It was a crass move to attract a younger demographic to hire Seth MacFarlane as Oscar host. The guy behind the crass and consistently unfunny “Family Guy” and its similar sequels couldn’t jazz up the show only tarnish it as it dragged on and on even more than usual.
With a smarmy smirk made smarmier by regulation tux, MacFarlane made has-been jokes to the assembled stars and then tried to pretend he hadn’t made them. His idea of a “Lincoln” joke was to say that John Wilkes Booth was the only actor to really get inside the President’s head.
He knew he was terrible so he tried to erase that by showing his inevitable reviews: Yes he was the worst Oscar host ever. Then he went meta by doing a fussy bit when William Shatner as James Kirk comes from the future to warn him against the things he did on the show. So we see the infantile song and dance “We’ve Seen Your Boobs” as if he had done it. See? He didn’t really do it.
MacFarlane repeated that premise later when he’d say fake things like “Oh, did we leave this joke in?” and then do it as usual. It was a way to couch his inappropriate material as if to say, see, it wasn’t supposed to be in there.
That he tried to balance the crude unfunny jokes with old fashioned song and dance didn’t work either. His own efforts to become a crooner are just perverse and shouldn’t be a part of an event where actual talent is supposed to be celebrated.
Bring back James Franco.