Will We Get An Edgier Jimmy Kimmel for this Year’s Oscars?

This weekend we’ll finally learn which films Oscar voters have deemed to be best, which celebrities secretly hate each other, and who wore what better. It’s sure to be an interesting night as this year is one of the most unpredictable Oscar years in recent history. However, there’s another big gamble that will happen this Sunday. Which version of Jimmy Kimmel will we get?

During this politically charged environment and in the midst of the #MeToo and Time’s up movements, what celebrity presenters say (or don’t say) has become just as important as which projects win or lose. Awards shows can sometimes feel like they’re less about declaring winners and losers and more about Hollywood coming together to publicly fight for its values, and no awards show is bigger than the Oscars. In any environment, Jimmy Kimmel’s opening monologue and mid-ceremony riffs would matter; Kimmel is only one of 22 people who have had the honor of hosting the Oscars more than once. However, in the ever-divisive year that is 2018, Kimmel’s comments matter more than ever, and it’s unclear if his everyman tone will land as well as it did last year.

I enjoy Kimmel as a late night host. Most nights he hits a good balance, watching like a cross between a more authentic and relaxed Fallon and a less snarky Meyers. However, last Oscars it felt as if Kimmel was trying to use his charm to play two roles at once — that of the fun bro here for a good time and the biting and socially aware comedian. At least to me, both of those efforts felt flat. Kimmel’s most scathing jokes had to do with Trump’s 5 a.m. Twitter habits and a pretty solid Mel Gibson burn. With the possible exception of a racist joke about Trump (“I want to say thank you to President Trump. Do you remember last year when the Oscars were considered racist?”), every joke Kimmel said could have been made during slow night for almost any late night show.

If the goal of Kimmel’s monologue was to be political, it felt like a waste of a platform. If the goal to break away from politics to focus only on fun things, that element was also lacking. The Matt Damon digs were excellent and the sandwich snack delivery segment was fun, but the entire night felt restrained from Kimmel’s perspective. Possible fear of upsetting the wrong people made it feel like Kimmel never really knew what to do with himself, and so he didn’t seem to take many risks.

For a long time I dismissed Kimmel’s Oscars presentation, assuming that the opening monologue’s wavering tone was merely a reflection of the constraints of hosting a major awards show in today’s climate. That changed when I saw Seth Meyer’s Golden Globes monologue.

Meyers’ monologue was everything that Kimmel’s was lacking — punchier, more fearless, more firmly rooted in a direct point, and yes, funnier. It was a scathing use of a major platform that perfectly mirrored the late night host’s brand while echoing the angry tone of Hollywood today. It felt barbed not because Meyers wanted it to be, but because that’s how he needed it to be. That speech set the bar of how much awards hosts can and should press the envelope in these modern times, and it seemed to speak to Kimmel as well.

During the Television Critics Association’s 2018 winter tour, Kimmel was asked about Meyer’s opening monologue the day after the Golden Globes. “Seth is really funny because he was making jokes last night that felt like they were specifically for me,” he said. “My wife, we were sitting on the couch and watching it and we started laughing. He said, his monologue was like sending the first dog into space and seeing if it came back alive, and it did feel that way.”

So that brings the focus back to Kimmel: How is the late night host going to approach the Oscars in his second year? As a host, Kimmel has changed a lot since 2017. In May of 2017, Kimmel used his show to open up about his son’s health scare, and ever since the late night host has been a bit sharper. Whereas before Kimmel seemed to float through the ethers of late night, by passionately fighting for health care he has better established himself and in effect both his comedy and show seem clearer now than ever before. The host has proven that he can be focused and barbed when he wants to be, and that approach seems to be working with viewers. In October of 2017, The Hollywood Reporter revealed that Jimmy Kimmel Live! was the only late night show to see year-over-year improvements in ratings for younger audiences.

Kimmel has also made it clear that he won’t be avoiding difficult topics at the Oscars. In an interview with Variety, he promised that movements like #TimesUp and #MeToo will be part of the night. “I can’t give you a percentage, but it’ll be a part of it,” he said. It should be noted that in the same interview, Kimmel said he would let Ryan Seacrest interview him, despite the sexual misconduct allegations against the host.

At the moment, it seems as if Kimmel is more concerned with celebrating the winners than making a big point. “This show is not about reliving people’s sexual assaults,” the host told ABC News earlier this week.

The late night host added that he didn’t want to “ruin” the night for people who have been dreaming of getting an Oscar their whole lives. “That’s not what I want to do,” he said. “I’m not going to stop any bad behavior with my jokes.”

However, that doesn’t mean Kimmel will be skipping controversial topics altogether. The state of America and Hollywood in particular is so divisive right now, it leaves little room for middling opinions, especially during the entertainment industry’s biggest night of the year. Hopefully Kimmel’s praise of Meyers paired with his now sharper and more personal brand of comedy means that we’ll be getting an Academy Awards host that can guide us through this difficult night in a way that is both fun, praise-filled, and not too forgiving to those who deserve to be criticized. Hollywood is in the middle of a time of reckoning, and it needs people — including comedians — to hold its feet to the flames. If not, well, at least there will probably be PB&J.

The 90th Academy Awards ceremony will air on ABC Sunday March 4, 2018, 8 p.m. ET.