Open Letter: MTV Edition

Dear MTV,

You fought a hard battle to resuscitate the VMAs. Really, you did. After watching your ratings tank for the last couple of years, you decided to put all your chips in on one last hand with a new location, new format, and new categories. A valiant effort.

However, I think it's safe to say that you lost that hand; it's time to back away from the table and head back to your hotel suite to sleep it off. Maybe when you wake up, it will all have been a bad dream.

Your first mistake was signing Britney up to open the show. Not only has she not had an album out since 2004, she's a complete trainwreck. Unsurprisingly, she wandered through her choreography and mumbled through her lip-sync, looking slightly confused and lost in the bright lights the whole time. She was painful to watch, but it was moderately entertaining to watch the audience members try to keep a straight face when the cameras panned across them.

Your second mistake was Sarah Silverman. As has been proven countless times before, she is not funny when she's put in any kind of hosting situation. Scripted comedy? FIne. Stand up? Fine? But she is not good at hosting and you people need to stop making her try. Plus, did she really need to do so many Britney jokes? The audience was already squirming from Britney's performance, the tired old jokes about her cooch and her kids were totally unnecessary.

Your third mistake was the new categories. "Monster SIngle of the Year" essentially translates to "Most Overplayed Song of the Year" and "Quadruple Threat of the Year" is just... stupid. Stop it. Just stop it.

There were some mistakes on the technical side too. Please fire whoever designed the seating arrangement. It should never take a winner more than 45 seconds to get to the stage; watching Beyonce squeeze her way between tables didn't exactly make for compelling television. If you insist on having the tables that close together so they can be danced on later, at least have the good sense to put the nominees at the front and on the outside edges so they have some hope of getting on the stage to accept their awards in a reasonable amount of time.

Also, please fire your Graphics department. The robotic nomination packages got old really, really fast.

All that being said, there were some highlights. Chris Brown gave an absolutely phenomenal performance (which should have opened the show) and Justin totally gets a round of applause for asking (twice!) that you "play more damn videos." The suite parties were way more entertaining than the main show and hey, at least now we know the title of the next Indiana Jones movie. But a handful of highlights does not a good show make.

I realize that I'm dating myself with this question, but do you remember when the Video Music Awards were about, I don't know... music? And videos?

Yeah, neither do I.

Perhaps next year you'd like to refresh everyone's memory?

No Love,
Me