{"id":221728,"date":"2026-03-16T06:45:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T06:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/221728\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T06:45:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T06:45:08","slug":"oscars-review-long-live-forever-host-conan-obrien","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/221728\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscars review: Long live forever host Conan O’Brien"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

With the state of the nation worse on pretty much every metric, it\u2019s 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<\/a>, sent via ABC, Hulu, Disney+ and other platforms into the world.<\/p>\n

The question, this year as it is every year, is how this Oscars night was different from any other Oscars night. With Conan O\u2019Brien 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 \u201cS\u00e1bado Gigante,\u201d but, gagwise \u2014 the Oscar broadcast is fundamentally a comedy with speeches \u2014 its hits-to-misses ratio was good or better than your average \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d episode.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Brien, 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\u2019t belong to the community it celebrates \u2014 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\u2019s Gladys in \u201cWeapons,\u201d<\/a> inserted himself into the movies nominated for best picture and other awards \u2014 that included an animated O\u2019Brien in a \u201cKPop Demon Hunters\u201d clip \u2014 chased by a mob of children from one to the other and into the Dolby Theatre, where his monologue<\/a> began.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m honored to be the last human host of the Academy Awards,\u201d he said. \u201cNext year it\u2019s going to be a Waymo in a tux.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I hosted last year, Los Angeles was on fire, but this year everything\u2019s going great,\u201d O\u2019Brien said, adding, \u201cTonight could get political. And if that makes you uncomfortable, there\u2019s an alternate Oscars being hosted by Kid Rock; it\u2019s at a Dave & Buster\u2019s down the street.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Switching into his sincere mode, O\u2019Brien noted the global representation at the awards, of collaborators \u201cworking hard to make something of beauty\u201d and making a pitch for \u201ccollaboration, patience, resilience and that rarest of of qualities today, optimism.\u201d Switching gears again, he imagined himself an Oscar recipient, crowned and robed and serenaded by Josh Groban. (\u201cHis Oscar win has been fated by God \/ He is the greatest, just check out that bod \u2026 He promised my agent my highest fee yet \/ Then blew all the money on this mountain set.\u201d) His Oscar was delivered by a hawk.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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 \u201cSinners\u201d and \u201cKPop Demon Hunters.\u201d Barbra Streisand<\/a> closed the \u201cIn Memoriam\u201d segment, which Billy Crystal opened by honoring the late Rob Reiner<\/a>, by singing a verse of \u201cThe Way We Were\u201d in tribute to the late Robert Redford<\/a>. (She called him an \u201cintellectual cowboy,\u201d he called her \u201cBabs,\u201d \u201cbut in a way that made me laugh.\u201d)<\/p>\n

The show closed with another clip in which O\u2019Brien imagined himself being made Oscar host for life; though it was a dodge. Channeling the final scene of \u201cOne Battle After Another,\u201d 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 \u201cMr. Beast, host for life,\u201d as in the YouTuber<\/a>. But permanent host is not a bad idea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the state of the nation worse on pretty much every metric, it\u2019s good we can still gather…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221729,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[6758,6946,101347,40162,6227,101349,77336,48,52,51,1637,47,50,49,101178,101348,66560,1860,8843,8074,72],"class_list":["post-221728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-award","tag-course","tag-few-hour","tag-good-picture","tag-host","tag-host-conan-obrien","tag-kpop-demon-hunters","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-life","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-obrien","tag-oscar-broadcast","tag-segment","tag-show","tag-way","tag-world","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}