According to Deadline, Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, the producers of the Academy Awards, apparently have mistaken a flat, ugly Oscars hosting performance by Seth MacFarlane for “relevance,” and asked him back to host again next year. Given that part of the reason MacFarlane was asked to host this year is because he has a side musical career and this was supposed to be a salute to the Oscars in music, an idea that was conveyed much better by Shirley Bassey straight killing it than by anything MacFarlane himself did, I wonder what the rationale is this time around. Is it going to be a salute to animation, a kind of filmmaking the Academy has traditionally refused to treat as if it’s as serious as live-action movies, hosted by a bunch of MacFarlane’s creations?

Word in Deadline’s story is that we might be saved a repeat if only because MacFarlane already said no to coming back, and because he’s very, very busy doing other things that will make him much more money. But in any case, that Zadan and Meron would ask again has me hoping that someone is smart enough to hire Retta to live-snark the ceremony MSTK3000-style. It may be the only way I get through this thing next year.

Seth MacFarlane’s performance as an Oscar host last night was a perfect advertisement for MacFarlane’s brand of humor. He opened with a number about the fact that he—and we as audiences—have seen female Academy Award nominees’ breasts. It was a bit that could have been a perceptive riff about the fact that women are asked to get naked, and to get naked in different ways, than their male counterparts, and could have tweaked the 77 percent of Academy voters who are men for voting for those roles, rather than recognizing female actors for performances that are non-sexual. Instead, he went in an entirely different direction that made for a faster, but not nearly as deep joke, bringing in the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles. A comedic sensibility that goes to Boobs + Gay Men Who Don’t Like Boobs = Hilarity may be commercially viable, but it’s as fleeting as adolescence.

From there, MacFarlane dug in as hard as he could have on one of the few comedic lanes he’s capable of working in. He used Quvenzhané Wallis, who is nine, to make a joke about George Clooney’s fondness for dating younger women, then tossed him a drink as if to reassure one of Hollywood’s most powerful and respected actors that he’d never actually make a crack at Clooney‘s expense. He suggested that Jennifer Anniston is hiding a past as a stripper. He made jokes about actresses throwing up to fit into their dresses. He thought it was funny that Javier Bardem has an accent. I’m no Chris Brown fan, but even MacFarlane’s joke about Brown was badly constructed, saying “Django is a movie where a woman is subjected to violence, or as we call it, a Chris Brown and Rihanna date movie,” ignoring the fact that Django is a movie where a woman of color is subjected to tremendous violence by white men and saved by a heroic black man who is taking on a chivalric role that was previously specifically reserved for white men.

What bothers me more than anything else about these jokes is how boring they are. I’ve heard variations of them countless times from people who think they’re hilarious, and act as if no one has ever unearthed such comedic gems before, and they’re always wrong. They are the scraps of humor actual comics left on the table a decade earlier in their careers after they learned that playing to people’s dumbest, most stereotypical assumptions is not actually the same thing as joke-making. But the laziness of MacFarlane’s brand played particularly poorly at the Oscars given the movie industry’s very real problems with both women and derivativeness, in a celebration of what’s supposed to be Hollywood’s best, the things that the profits of things like The Avengers make it possible to keep in production.
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On Friday, I laid out in detail the data on how women of color are underrepresented—and underpaid—in every aspect of the television industry. Today, I want to do something a little different. We all know about Shonda Rhimes, the single most powerful woman of color in the television business. And in the post-Girls conversation about the women of color who should be given the kind of creative control and financial backing that creators like Lena Dunham and Louis C.K. have received from HBO and FX, respectively, Issa Rae, the creator and star of the marvelous web series The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, has come up repeatedly as a suggestion. Rae’s work is tremendous, and unfortunately, it seems like her conversations with television networks lead her to conclude it was better to retain creative control and stay on the web rather than surrender her vision in exchange for a budget and amplification, and that rigidity on the networks’ part is a loss for them, and her, and us.

But it’s also worth remembering the women of color writing for network television who are less immediately visible because they don’t also appear in front of the camera. I called up a couple of television writers whose work I enjoy and asked them to recommend their colleagues, and added a few of my own. These are just a few of the women of color whose work is worth watching, and supporting. Some of them have already run their own shows. And I’d love to see more of them get a chance to do so in the future. In no particular order:

1) Nahnatchka Khan: Khan came up as a writer and producer on comedies like Malcolm in the Middle and American Dad*. She created Don’t Trust the B—- in Apt. 23, starring Dreama Walker, Krysten Ritter, and James Van Der Beek, which premiered on ABC earlier this month.

2) Denise Thé: Thé got her staff writing start on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and has since gone on to serve as the story editor on Medium and to write for Cold Case and Person of Interest.

3) Mara Brock Akil: She created Girlfriends and that show’s spinoff The Game. She’s a consulting producer on Cougar Town. And she wrote Sparkle, the Motown period piece that will be Whitney Houston’s last movie, and Gabrielle Union star vehicle Being Mary Jane, both of which are due out this year.

4) Silvia Olivas: Olivas co-produced Moesha and The Brothers Garcia, part of an initiative to make shows with Latino characters that would appeal to diverse audiences (these days, we just get Rob!). Recently, she’s been writing for children’s shows like Martha Speaks and Special Agent Oso.

5) Maurissa Tancharoen: Part of the Whedonverse by marriage (Tancharoen is married to Jed Whedon), Tancharoen wrote for Dollhouse, and currently is writing and producing in the Spartacus franchise for Starz.

6) Aisha Muharrar: Muharrar writes what I think are consistently some of the warmest episodes on Parks and Recreation, including “Kaboom,” involving prank volunteerism, and this season’s “Born and Raised,” the show’s rebuke to birtherism.

7) Stacy Littlejohn: She created MTV’s Single Ladies, wrote for both Wanda Sykes and Cedric the Entertainer, and has produced Life With Bonnie and All of Us.

8) Cherry Chevapravatdumrong: Another veteran of Seth MacFarlane shows, Chevapravatdumrong is a long time Family Guy writer and story editor, including credits on the series’ movies.

9) Natalie Chaidez : She’s produced In Plain Sight, V, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Heroes, Judging Amy, Cracker: Mind Over Murder, and New York Undercover and written for all those shows as well as Kojak, Skin, and Past Life. Need I say more?

10) Elaine Ko: Another veteran of the Family Guy writers’ room, Ko is presently a writer and executive story editor on Modern Family, one of the most successful comedies on television.

*I was totally surprised by this, but it’s notable how many women on this list are veterans of Seth MacFarlane shows.