Okay, let’s get the Seth stuff out of the way first — and allow me to set the stage for what I’m about to say here: I follow Seth MacFarlane on Twitter, and I watch Family Guy every week. For me, his humor quotient displayed on both media is hit-or-miss… while I find lots of his tweets and many moments of FG laugh-out-loud funny, slightly less than half of the time I’m just not amused at all. But that’s okay — as far as I’m concerned, the funny bits more than make up for the tweets/episodes that don’t do anything for me. Thus, I didn’t come into last night’s Oscars as either a knee-jerk Seth hater, nor as a he-can’t-do-anything-wrong Seth apologist. I had, I thought, an open mind about his prospects, as I sat down to watch. And indeed, in the first 2 or 3 minutes, I started to get quite optimistic about what kind of host he would be for the show. Then, things got a bit off-track. Then even more off-track. It seemed to me that Seth MacFarlane couldn’t decide what kind of host to be, and so, vacillating between opposing poles (but never really embracing either end of the spectrum), he came off to me as simply bland. The comedy was also off, overall. Jabs at the industry are to be expected from any Oscar host, but there’s a fine line, which is easily crossed. Many of his jokes came off as mean-spirited (like the one which ostensibly was aimed at Rex Reed, but at its core was making fun of Adele for being overweight). I think a good rule of thumb for anyone asked to emcee this event is, “Can you imagine Johnny Carson telling these exact jokes?” Johnny poked fun at nearly everyone, but in such a gently teasing way that it was nearly impossible for the butt of the joke to take offense. Johnny, after all, might have to look that person in the eye one day and interview them on his show. Seth’s humor last night was more in the vein of Howard Stern than Johnny Carson. But, Oscar host is admittedly one of the toughest showbiz gigs there is, and Seth MacFarlane was far from the worst. There were, in fact, moments where you could see a pretty decent host shining through the facade. So, while I won’t be upset if he doesn’t host again, it was surely far better than the Franco/Hathaway debacle.