For months in advance, and long before the nominees were even announced, the 82nd Academy Awards ceremony was billed as a combination Divorce Court episode and live-action Celebrity Death Match, with an aggrieved ex-wife facing off against her former husband for the Best Picture spoils, and nothing but ABC’s five-second delay standing between the audience at home and the schadenfreude sure to ensue inside the Kodak Theater. Though actually, thanks to an ongoing dispute between Cablevision and ABC’s parent-company Disney—which resulted in the network’s signal being pulled from three million odd viewers—it’s possible something else was threatening to come between you and the His-n-Hers throwdown last night. Anyway, the point is, these Oscars had been hyped. And after all that hype, we did finally get to see an impromptu on-stage tussle (watch it here).

However, the fight was not, as promised, between best director nominees and exes James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow. Those two, quite predictably, were all hugs and kisses. No, the fight was between Roger Ross Williams and Elinor Burkett, the director and the producer, respectively, of Kayne, the winner for Best Documentary Short. It was that kind of night, I guess.

I’ve said before, every Oscars is the most boring ever, and I still think that’s true, but complaints were up from my wife and the four friends watching with us, and it seemed to have something to do with how drearily predictable this year’s winners were. With the number of Best Picture nominees newly expanded from five to ten, my Fanzine colleague Kevin Killian was apparently certain that this was going to be the year the Oscars would be liberated from the tyranny of Miramax-era good taste, possibly even resulting in a win for Avatar. But with all due to respect to Kevin, I mean, of course Bigelow won for best director.