Bad Vibes and Forced Surprises at the 2022 Oscars

I was excited for the 94th Academy Awards on Sunday night — another relic from the Before Times reemerging from its Covid slumber. I curled up on the couch in my stained high school lacrosse hoodie to judge gorgeous clothes that cost more than my first car. To cringe at the scripted banter between presenters. And to celebrate all of the movies I didn’t see.  Don’t worry, XP Land won’t dignify a certain display of toxic behavior on stage with another hot take. We won’t even link to it! However, even without that singular moment, the whole show was a little… uncomfortable. I felt like I was watching an SNL skit mocking the Oscars instead of the Oscars itself. And I’m not the only one whose hopefulness was burned. According to The Hollywood Reporter, “Sunday’s show finished well ahead of the final numbers from last year’s scaled-down ceremony, which had all-time lows of 10.4 million viewers and a 2.12 rating in the 18-49 demographic. The Oscars improved by 60 percent in total viewers and 77 percent among adults 18-49.” But don’t get too excited. This year’s Oscars will go down as the second-least-watched since Nielsen began tracking total viewers in...