
Kate McKinnon’s Weird Barbie gives a lost Jimmy Kimmel directions to the Oscars, in ABC’s extended trailer.
Oscar season is over at last! Tonight ABC aired the 96th Academy Awards, once again held at ye olde Dolby Theatre and hosted for a fourth time by ABC’s favorite trooper Jimmy Kimmel. This year’s soiree clocked in at 144 minutes, a surprising 14 minutes shorter than last year’s telecast. That’s after starting six minutes late and keeping the stopwatch running till the very end of the end credits, up to the final boilerplate disclaimer read by announcer David Alan Grier. Kimmel and his writing staff made only a single overtime joke in the monologue, then dropped that annual running gag for the rest of the night. It’s refreshing whenever a tired joke is crossed off the setlist.















For those just catching up on the week in headline news: Republican politician Chris Christie, currently governor of New Jersey but intermittently mentioned in hushed tones among optimistic rank-‘n’-file as a possible party savior in the 2016 Presidential race, has been accused of directing his subordinates to pull transportation strings and create a four-day traffic snarl where the George Washington Bridge connects Manhattan to the New Jersey town of Fort Lee, allegedly because its mayor hadn’t fallen in lockstep with his party colleagues and publicly endorsed Christie’s future endeavors.

