiming discrimination when she’s kicked out: “This is the ’90s!” The way she says “fresh” when given a glass of lemonade by a butler, now a reflexive, insufferable impulse I must recreate whenever served a glass of lemonade. The heart to heart she has with Melissa McCarthy after her breakdown. She and Maya Rudolph miming the drum solo when Wilson Phillips performs “Hold On” during the finale. But on this [10th anniversary of Bridesmaids](—make sure to check out my colleague Matt Wilstein’s [interview with director Paul Feig]( about the milestone—what has preoccupied me the most, and perhaps has since I first fell in love with the comedy a decade ago, is how unbelievably, underappreciatedly, iconically good [Rose Byrne]( is in the movie. If we talked about it once an hour every day since the movie came out, it would not be enough. She should have been nominated for a Best Supporting Actress that year alongside—or maybe instead of?—McCarthy, one of two nods she should have by now in that category. (The other is for playing the villain in Spy, a toast to which I could never write for fear of it earning her character’s eviscerating insult, one of the funniest line deliveries I’ve ever seen. [Watch here](.) As Helen, Byrne plays the regal bitch, the film’s snooty antagonist, but someone you never hate. That’s of course owed to how funny the performance is. But it’s also owed to how subtly she portrays Helen’s confidence as a shield that’s been erected piece by piece through a lifetime of insecurity. It’s hard to even choose Byrne’s standout scene. Is it when she goes bout by comedic bout with Wiig—no small feat—during the wedding toast scene, a TKO delivered while speaking perfect Thai? Her pronunciation of “Fritz Bernaise” in the dress shopping scene, as if it’s as natural to say as “Calvin Klein” or “Target?” Or when she smiles through tears during an emotional breakdown, admitting that she’s not even ugly when she cries? It was a revelatory performance from an actress probably best known for her dramatic work in Damages—she became the MVP of the movie’s comedic ensemble of Saturday Night Live and Groundlings improv vets. Now that Bridesmaids is 10, we can officially call it one of the best performances of the last decade. And, because the fire never stops Byrne-ing (Too cheesy? We don’t care), [here is a trailer]( for her next project, a TV series called Physical in which she plays a bored ’80s housewife whose life changes when she discovers aerobics. I could not have invented something I want to see more if I had tried. Well, GOOP Does Rhyme With Poop Gwyneth Paltrow is always happiest when by the sea, and she can’t wait to share that love with you in the same way she absolutely, definitely, 100-percent travels when she hits the water: on a cruise ship. Yes, in 2022, Paltrow’s GOOP company [is partnering with Celebrity Cruises]( on a brand-integrated travel experience. After this past year, especially, if there’s one thing I think of when I think of wellness and health, [it is a cruise ship](. Listen, all industries are struggling, and if Gwyneth is trying to help jumpstart the cruise business, who am I to poo-poo it? (Well, if I take this cruise, I will be the one to poo poo.) Perhaps GOOP sees an opportunity in the #HotVaxxSummer market and is shrewdly taking advantage. The ship might peddle an exclusive two-for-one offer: A [jade vagina egg]( and a corresponding one to plug up your bum when you inevitably contract norovirus. We love a matching set! #WeArePrancer In a rare turn of events, “good news” went viral this week. That is literally how the [tweet from NPR started](, a sentence in which every next word was more remarkable than the one before it, a reading journey as dramatic and thrilling as The Odyssey itself. “Good news,” [the tweet read](. “Prancer, the 13-pound gremlin Chihuahua who hates men and children, and was described as a ‘vessel for a traumatized Victorian child,’ has been adopted by a 36-year-old single lesbian in Connecticut.” [Alternate text] The important context is that earlier this month, a volunteer frustrated at her fruitless attempts to get Prancer, “a Chucky doll in a dog’s body,” adopted [posted an unusually frank ad]( that detailed all of his terrorizing ways. That post itself earned Prancer a little bit of internet fame, catching the attention of his now-owner, who felt she and he might make a good match. It’s a heartwarming story, really: There is someone out there to love even the most tragic of us. That first viral ad from the rescue volunteer said, “Prancer came to me obese, wearing a cashmere sweater, with a bacon, egg, and cheese stuffed in his crate with him,” which is coincidentally exactly how I arrived at my new apartment when I moved this winter. That is to say: Prancer, I see you. Now who will adopt me? Important News Re: Britney Spears and a Sandwich [Alternate text] Two very dramatic Britney Spears developments: In the wake of the #FreeBritney movement, she has [asked to address the court directly]( about her conservatorship. She also made a sandwich, and it was completely unsettling. ([Watch here](.) [Alternate text] - Pose: The category is: Live! Werk! Cry along to the final season of Pose! (Sunday on FX) - The Mitchells vs. the Machines: Conversely, cry along to this animated kids’ film! (Friday on Netflix) - Girls5eva: Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt meets Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. (Thursday on Peacock) [Alternate text] - The Mosquito Coast: Nary a mosquito in sight. (Friday on Apple TV+) - Without Remorse: Michael B. Jordan deserves better. (Friday on Amazon) Advertisement [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Instagram]( © Copyright 2021 The Daily Beast Company LLC 555 W. 18th Street, New York NY 10011 [Privacy Policy]( If you are on a mobile device or cannot view the images in this message, [click here]( to view this email in your browser. To ensure delivery of these emails, please add emails@thedailybeast.com to your address book. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, or think you have received this message in error, you can [safely unsubscribe](.