Kyle Buchanan for Vulture:

AMPAS just announced emcee duties for Seth MacFarlane…

Some predictions for this year’s telecast:

• The theme will be old-time Hollywood glamour and also farts.
• MacFarlane will open with a musical number in which he schizophrenically spews the voices he’s built an empire around.
• There will be a lot of winking and nodding to remind us that MacFarlane isn’t a churl (like Ricky Gervais) but a company man dutifully panning his pals with kid-gloves.

I don’t mind MacFarlane’s ubiquitous output, but I don’t get his current on-camera omnipresence. What’s the attraction? More to the point: what’s the endgame? Is this media blitz to launch the next act of his career? Or is it just another way to sell Family Guy box sets? It can’t be because audiences like the guy, can it?