Modified On March 6, 2006
Don’t be fooled by the headline on the review of Stewart’s performance on the website for Canadian television. Their praise is tentative at best. In its recap of the evening, they said:
…hopefully Stewart’s legacy won’t share the fate of fellow New York talk show host David Letterman who bombed on stage with the infamous “Oprah, Uma"’; joke that sealed his fate as a one-time host.[…]But Oscar organizers are hoping that Stewart will bring in the highly-coveted younger audience that makes up much of the viewers of his cable TV show.
Not exactly a rave. Read the whole thing, as it quotes Stewart’s material extensively, not just the Bjork gag.
Associated Press is less tentative. Their review, “Stewart Disappoints As Oscars Host,”
The broadcast began on a shaky note with a filmed intro that found past Oscar host Billy Crystal being introduced as this year’s host, then declining, followed by Chris Rock, Steve Martin, Whoopi Goldberg, David Letterman, Mel Gibson, even Mr. Moviephone — none of whom wanted the gig.
That seemed to leave it to Stewart by default. Maybe it’s come to this.
Frazier Moore is the byline. He/she doesn’t get it, obviously. Perhaps AP’s first priority when assigning someone to review a comedy performance should be to assign someone who has… a… sense… of… humor? Is that asking too much?
But as the night wore on, Stewart proved too deferential, too nice and too obvious in his targets.
Deferential? Does Moore own a dictionary? (No one does deferential like Billy Crystal, who has developed the art of simultaneously delivering a punchline and apologizing.) Stewart deferred to no one. We suppose the reaction to Stewart comes down to this: In this, the year of Serious Oscar tackling Major Important Issues, they hired Stewart because they figured he’d get down and dirty and deliver a non-stop stream of Bush bashing and Red State gags. Instead, he targeted Hollywood. And, as we saw, Hollywood has a marvelous sense of humor about everything… but Hollywood. Proof of this: More than one article citing the Bjork joke as the hardest laugh of the night and a high point. It was the weakest one of the evening and the most hackneyed (Hasn’t there been enough Bjork jokes? She wasn’t even in the building! How about a Lorena Bobbitt joke while we’re at it?) But it came closest to what the Hollywood Establishment anticipated.
ADDENDUM (2:57 PM EST): From H-wood media crank, Nikki Finke, comes this– “Even his sharp political humor, what little there was of it, was dull. He slammed the Democrats twice, and told only one Cheney joke. (That got his biggest laugh.) He didn’t lay a glove on Bush, and what’s up with that? Isn’t that why we tuned in, to see Mr. Liberal get himself in trouble with the Red State Right?”
Pretty spooky, huh? We called that one!
Stewart makes a living mocking the self-important, pointing out hypocrisy. Hollywood is dripping with self-importance and the streets are paved with hypocrisy. It’s a comedy gold mine! (When you have a rapper from Three 6 Mafia clutching an Oscar and thanking Gil Cates, it’s a dream for a comic like Stewart.)
Tom Shales in a Reuters review…
…found it “hard to believe that professional entertainers could have put together a show less entertaining than this year’s Oscars, hosted with a smug humorlessness by comic Jon Stewart, a sad and pale shadow of great hosts gone by.”
Smug? Certainly. That’s what he was hired for, it’s his main asset on The Daily Show. Humorless? Only if you’re the butt of the jokes.
At least Ebert and Roeper dug the act.
“He was smart, he was funny, he was as comfortable and as anyone since Johnny Carson, and I think he could have the job for life, if he wants it,” Ebert said. Roeper chimed in that he thought the “the Carson comparison is perfect.”
We thought the performance was consistently funny throughout. No one has been harder on Stewart than us over the past year or so. But we enjoyed the show. We had a feeling it might go this way, however… as did Stewart. (Recall his reference to– and defense of– Letterman’s Oscar hosting performance on Larry King Live last week.)
A personal note: Hey! What’s up with US Weekly? They had their first-ever Oscar bash at Wolfgang Puck’s place at the Pacific Design Center and they didn’t invite the Fashion Policers? Oh, sure! Ask us to comment on the horrid apparel of H-wood’s beautiful people, but, for God’s sake, DO NOT invite them to any parties!
Further ADDENDA: Could anyone be more out of touch than the WashPo’s Tom Shales?
“Stewart began the show drearily, loping through a monologue that lacked a single hilarious joke with the possible exception of “Bjork couldn’t be here tonight. She was trying on her Oscar dress and Dick Cheney shot her.”
That was about it– and Stewart had five months, working with his legions of writers from the Daily Show on Comedy Central, to come up with good material. It goes to prove that there’s still a big, big difference between basic cable and big-time network television after all.”
Shales is sticking up for Network Television, against Cable Television, while working for a dying newspaper. He has no idea how irrelevant he is…
MSNBC.com has gone so far as to say it “Daily Show host will be lumped in with Letterman, Rock as Oscar failure” in a sub-headline. MSNBC.com contributor Andy Dehnart said:
Exposing hypocrisy while being self-depreciating (sic) is what Stewart does best; in fact, it’s basically all he does. Those who believe The Daily Show is actually “fake news” don’t understand either satire or the exceptionally smart, informative humor that the show invokes on a daily basis. Stewart and The Daily Show‘s team emphasize and demonstrate the importance and gravity of the day’s news by making fun of it.
But that sort of contradictory, somewhat nuanced humor didn’t work well for the Oscars’ audience. The theater audience’s lack of laughter was judgmental and was at odds with viewers who were laughing because this was the funny Jon Stewart we know from cable.
And there’s the frustrating part: Stewart was a success. We here at SHECKYmagazine HQ enjoyed his hosting. A good portion of America enjoyed it. But Hollywood will have the final say. And they’re not amused. If they cared at all about their declining appeal among great portions of America (box office receipts are waaay down), they would laugh off Stewart’s jibes. They are in no mood to do so; they care not about their sinking Q rating.
They won’t be able to destroy Stewart, but they won’t be inclined to compare him to H.L. Mencken anytime soon.