NEW YORK — The love-him-or-hate-him reaction to Seth MacFarlane's turn as Academy Awards host is evidence that one of the most high-profile jobs in show business is becoming one of its most thankless. He predicted he'd be ripped apart and he was, particularly on social media. He also had his fans, with many suggesting the motion picture academy got precisely the kind of performance it expected and wanted in hiring someone known for his subversive, even crude humor. To some ears, MacFarlane's material — which included a domestic violence joke involving Rihanna and Chris Brown, and references to Mel Gibson's racial slurs — didn't make the grade. “If you're going to the edge, you have to be funny,” said comic Joy Behar on the TV show “The View” on Monday. “To me, I love Seth, but it wasn't funny enough.” Behar's colleague, Whoopi Goldberg — a four-time Oscars host — had a bit more empathy, noting that people in MacFarlane's position have a tough line to walk. The Oscars can't force a younger audience to be interested just by hiring a younger host, she said, and a younger host has to know the audience that is out there. Robert Thompson, director of Syracuse University's Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture, agreed that MacFarlane's was a difficult position. “Your job description is that you are trying to appeal to people who are not necessarily watching the Oscars to get them to watch, and at the same time appeal to people who are actually watching it,” he said. “That's not an easy thing to do.” The Nielsen Co. said an estimated 40.3 million people watched the Academy Awards on Sunday, up 1 million from last year and the first time since 2010 that the show topped the 40 million mark. “Watching the Oscars last night meant sitting through a series of crudely sexist antics led by a scrubby, self-satisfied Seth MacFarlane. That would be tedious enough,” wrote the New Yorker's Amy Davidson. “For a guy who had the deck stacked against him before he started, MacFarlane did a surprisingly impressive job,” wrote critic Tim Goodman in the Hollywood Reporter. Critic Frazier Moore of The Associated Press said MacFarlane went back and forth between the Bad Seth and Good Seth throughout the night — and gave high marks to both. “Both were very funny, stewarding a broadcast that never went askew,” Moore wrote. – AP
