Late night hosts were uniformly impressed with just one moment in the Oscars


"Last night was the 93rd annual Academy Awards," and "I guess most people thought the show was a little sluggish and at times uncomfortable," Jimmy Fallon said on Monday's Tonight Show. "It was as if the whole ceremony had just gotten its second Pfizer shot."
"The ceremony was watched by a record-low 9.9 million people," Fallon said. "That's like taking everyone who watched Mank and adding 9.8 million." There were some firsts in the awards, though, and "there was also a really funny moment during Daniel Kaluuya's acceptance speech," where he thanked his parents for having sex, he said. "His mom was like, 'This is so embarrassing,' and he was like, 'Relax, no one saw it.'"
The Late Show reimagined past winners also thanking their parents for having sex.
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"The ratings for the Oscars plummeted from 23 million last year to less than 10 million this year," Jimmy Kimmel said on Kimmel Live. "How can something so woke put so many people to sleep?" Still, "it was an historic evening," he said. "You know, before last night, an Oscar had never been given to a still photo of Anthony Hopkins before." Guillermo, on the red carpet before the Oscars, got Kaluuya to promise to thank him in his acceptance speech, and maybe Kaluuya should have taken him up on the offer.
"Chloé Zhao became the first woman of color to win best director, Yuh-Jung Youn was the first Korean actor to win an award, and Daniel Kaluuya, my friend, became the first person to get an Oscar and a beatdown from his mama on the same night," Trevor Noah said at The Daily Show. "Forget saying 'My parents had sex,' just to say 'sex' in front of African parents will be instantly rewarded by an ass-whooping of monumental proportions." Still, "I think this is the future of award shows," he said. "Forget agents and managers and the crowd, I want to see parents. Yeah, I want to see Brad Pitt's dad holding up his embarrassing baby photos in the bathtub. ... I want to see The Rock's mom heckling him from the crowd. 'He looks tough now, but he wet the bed until he was 19!'"
Late Night's Amber Ruffin was more impressed with the show than anyone on James Corden's Late Late Show. You can watch her 60-second Oscars recap, and her overall winner, below. Peter Weber
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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
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