If only every Oscar moment were this healthful.
As a kid, I lived for Oscar night. I filled out a ballot, I read up on history, I became incensed over who won and lost, even though I'd seen almost none of the movies. For a long time, I felt the same way about Saturday Night Live. At some point, to lessen the heartache that comes with watching a beloved institution slide into meaninglessness, I cut my losses. More on Bullett.
Just as schoolchildren the world over have accepted the roundness of the earth and the deliciousness of pizza, everybody knows that Saturday Night Live is terrible. That doesn’t mean that nobody watches it. Like cigarettes, inactivity and (sadly) pizza, Saturday Night Live is a bad habit, and one that must be broken for a person to lead a healthy weekend life. The show’s relentless badness—and the fact that there are sometimes other fun things to do on a Saturday night—makes breaking that habit fairly easy. Quitting the Oscars is much harder.
I wrote in December about my resolution to avoid Oscars preview coverage, which is as entertaining as a horserace with no horses. This was fairly easy to stick by. On Sunday, I will keep a promise I made to myself the year that James Franco staked a claim to being the worst Oscar host of all time. I will find something better to do on Oscar night.
Seriously, folks. Respect yourselves. Skip the telecast. Watch movies instead. You love movies and—unlike the Oscars—they love you right back.