Posted on Sun, Feb. 24, 2008

When they announced Jon Stewart would host the Academy Awards for the second time in three years, some of us wondered what Jimmy Kimmel had done to so terribly offend ABC.

After all, America’s hipster political comic hadn’t left viewers clamoring for more of his Hollywood wit. Stewart’s jokes had so much bite you could see audience members wincing. And with a near-low 38.9 million viewers tuning in, he brought the so-called “Super Bowl for women” down to wild-card playoff game levels.

But the “Daily Show” host isn’t the thinking person’s talk-show host for nothing. Stewart seemed aware that he’d been too cable for network TV’s biggest entertainment production of the year, and Sunday night he avoided repeating any of his 2006 missteps.

He didn’t yell over the applause. He didn’t savage the producers who toiled over the 42 clip reels that aired during the broadcast. And during his opening monologue, the front rows of the Kodak Theatre felt only the soothing pulsation of a comedian’s gentle ribbing.

“Does this town need a hug?” Stewart said. “ ‘No Country for Old Men.’ ‘Sweeney Todd.’ ‘There Will Be Blood.’ All I can say is, thank God for teen pregnancy.”

Who else than Stewart could have combined two esoteric topics — the writers who went on strike and the cancellation of the Vanity Fair Oscars party — into a pitch-perfect joke that everyone could enjoy? For those who have trouble remembering what happened in the first one-20th of the broadcast, the punch line was, “Maybe one day invite some of them (writers) to the Vanity Fair Oscar party.”

Having performed this duty and a couple of more setup pieces during the opening hour (including a very funny satirical tribute to periscopes and telescopes in film history), Stewart did what Oscar hosts lately have been asked to do … go backstage and stay there.

Oh, every now and then he would poke his head out to say something that sounded like Jay Leno’s writers had faxed it in (like the one about Harrison Ford being “either an internationally acclaimed movie star or an auto dealership”).

But really, there isn’t much for an Oscar host to do these days after the first hour. That’s when the major awards start getting called, and the montages and musical numbers start sucking all the oxygen out of the room. The Academy Awards have become practically host-proof — and thereby critic-proof. Just about anyone willing to do stand-up in front of 100 million people will probably be asked to emcee them. There’s hope for you yet, Jimmy.

I was surprised, however, that all of that pent-up creativity from the 14-week writers’ strike wasn’t unleashed during the 3-hour, 15-minute telecast. The best line of the night came from the late Bob Hope, who explained to an Oscars audience the tallying of the winner: “A secretary types them up and she is taken out and shot … so here we are.”

But too much seemed familiar this night. Steve Carell continued his mock feud with Stewart, chiding him for his “constant need for attention.” Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill tried (unsuccessfully) to channel previous Oscar presenters/goof-offs Will Ferrell and Jack Black. Jerry Seinfeld made the appearance as the voice of a honeybee — now where did they get that idea?

One new idea was having servicemen and one servicewoman from Iraq announce the winner for best documentary short, though that did have the unintentionally ironic result of a member of the United States military honoring a film about a gay couple.

The night’s most inspired moment came after Bill Conti and the orchestra cut off one of the winners of the best song Oscar before she could give a speech. It seemed profoundly unjust because the movie, “Once,” was nominated exactly that many times, and Marketa Irglova’s co-writer, Glen Hansard, had given a perfectly lovely and heartfelt, if overlong, speech of his own.

So Stewart brought Irglova back on stage. His instinct was rewarded with perhaps the night’s most touching acceptance.

A word must be said about Regis Philbin, who was asked to run ABC’s pre-Oscars show and who rewarded the faith network executives had in him. Like a jolt of Geritol (that’s vitamins to you under-50 readers), Philbin took the reins of the red-carpet telecast and never let up, bringing his signature mix of enthusiasm and mock outrage (“It’s George Clooney! What’s the matter with you people?!”) to a broadcast that desperately needed it.