It was an unsurprising Oscars telecast until Will Smith hit Chris Rock.
The favorites had mostly won: Ariana DeBose for West Side Story, Troy Kotsur for CODA, lots of technical awards for Dune. The hosts — Regina Hall, Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes — had made a bunch of jokes and been put through a few bits, some not bad and some very bad. Every unnecessary montage was judged for its merit against the eight awards that the producers had cut from the live broadcast. A great musical number from Beyoncé, a star-studded take on the Encanto hit “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” that some people liked and some people emphatically didn’t. In other words, a pretty regular Oscars Sunday night.
It would later conclude with a best picture win for the family drama CODA, but we didn’t know that yet. We just knew things were humming along largely as expected — Encanto for animated feature, Drive My Car for international feature, and so on.
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