Listen to our Oscars 2018 Reaction episode on:
Another year, another Oscar season draws to a close… with less controversy than last year, but also – dare we say it – a little less excitement?
Having sat up until a positively unreasonable hour fortifying ourselves with various drinking games – non-celebrity winner gets abruptly played off by the orchestra, joking reference to the La La Land/Moonlight fiasco, veiled Donald Trump burn etc. – we begrudgingly summoned the strength on Monday evening to record our official verdict on the show.
There was a quiet ‘redemption arc’ feel to this year’s ceremony, from Jimmy Kimmel’s return as host to Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway announcing Best Picture – correctly, this time. Recent social and political upheavals hung fairly heavily over the show, although the upshot was a higher than average proportion of Hollywood’s leading ladies getting the chance to shine. Kimmel also managed to wring a nice bit of recurring humour out of the promise of a free Jet Ski for the Academy Award winner who delivered the shortest speech.
The awards themselves ended up being spread around fairly evenly, with only The Shape of Water (4) and Dunkirk (3) taking home more than two trophies in total. If the show had one major weakness, it was a lack of surprises – with every category going broadly where it was expected to. It was probably too much to ask for a last minute holy shit moment to rival last year, but it’s hard to avoid that the sheer number of pre-Oscar award shows on the air robs a lot of the anticipation from the big evening itself.
This Oscar Reaction episode concludes our trilogy of Academy Awards themed bonus shows for this season. Until the next season rolls around, we’ll be continuing with our regularly scheduled programming every Friday morning – including our very first Patreon crossover special this Friday. As ever, stay tuned and thanks for listening! Now if you’ll excuse us, we have some much-needed sleep to catch up on…