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Honestly, when that is the highlight of the show — and for me, that whole thing is the highlight — the Oscars are doing something catastrophically wrong. Nothing about the show was that interesting, in even so-bad-it’s-good ways, with the exception of the pointless and ridiculous auto-tune montage. Yes, Oscar writers, I did want to see what scenes in Harry Potter and Twilight looked like as a remix! You have made my dreams come true! Franco, as the show continued its long trek into oblivion, seemed more and more aware that, of the many weird and performance-art-type experiments he’s gotten himself into, this one was blowing up in his face. So he basically let Anne Hathaway, in her best pageant mode, do all the work. While there were fewer montages, the climactic clip was one of the rudest Best Picture nominee montages I’ve seen.

The package was simple: show clips of all ten nominees over Colin Firth, as King George, delivering the titular monologue from The King’s Speech. While, as a montage, it worked well, it completely fails as part of the Oscars. Why? All we are left to assume is that the winner of the award — at the moment of the montage airing, the presumed winner — is lording it over the losers. I know that’s not the intention, or I hope it’s not, but the interpretation is obvious enough that it’s been made elsewhere online since the show aired. And for those who think I’m just continue to hate on The King’s Speech, I’ll paraphrase what TV critic Alan Sepinwall said on Twitter: I’d really like The King’s Speech a lot more if it wasn’t for all the awards hype surrounding it.

The King’s Speech was a perfectly nice movie, and it was a great example of what the Academy likes: safety. The Oscars telecast was safe, and the awards were safe. Safety is boring, unfortunately. Safety is expected. Safety is nothing worth writing home about. Why does the show get high ratings (even this year, they were over 30 million) if it’s so safe? We could ask the same about American Idol, but that’s the most popular show on television. People like safety, most of the time. The reason why most people online aren’t fans of last night’s show is pretty clear: if you’re not going to try to mask that you’re putting on the same old show year after year, you’re going to fail.

So, with a prolonged whimper, we say goodnight to the 2010 Oscar season. There were some great discoveries in the world of film, but few surprises among who won anything. Good for Wally Pfister for being honored for his work in Inception. Honestly, good for Inception for winning four Oscars, as many as The King’s Speech did. But there were a lot of good to great movies this year, and only a few of them got honored at the Oscars. The King’s Speech, Inception, Black Swan, Toy Story 3, The Fighter, The Social Network, and Alice in Wonderland are among the only movies to win anything at the show. Were they your favorite films of the year? I doubt it. We’ll see you back here next year, but don’t expect things to be any more rose-colored. The Oscars are in a pit after this show. Let’s hope they get out of it.

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