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In a racially controversial Oscars year, the show played it safe

Most years we watch the Oscars to find out who won what, who wore what and how we fared in the office pool. But this isn't most years.

Leonardo DiCaprio snagged Best Actor. "I do not take tonight for granted," he said as he...
Leonardo DiCaprio snagged Best Actor. "I do not take tonight for granted," he said as he accepted his award.(Dan Steinberg / Invision/AP)

This is the year when heightened consciousness of the academy's glaringly white male membership shifted our focus elsewhere: to host Chris Rock, the most incisive comedic dissector of racial issues in show business; to the Oscar boycott and subsequent paucity of minority faces in the audience (to match the paucity of minority nominees); and to the victory speeches, which held the potential to become a bit more topical and pointed than usual.

Rock took the stage in a white tux to the strains of Public Enemy's "Fight the Power" and sank his teeth into the opening monologue. If there was ever a perfect year for Rock to show up and Bring the Pain (to borrow the title from his incendiary 1996 comedy special), this was it.

He didn't waste any time getting to the point. "If they nominated hosts, I wouldn't be here," he quipped. "You'd be watching Neil Patrick Harris." But his irreverence also had bite. He wondered why black people didn't boycott the Oscars in the '50s and '60s, and provided his own dark answer: "We had real things to protest at the time. We were too busy being raped and lynched to care about who won best cinematographer. When your grandmother is swinging from a tree it's hard to care about best documentary foreign short." Touché, and then some.

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Rock worked some celebrity shtick into his monologue -- the Oscars, after all, remain a celebrity party. Not every gag connected: The joke about Rihanna's panties was a dud, and the bit involving Clueless star Stacey Dash a few moments later went down like a lead Zeppelin. On balance, however, Rock did what he does best: shake things up and make them dangerous, but somehow still amiable enough to get his rich audience to buy Girl Scout cookies from his daughters on the air.

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At times the evening took on a parlor game quality: How many faces of color were in the audience? (From my couch, maybe a few less than usual.) 

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What about presenters? (Seemed like a little more than usual, with Michael B. Jordan, Chadwick Boseman and Priyanka Chopra among those getting airtime.) Would any major winners use their platform to make a plea for racial equality? (At press time, no.)

Thankfully there was some fun to be had, including a montage that incorporated Leslie Jones, Tracy Morgan, Whoopi Goldberg and Rock himself, as a black astronaut stranded on the red planet in The Martian. The Black History Month Minute honoring Jack Black was a hoot, too.

Elsewhere, the evening's major innovation was the Thank You crawl, a scroll of text that allowed winners to thank people without saying as much as they usually do. Like Major League Baseball, the academy is trying to speed things up (as a deadline journalist, I appreciate the effort). And, of course, some awards were awarded. Mad Max: Fury Road scored a pile of below-the-line awards. Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl) and Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies) won for their supporting performances. Spotlight and The Big Short won the screenwriting awards.

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On the whole, these Oscars were as stage-managed and predictable as any other in recent years. 

Gone are the days when Marlon Brando could send up the Native American activist Sacheen Littlefeather to accept his Oscar (the kind of gesture that would have fit in well this year). Now we settle for Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs reaffirming the organization's pledge to diversify its membership. When Rock wasn't cracking wise, and sometimes even when he was, the telecast played it pretty safe.

The lack of surprise shouldn't come as a surprise. The academy has made its recent headlines by showing how firmly it remains stuck in the past. Sunday's show felt a little more streamlined, a little more self-aware, a little more bold. But this is still the stodgiest of awards shows, even in an eventful year. As we've had so much cause to observe and lament in recent weeks, change comes slow to Hollywood.

Twitter: @chrisvognar