Plus: 'Tournament of Champions,' 'Louder Than A Riot' and the last word on 'The Whale'

View this email online by Stephen Thompson Welcome! It was the week Ted Lasso’s return sparked mixed emotions. It was the week that those of us forced to miss SXSW could at least watch many, many hours of college basketball to compensate, should we so choose. And it was the week that I found a way to plug the new season of Louder Than A Riot three times in a single newsletter. Let’s get to it! It’s time to celebrate the mistakes the Oscars didn’t make If you’ve ever worked on an annual project of any kind – maybe it’s an event, maybe it’s a report, maybe it’s the Academy Awards – you’ve probably been part of a debriefing process, wherein various stakeholders gather to discuss what went right, what went wrong and what went really wrong. Maybe, for example, your best actress winner gave a lovely speech, but your best actor winner got up on stage and slapped a famous comedian across the face. It happens.  These debriefing sessions are bound to look different depending on the circumstances, of course. But their general shape is usually the same: positives, negatives, notes for next year, maybe a few shoutouts for jobs well done. What sometimes gets missed is an unsexy-but-crucial rundown of the mistakes that got avoided. Because, as anyone who’s been involved in an annual project for many years can tell you, bad ideas have a way of sneakily reintroducing themselves once you’ve avoided them long enough. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert pose with their best director trophies for EEAO/AFP via Getty Images So consider this one last word about the 2023 Academy Awards, which wrapped up Sunday night in a manner largely free of catastrophic embarrassment. I’ll leave out the obvious stuff – “No one was physically attacked on stage,” for example, or “No one announced the wrong best picture winner” – in favor of the mistakes that might get reintroduced one day, should we be foolish enough to let our collective guard down. 1) They gave out all the awards during the telecast. It’s easy to forget that, just last year, the Oscars elected to give out several awards in previously taped segments, with the ostensible purpose of speeding up the show. This was a terrible idea for basic reasons of decency and watchability – yes, people actually do care to see people pick up awards for, say, cinematography – while also making viewers seethe at the filler that made the cut. It also robbed the Oscars telecast of a strength: It’s harder for a show to lag when you’re constantly returning to the official business of handing out trophies. There was certainly filler in last Sunday’s telecast (ahem, Little Mermaid promo), but the pace felt noticeably quicker than usual. 2) They cut the little things. As Glen Weldon noted at the time in NPR’s Oscars live blog, this year’s Oscars cut way back on intros – particularly when it came to clips of the 10 films nominated for best picture. “Consider: They’re introducing tonight’s best picture nominees with an offscreen announcer,” Glen wrote. “In years past, that job has been done by presenters. Actors who walk out, pause, engage in stiff presenter banter, and then introduce the best picture nominees. It seems like a small tweak but it’s easily shaving, what, at least 10 minutes off this broadcast?” This was a small tweak with a legitimately massive payoff. Imagine if, every time you took a four-hour drive, you had to pull over to the side of the road on 10 separate occasions and wait for 60 seconds each time. Then, imagine taking the same drive without those stops. Streamlining the process of screening clips didn’t seem like much on Oscar night, but it represented a huge, hidden quality-of-life improvement. 3) They showed clips! They showed clips! They showed clips! On occasion in recent years, Oscar producers have tried to shave time by skipping clips of the nominated performances – sometimes by simply listing names, sometimes by having a presenter gas on about each nominee’s greatness. You’d think the Academy Awards would know the value of showing rather than telling, but this mistake keeps seeping back to the surface every few years. Showing clips reaffirms the value of the nominated work, gives unfamiliar audiences an idea of the movies they might yet want to see, and, perhaps most relevant to the Oscars’ interests, celebrates the awesome power of the movies better than a million “A Salute To… The Movies!” montages ever could. 4) They killed the audience mics during the “In Memoriam” segment. Whenever you’ve got a musician playing a song as names of the recently departed scroll by, you run the risk of the event turning into a tasteless workout of the Applause-O-Meter. You could hear the occasional bit of applause this year – presumably picked up by Lenny Kravitz’s mic – but it was easy to miss. Here’s to an avoidable catastrophe, successfully avoided! Naturally, these Oscars still made other mistakes, including inconsistent uses of the orchestra to play people off stage and the Academy’s insistence on nominating a Diane Warren song yet again. But this year still felt like progress. Newsletter continues after sponsor message We Recommend I divide my work life between Pop Culture Happy Hour and NPR Music, so it’s not as if I was gonna pass up an opportunity to praise our fantastic new season of Louder Than A Riot, hosted by our pals and colleagues (and occasional PCHH panelists) Sidney Madden and Rodney Carmichael. Season 1 looked at the intersection of hip-hop and the criminal justice system, while Season 2 digs into “misogynoir” and hip-hop’s uneasy relationship with women and queer people. The first episode includes reporting on the trial in which Tory Lanez was convicted of shooting Megan Thee Stallion, but it’s also about more than that. This is a frank, thoughtful, lively, deeply researched show from one of the best teams in the business. One last bit of Oscars reading: If you hated The Whale like I hated The Whale, you’ll love how much – and with how much profanity – Lindy West hated The Whale.  In need of a new bit of reality-TV escapism, I discovered the Food Network’s Tournament of Champions, in which Guy Fieri – that most underrated Mayor of Flavortown – presides over a (seasonally appropriate) bracket-style competition among famous chefs. Season 4 is going on now, with a supersized 32-person field, but I’m still on Season 1. Among the many joys here, the casting pays off my many years spent watching TV cooking competitions: You get Top Chef winners galore, ubiquitous cooking-show judges and other names you didn’t know you’d retained. It’s lively and friendly, which is crucial. What We Did This Week Willem Dafoe stars as Nemo in Inside, directed by Vasilis Katsoupis./Focus Feature I popped up on Morning Edition for one last chance to rank the year’s nominees for best original song – and, later in the week, sang the praises of Eluvium’s “Void Manifest.” Glen appeared on Weekend Edition Sunday to discuss TV binges with Ayesha Rascoe and Eric Deggans. As noted above, several of us – Aisha, Glen and Stephen – contributed to NPR’s Oscars live blog. Meanwhile, Linda rounded up major takeaways from the Oscars. Early Monday morning, the Core Four gathered around microphones to recap the Oscars. Glen and Ayesha Rascoe had kind words for Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. We revisited Linda and Aisha’s conversation about You. Glen, who’s had a big week, spoke to Jordan Crucchiola and Walter Chaw about Scream VI. Glen and I chatted about Shazam! Fury of the Gods. What's Making Us Happy Every week on the show, we talk about some other things out in the world that have been giving us joy lately. Here they are: Glen Weldon: Inside Stephen Thompson: Louder Than A Riot Stream your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to find your local station stream. Subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+. Your support helps make our show possible and unlocks access to our sponsor-free episodes. What do you think of today's email? We'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: pchh@npr.org Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here. Looking for more great content? Check out all of our newsletter offerings — including Music, Books, Daily News and more! You received this message because you're subscribed to Pop Culture Happy Hour emails. 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