OK, so there weren't a lot of surprises during the telecast of the 72nd annual Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday night. For the most part, those who were expected to win did.
But, still, there was one moment that was utterly astonishing if you thought about it for a minute. At least if you thought about it in terms of television.
When Hillary Swank was announced as the winner of the Academy Award for outstanding performance by an actress in a lead role, I couldn't contain myself. "Good heavens!" I exclaimed. "Someone from 'Beverly Hills, 90210' just won an Oscar!"
Which is not to say that Swank didn't deserve her Oscar. (Deseret News movie critic Jeff Vice assures me she did.) But, still, it's amazing that someone could go from "90210" to Oscar in the space of a couple of years.
For those of you who missed it, Swank spent the 1997-98 season playing Carly Reynolds, a single mother who got involved with Steve (Ian Ziering). She didn't last long on the show, but that turned out to be a pretty good thing for her.
Not that Swank's win was so completely stunning — she did actually exhibit acting talent even on "90210." (And acting opposite someone with as little ability as Ziering probably didn't hurt.)
But, I mean, it's not like Tori Spelling won an Oscar.
An event such as that would signal the end of civilization as we know it.
ANOTHER TV TIE: Among the big winners on Sunday night was, of course, the film "American Beauty." It raked in five awards, including best picture, best actor, director, cinematography — and best original screenplay for Alan Ball.
And as the others collected their awards, they all spoke glowingly of Ball as a "genius" who turned out this fabulous script.
This would be the same Alan Ball who used to be a co-executive producer of the sitcom "Cybill" and who was the creator and executive producer of the deservedly short-lived, remarkably mediocre sitcom "Oh Grow Up" on ABC this past fall.
That would be the show about two straight men and a gay man sharing a New York brownstone with a dog named Mom — a dog that would bark at the camera while subtitles showing its thoughts appeared on your television screen.
Ball, who based the show on his own life and the dog on a real dog — one he called "a very complex psychological character" — seemed considerably less like a genius at that point.
LONG AND BORING: ABC's Oscarcast was excessively long, excessively boring and nothing short of tedious.
And it will never, ever get any better if Americans keep watching it in droves.
According to early ratings returns, ABC is estimating that 78 million people watched all or part of the Academy Awards on Sunday. The 31.7 rating means that nearly a third of all homes in the country tuned in. (The numbers were off a slight 1 percent from 1999.)
ABC charged advertisers between $1 million and $1.5 million per 30-second commercial, raking in more than $60 million in revenue for the evening. Why would the network want to change a thing?
Not that the record four-hour, eight-minute telecast was completely terrible. Billy Crystal is still the best host the Oscars can get, and his opening taped bit and monologue/song was the highlight of the show. (If all of his jokes throughout the evening didn't work, well, his batting average was still pretty high.)
And producers Richard Zanuck and Lili Fini Zanuck did some smart things — most notably using montages of clips from past movies instead of production numbers and keeping the performances of the five nominated shows brief. But a four-hour awards show? There's no excuse for that.
Although, compared to the embarrassingly stupid and vapid "pre-Oscars" half hour, hosted by the embarrassingly stupid and vapid Meredith Viera and supermodel Tyra Banks, the Oscars almost looked good. (Viera used to be a "60 Minutes" correspondent, believe it or not. And we thought she couldn't fall any lower than her gig as one of the hosts of "The View.")
The problem with the Oscars is that there's about an hour of stuff anybody really cares about folded into four hours of TV. We could do Crystal's opening bit, hand out the maybe dozen awards the public is interested in — the acting awards, picture, director, maybe screenplays and song — do a couple of montages and even perform the songs — in 90 minutes, tops.
The fact is that the public doesn't really care much about costumes or sound-editing or whatever. Not that those aren't important, but would you go see a movie just because Hollywood said it had the best sound? I don't think so. But if not for all those things no one much cares about, there wouldn't be enough time to squeeze those $60 million worth of commercials into the program. And, as long as upwards of 80 million Americans watch the Oscars, nothing will change that.