Oscars 2016: 15 Best and Worst Moments

The elephant in the room? Consider it addressed. The jokes and apologies referencing the #OscarsSoWhite controversy were so numerous that they distracted from the fact that there were 24 awards to hand out, many of them to surprised and emotional winners. Still, there were some moments that, for good or ill, viewers won't soon forget.

1. The Monologue

Rock wasted no time before diving into the controversy, referring to the Oscars as "the white People's Choice Awards" and noting that if hosts were subject to nomination, he wouldn't have been there. But he also deflated the protesters, observing that there must have been plenty of other years with no black nominees (say, in the 1960s), but no one complained then because black people had more important things to protest. That is, they were "too busy being raped and lynched to worry about who was best cinematographer." As for Jada Pinkett Smith boycotting the show, Rock said that was like him boycotting Rihanna's panties: "I wasn't invited." Rock correctly noted that the lack of diversity at the Oscars was symptomatic of the way things work throughout Hollywood. His funniest line may have been his description of Hollywood as not overtly racist but "sorority racist." As in, "We like you, Rhonda, but you're not Kappa."

2. The Pre-taped Bits

Rock kept hammering the theme with pre-recorded bits. The best of these was one that showed how hard it was to squeeze black performers into this year's nominated films, a montage that spliced Whoopi Goldberg into "Joy" as a cleaning lady unimpressed with Jennifer Lawrence's mop handling, Leslie Jones into "The Revenant" in place of the attacking bear, Tracy Morgan as a Danish-eating transvestite in "The Danish Girl," and Rock himself as a stranded astronaut that white NASA officials wouldn't even spend $2,500 to rescue in "The Martian." Another bit, a reprise of one he did when he hosted in 2005, had him interviewing black moviegoers in Compton, none of whom had seen or heard of any of this year's nominated movies. (But they'd all seen "Straight Outta Compton.") The weakest was a "Black History Month Minute" with a bait-and-switch punchline that didn't live up to its elaborate set-up and inadvertently proved Rock's point about lack of opportunity by wasting Angela Bassett, who deserves better.

3. Stacey Dash

In another joke at the Academy's expense, Rock introduced the "Clueless" actress-turned-Fox News pundit as the Academy's new minority outreach liaison. Give Stacey Dash points for being game enough to show up after all the backlash she got for dismissing both the #OscarsSoWhite controversy and Black History Month as reverse racism. But if you hadn't been following the issue closely, you wouldn't have known why Dash's mere presence was supposed to be funny, and neither performer did anything to sell the gag, which fell painfully flat.

4. 'Merkin'

Presenting for Best Make-Up, Jared Leto probably introduced millions of viewers to the term, asking them to Google it if they didn't know what it means. Later, he saved them the trouble by tweeting this NSFW picture of one. You're welcome, world.

5. Girl Scout Cookies

Rock did have one welcome running gag that, thankfully, was utterly non-controversial. It involved him going out into the audience with a troop of Los Angeles Girl Scouts to sell cookies on behalf of his daughters back on the East Coast. By the end of the show, he claimed to have hit up the millionaires in the audience for more than $65,000. That's an awful lot of Thin Mints.

6. Droids

There were gimmicky appearances by such non-human presenters as the Minions and "Toy Story" stars Woody and Buzz Lightyear (still bickering after 20 years in the toy chest). But the most delightful were the three "Star Wars" droids. C-3PO did all the talking, of course, but R2-D2 and BB-8 were adorable. And yes, 3PO does look like an Oscar. Which is good, since "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" didn't win any of the five it was nominated for.

7. Diverse Winners

Fittingly, several of the winners wanted to claim the mantle of diversity, as if to make up for the all-white slate of acting nominees. Best Song winner Sam Smith claimed he might be the first openly gay man to win an Oscar. Best Director winner Alejandro González Iñárritu ("The Revenant") said he looked forward to the day when the color of one's skin was as irrelevant as the length of one's hair. Even Colin GIbson, who won early in the evening for Production Design, claimed the night's "first Oscar for diversity" because of all the different nationalities of the "Mad Max: Fury Road" production design crew.

8. 'Mad Max' mania

It didn't win Best Picture or Director, but "Mad Max: Fury Road" raced off with six awards, sweeping most of the technical categories. And the mostly Aussie winners were a hoot, from the rowdy pair of sound editors (did they get bleeped, or was that just a broadcast glitch) to costumer Jenny Beavan, who's not Australian but who wore a leather outfit that wouldn't have looked out of place in the movie.

9. The Crawl

This innovation, a ticker running the names of all the little people the winners want to thank, could have proved a headache-inducing distraction, but it was actually pretty easy to ignore. Indeed, the winners themselves seemed to ignore it and thank laundry lists of supporters anyway. If the purpose of the crawl was to shorten the speeches so that winners wouldn't have to be played off by the orchestra, it failed.

10. Louis C.K.

For all the scripted patter of the presenters, it was the "Louie" comic who offered the intro that was funniest and most poignant. It was for Documentary Short, whose nominees Louis C.K. said he admired because, unlike everyone else at the Dolby Theatre, they weren't rich and weren't going to make a dime from their movies. "This Oscar is going home in a Honda Civic" and will probably be the nicest thing the winner ever owns. Don't know if that's true for "A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness" director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (she won the same prize three years ago for the related film "Saving Face"), but she did say that "Girl in the River" had prompted the prime minister of Pakistan to change the law in order to prevent honor killings, so her film really has made a difference.

11. In Memoriam

This year's montage of the dead was accompanied by a lovely acoustic performance of the Beatles' "Blackbird" performed by Dave Grohl (guess Paul McCartney was busy getting turned away from an Oscar party). For those keeping score at home, early 2016 departures David Bowie and Alan Rickman made it in; Abe Vigoda, George Gaynes, Glenn Frey, Elizabeth Wilson, and Uggie the Dog did not.

12. Lady Gaga

It really looked like the fix was in for Lady Gaga's Best Song nominee, "Til It Happens to You." It was introduced by no less august a personage than Vice President Joe Biden, who offered a public service plea to be vigilant against college campus sexual assault (the topic of both Gaga's song and the documentary it comes from). The singer delivered an impassioned rendition of the ballad, joined on stage by what was apparently a group of actual campus rape survivors, all of them with inspirational slogans scrawled on their arms. It seemed that Gaga's co-composer, Diane Warren, was finally about to win an Oscar after seven previous unsuccessful nominations. But no, the prize went to Smith for his James Bond theme, "Writing's on the Wall." Next time, we bet Gaga calls on the president instead.

13. Ennio Morricone

It wasn't a good night for sentimental favorites, whether it was Warren or Sylvester Stallone, widely expected to win for Supporting Actor for "Creed" 39 years after failing to win one for playing Rocky Balboa the first time. But one sentimental favorite did win: "Hateful Eight" composer Ennio Morricone, who'd won an Honorary Oscar a decade ago but had never won in competition despite half a dozen nominations. Finally, the 87-year-old legend, who became an international sensation a half-century ago with his instant-classic score to "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," won an Oscar the old fashioned way. He was moved to tears by his victory, and after his translator helped him to the stage, he spoke movingly, in Italian, but with obvious emotion that, like his music, transcended language barriers.

14. Ali G

Presenter Sacha Baron Cohen resurrected his aggressively ignorant white rapper character, which allowed him to poke fun at both the Oscars' lack of diversity and those protesting against it. He complained that there should have been recognition for those little yellow guys... the Minions, and for the black guy from "Star Wars"... Darth Vader. A little Ali G goes a long way, and thankfully, Baron Cohen wrapped before he wore out his welcome.

15. The Upsets

There were quite a few of these -- all the short film winners, Best Song, Supporting Actor winner Mark Rylance ("Bridge of Spies"), and Best Visual Effects, which went to "Ex Machina," a movie whose $15 million budget was probably less than what favored nominees "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" and "Mad Max: Fury Road" spent on bagels. But the biggest surprise (though a handful of pundits did predict it) was Best Picture, which went to "Spotlight" instead of odds-on favorite "The Revenant" or fellow long-shot "The Big Short." Winning Best Original Screenplay as well, "Spotlight" became the first Best Picture winner to win just two Oscars total since Cecil B. DeMille's circus epic "The Greatest Show on Earth" 63 years ago. "Revenant" had most of the awards momentum, and "Big Short" had won the Producers Guild prize (which accurately predicted the Oscar for the last eight years), but this proved to be a year with an often unpredictable three-way race that went down to the wire. The #OscarsSoWhite controversy may have made all the noise, but it was the race among three strong movies that made the Oscars exciting and suspenseful, all the way to the bitter end.