Well. Lisa's advice to Bart would be pretty well heeded here, because there was a lot of dumb crap that could have been taken out. In fact, it would have made room for something I was hoping would be there... since we weren't seeing anything substantial of the Angry Dad movie/ short throughout the episode until the very end, I was wondering if maybe they'd just make the full short and, well, show it all, at the end. Something like acts 1-3 = the Simpsons episode with the resolution at the end, and act 4 = the short in full. It is a short, after all. That's what they should have done, again, given the amount of good material.
Here's some of what they could have cut: the ceiling fan sequence at the start (though it was amusing how a similar thing was found in 9F03), things Homer's ass can do, the extended "Mixar" sequence with all the surreal nonsense apart from the "cameos" of Lasseter et al. (it was marginally funny, like Luxo Jr., but not Simpsons style outside of a nightmare sequence), the weird Anthony Hopkins "cameo" and other such ones... actually, just typing that gave me a flash of how Futurama's "That's Lobstertainment!" (3ACV08) was pretty poorly received, and for similar reasons of style departure - but at least we got to watch much of the bad movie.
Also: why on earth was the theme from Jurassic Park heard over the awards ceremony montage? And what was with the spliced/shortened Gracie Films theme? Nice way to cap off this thing.
On the plus side: Ricky Gervais's extended bits were pretty good. The minor bit of plot about Homer ruining all the awards ceremonies, Bart hiding the Oscar nom from him, and the change of heart at the end was also nice. Many of the other shorts were fun to watch, particularly the "Willis and Crumble" one, but the Condiments short was actually pretty awful - attributed to "Mixar" but definitely not their caliber of animation or writing.
DYN: ...Banksy graffiti backstage at the Oscars? (see also MABF18) ..."Mixar" uses the same "M" construction as "Mapple" and "Mypod" - and Pixar is itself pretty closely related to Apple?
Previous episode stuff DABF13: the original Angry Dad episode, of course 9F03, 9F16, Movie: similar themes of making a movie from a cartoon, awards shows (Bart and Lisa in the Oscar audience = definitely reminiscent of 9F16), etc. 4F12: Homer does a cartoon voice KABF21: Wall-E shows up 5F19: "Mixar" guys have "awards polish" EABF05: Kennedy Center Honors are part of the montage - Lisa dreams of it here 9F02: Lisa's hair at the end
Meta -They don't actually show the Dan Castellaneta caricature from DABF13, but they say he can't do the voice anymore because he blew out his voice (screaming about he didn't get paid (for the first one)). Homer does the voice instead. -The Simpsons theme plays twice (two separate excerpts) when the short wins a Golden Globe and then an Oscar. Not the first time that's happened. -Homer mentions that his voice is part Walter Matthau (true), also part Little Richard and Snoopy when he cries (as far as I know, not true). -Lisa guesses her red dress is from Lamps Plus. -An interesting non-example I was expecting but didn't turn up: It was near the end of the episode when Bart came to the realization that awards shouldn't be about honoring one person as the sole one responsible; I thought we might be in for a giant Matt Groening credit, in the style of Ian Maxtone-Graham's credit in BABF10, since many people seem to think he's the only person who makes the show anyway.
Actually, I just had a moment of Fridge Brilliance. It's about Angry Dad, after all, and the episode left me just sort of feeling angry. Well played.