I didn't watch the Oscars, but Chadwick Boseman should've won

For the second year in a row I skipped watching the Oscars -- and to be honest, I didn't even miss it. Not even a little bit. I was so burned by last year's snubs, particularly of eminently worthy actors and actresses of color that I more or less vowed never to come back, even though I do check in on the awards race nonsense from time to time because I begrudgingly admit it entertains me.

And this year there was a lot to celebrate. After last year's tepid showing, this was the most diverse crop of actors ever nominated. And we have two female Best Director nominees, with Chloe Zhao ultimately triumphing and become just the second woman ever to win that prize.

And yet I imagine the thing most people will be talking about today is Anthony Hopkins' surprising upset of the late Chadwick Boseman in the Best Actor race. I mean Frances McDormand winning a third Best Actress Oscar (a feat even Meryl Streep hasn't achieved) is a big deal. And it's nice to see Youn Yuh-jung win Best Supporting Actress in what was, in retrospect, a pretty wide open race.

But Boseman's posthumous win seemed all but assured. So much so, that Hopkins' win (making him the oldest Oscar winning actor ever) came as such a huge shock.

It's not that Hopkins wasn't terrific in The Father, he was. It is the perfect sort of Oscar baity performance -- exploring the trauma of an aging man grabbling with Alzheimer's. Still, Boseman, who was so much more than an actor, and if there was ever a moment to pay tribute to his remarkable, all-too-brief career.

And apparently, idiots in the academy, according to pop culture writer Mark Harris were debating internally about whether giving Boseman the Oscar would be a "waste."

Curiously, I don't remember these same debates in the public when the late Heath Ledger, deservedly, won virtually ever critic's award -- including the Oscar -- for his iconic performance in The Dark Knight back in 2008. Of course, an Oscar for Boseman would not have been wasted, it would have been a fitting a tribute, just as Peter Finch's posthumous win was for his classic performance in Network.

Hopkins isn't the bad guy here. He's not a perennial winner who robbed someone more deserving. I could actually make an argument for all the other nominees winning too (with the exception of Gary Oldman) and I actually think the Best Actor winner should have been someone who wasn't even nominated -- Delroy Lindo for Da 5 Bloods.

More so this result, which I understand was a wet fart of an ending to the broadcast, is just another reminder that the Oscars are as out of touch as the Grammys have been for years. For every totally deserving and life affirming win as Parasite's last year, there is a Green Book victory and a Glenn Close nomination for a bad performance in a bad movie.

I'm tired of being disappointed almost every year, I'm tired of lamenting the preference for hokey message movies like The Trial of the Chicago 7 over more interesting fare like 2019's Uncut Gems, which didn't get a SINGLE NOMINATION. Not for Adam Sandler, who gave the performance of his life, not for its screenplay, its directors, its incredible score. For a movie like that to ignored is simply unforgivable and an indictment of everything the bloated Oscars is, and probably always was.