2013 Academy Awards in review: Seth MacFarlane tries to salvage marathon show

If you go back and read our review of Seth MacFarlane’s opening for the 2013 Academy Awards, you’ll notice that we made one thing rather clear: we didn’t care for it at all. Many of the jokes fell flat, and the lack of balance between the classy and obscene felt as though there were multiple personalities hosting. We’d rather he leave the Rihanna and Chris Brown jokes to Ricky Gervais or Kathy Griffin, and keep his humor more about Hollywood and the movies.

After all, Seth got better as the night went along, and even helped the show extensively during the latter stages. He pushed things forward to commercials when they got long (and boy, did they ever), and he also had some surprising moments, such as when he left the stage upon saying “the following presenter needs no introduction.”

The further MacFarlane got away from his “Family Guy” persona for the show, the better of a host he was. Overall, he was far and away an improvement on Billy Crystal last year or the debacle with Anne Hathaway and James Franco, and we’d actually like to see him back so that some of his nerves will be settled during the beginning. (We’d also like to see Chris Rock back, just in case he wants to host again.)

As for the rest of the Oscar telecast, it was much of the same: too long and far too bloated. So what do you cut out? The musical homage during the show was, but ultimately unnecessary, as we’d rather have the Best Song nominees continue to perform. You also can’t cut down the speeches any more (the “Jaws” music that was playing was awful enough itself), and none of the technical categories should be moved to an earlier show. The easiest thing that this show could do to cut time? Have a quick voiceover send it to commercials, rather than a MacFarlane coming out and announcing that we are at a break. The opening could also lost about three to four minutes and been just fine.

Ultimately, none of these opinions really matter. This show is probably always going to venture near four hours, and whether or not you enjoy it will depend on how interested you are in the movies and the actors. While the Oscars were exhausting this year, hats off to MacFarlane and the crew for at least making them watchable in the later stages. Was it perfect? Far from it, but we’ll take improvement as a step in the right direction.

If you want to read about some of the winners for the night and other coverage, be sure to check out the link here.

Photo: ABC