Frances McDor­mand and Guiller­mo Del Toro were the 2018 Oscars MVPs

As Jim­my Kim­mel took to the stage last night at the Dol­by The­atre in Los Ange­les, audi­ences around the world held their breath and hoped for the best. Round­ing off an exhaust­ing awards sea­son, the cer­e­mo­ny opened with a schticky old-timey voiceover, nod­ding to some of the famous faces in the audi­ence and hark­ing back to the Academy’s 90-year his­to­ry. Maybe it was a lit­tle strange to throw back in this way giv­en that Hollywood’s murky past has been so hot­ly dis­cussed, but the bit man­aged to be short enough to avoid out­stay­ing its welcome.

It’s easy to see why Kim­mel was invit­ed back for a sec­ond year as host — he’s charm­ing and per­son­able, and more than capa­ble of mar­ry­ing the light com­e­dy of the Oscars with the more seri­ous ele­ments that it was entire­ly nec­es­sary to dis­cuss on the night. His open­ing mono­logue namechecked many of the nom­i­nees, but arguably Helen Mir­ren stole the show when she turned up to mod­el a jet ski, which Kim­mel was offer­ing up to award win­ners who man­aged to keep their speech­es short and sweet. This was the recur­ring joke of the night, with Lakei­th Stan­field repris­ing his Get Out role to real­ly dri­ve the point home.

If the aim was to stop the cer­e­mo­ny over­run­ning (as it almost always does) they didn’t quite pull it off. As jokes go, it was a pret­ty tired one, made even more so by the con­stant cut­ting to pre-record­ed mon­tage videos, cel­e­brat­ing the his­to­ry of the awards, and…war films, for some rea­son. There was a nuanced trib­ute to #MeToo, which fea­tured in a video that also cel­e­brat­ed the work of POCs, with con­tri­bu­tions from Kumail Nan­jiani, Mira Sorvi­no and Bar­ry Jenkins.

In this year’s iter­a­tion of Ellen’s piz­za order, Kim­mel took a group of celeb pals includ­ing Armie Ham­mer, Lupi­ta Nyong’o and Mar­got Rob­bie out of the build­ing to sur­prise a group of cin­e­ma-goers across the street at Grauman’s Chi­nese The­atre and hand out some snacks. It was a cutesy skit, redeemed only by the sight of Guiller­mo del Toro car­ry­ing a six-foot sub and Ham­mer fir­ing hot dogs from a hot dog can­non at mem­bers of the pub­lic. But we’ve come to expect these stock Oscar moments now, where the glit­terati deign to allow mem­bers of the pub­lic into their lit­tle world for five minutes.

In fact, it was a fair­ly pre­dictable night all round in terms of win­ners. Per­haps the biggest sur­prise of the night came in the Best Doc­u­men­tary cat­e­go­ry, where Net­flix final­ly won their first Oscar (after four nom­i­na­tions) for Icarus, beat­ing out Agnes Varda’s Faces Places. Fans of Lady Bird were left dis­ap­point­ed after the film failed to win any of its nom­i­na­tions, while Phan­tom Thread only received one award (and very deserved it was) for Best Cos­tume Design.

Over in Cin­e­matog­ra­phy, chron­ic nom­i­nee Roger Deakins final­ly won his gold­en stat­uette at the 14^th attempt for Blade Run­ner: 2049. Jor­dan Peele was elat­ed to receive Best Orig­i­nal Screen­play for Get Out, and James Ivory became the old­est Oscar win­ner ever, tak­ing home Best Adapt­ed Screen­play for Call Me by Your Name. Del Toro gave an impas­sioned speech for his Best Direc­tor nod and seemed com­plete­ly dumb­found­ed when The Shape of Water was announced as Best Pic­ture, mak­ing sure to check the enve­lope when he reached the stage.

The speech­es of the night belonged to Rachel Shen­ton, who signed her accep­tance for Best Live Short for The Silent Child, and Frances McDor­mand, receiv­ing her sec­ond Best Actress Oscar. She implored men in Hol­ly­wood to start con­ver­sa­tions with women and to help them finance projects, before say­ing, ​“I have two words for you: inclu­sion rid­er,” refer­ring to a clause in an actor’s con­tract that requires the cast and crew be diverse in order to retain the actor on the project. Frances didn’t come to play.

Over­all, it felt like the Oscars cer­e­mo­ny 2018 need­ed. Women were giv­en a plat­form to talk that felt like more than just tokenism, and although it couldn’t pos­si­bly hope to top the dra­ma of last year’s La La Land/Moon­light deba­cle, it was a decent show­ing that man­aged to address the issues of the day with­out com­ing across as tokenism. McDormand’s speech was a ral­ly­ing cry to ensure equal­i­ty isn’t just a buzz­word (which, when they award Gary Old­man an Oscar for play­ing Win­ston Churchill, it did sort of seem).

If any­thing, this year’s Acad­e­my Awards have high­light­ed how far Hol­ly­wood still has to come. It’s a start, but after 90 years, progress isn’t just wel­come, it’s a necessity.