With the state of the nation worse on pretty much every metric, it’s good we can still gather round our screen of choice to watch film professionals win awards for a few hours on a March evening. This happened Sunday for the 98th time at the Academy Awards, sent via ABC, Hulu, Disney+ and other platforms into the world.
The question, this year as it is every year, is how this Oscars night was different from any other Oscars night. With Conan O’Brien returning as host in 2026, the ceremony was much in the spirit of his first go in 2025, except this was all in all a livelier, funnier show. Not perfect, of course, as the only program to ever occupy three hours of television without flagging was “Sábado Gigante,” but, gagwise — the Oscar broadcast is fundamentally a comedy with speeches — its hits-to-misses ratio was good or better than your average “Saturday Night Live” episode.
O’Brien, whose persona is equal parts madness, sincerity, self-love and self-hate, would seem to be a perfect host for a broadcast that needs to take things seriously, but not so seriously that it alienates anyone who doesn’t belong to the community it celebrates — a show that exists both in the world of Hollywood and the world outside the industry. In a classic Oscars gambit, the broadcast began with a filmed segment in which the host, looking like Amy Madigan’s Gladys in “Weapons,” inserted himself into the movies nominated for best picture and other awards — that included an animated O’Brien in a “KPop Demon Hunters” clip — chased by a mob of children from one to the other and into the Dolby Theatre, where his monologue began.
“I’m honored to be the last human host of the Academy Awards,” he said. “Next year it’s going to be a Waymo in a tux.”
“When I hosted last year, Los Angeles was on fire, but this year everything’s going great,” O’Brien said, adding, “Tonight could get political. And if that makes you uncomfortable, there’s an alternate Oscars being hosted by Kid Rock; it’s at a Dave & Buster’s down the street.” And it did frequently get political, through jokes or serious addresses to the room, with various parties adding to the attacks on censorship, complacency and oligarch-controlled media.
Switching into his sincere mode, O’Brien noted the global representation at the awards, of collaborators “working hard to make something of beauty” and making a pitch for “collaboration, patience, resilience and that rarest of of qualities today, optimism.” Switching gears again, he imagined himself an Oscar recipient, crowned and robed and serenaded by Josh Groban. (“His Oscar win has been fated by God / He is the greatest, just check out that bod … He promised my agent my highest fee yet / Then blew all the money on this mountain set.”) His Oscar was delivered by a hawk.
As for the awards, leaving the best picture and lead acting awards for the end of the show of course makes hierarchical sense, but it’s also the carrot on a stick that draws the viewer through to the end. As if to revive potentially flagging interest along the way, something big would hit the stage almost on the hour. There were storming numbers from “Sinners” and “KPop Demon Hunters.” Barbra Streisand closed the “In Memoriam” segment, which Billy Crystal opened by honoring the late Rob Reiner, by singing a verse of “The Way We Were” in tribute to the late Robert Redford. (She called him an “intellectual cowboy,” he called her “Babs,” “but in a way that made me laugh.”)
The show closed with another clip in which O’Brien imagined himself being made Oscar host for life; though it was a dodge. Channeling the final scene of “One Battle After Another,” he is brought to an office where he winds up gassed and being shoved into a creamator before the label on the office door is changed to “Mr. Beast, host for life,” as in the YouTuber. But permanent host is not a bad idea.
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