MTV Video Music Awards: Recap

Where do we begin? Last night's less-than-thrilling and teetering on tragic MTV Video Music Awards ceremony was so flawed that it's frankly overwhelming trying to discern where it exactly went wrong.

But let's start at the very beginning. Britney Spears made her big comeback by opening the evening's show with her new single "Gimme More," and her performance was unarguably bland and perplexing. The down-spiraling pop singer was barely in attendance of her own dance number as she meandered across the stage and intermittently attempted to sing along with the lip-synch. Based on her tabloid past and the vacant number, we can't help but wonder if Spears "calmed her nerves" with something just a wee bit stronger than chamomile tea.

The theme of last night's misguided production was Las Vegas. Instead of having bands perform on one central stage, Foo Fighters (who brought along Gnarls Barkley frontman Cee-Lo to play lead singer on a track), Fall Out Boy, Justin Timberlake, and Kanye West were all given "party rooms" where they would perform in the middle of the hotel debauchery. Though it may have been quite the party in the actual room, home viewers were delivered jerky cameras showing the respective musicians in mid-performance and cutting to commercial before the song was nearing completion. The party rooms never aired a complete song from beginning to end.

Even the stage acts were lackluster and sing-by-numbers. Newcomer Chris Brown tried to turn the tide with his enthusiastic performance which received some major props from JT. But, aside from his song-and-dance routine and Alicia Keys' and Rihanna's live singing, music was so inherently absent from the evening's schedule that at one point Timberlake admonished the channel for abandoning it's roots, asking the channel to "Play more videos" and less "reality TV shows" after receiving a Moon Man from the girls of The Hills. Excellent timing.

The hosts ranging from Sarah Silverman to Seth Rogen to Shia Lebouf were unusually un-entertaining, but perhaps that's due to the fact that everyone seemed a little out of place during last night's VMAs. The spastic, ADD-nature of the camera work didn't catch some of the more entertaining moments of the night. During the awards show, Kid Rock apparently punched Tommy Lee in the face for reasons unknown (but we're pretty sure the reason is blonde and looks good in a red bathing suit). Security escorted Lee out of the Palms Hotel and Casino when it looked like things could escalate. Rock was allowed to stay until the end of the performance but then was cited for a misdemeanor battery.

As far as the awards themselves goes, we'll say it for you: who really cares?

Apparently, Kanye West does. The rapper was so annoyed at his loss in all five categories that he was nominated for that he vowed never to return to MTV. West reportedly said, "That's two years in a row, man...give a black man a chance. I'm trying hard man, I have the...number one record, man." We hope West isn't grouping MTV in with George Bush.

Ultimately, we expected the VMAs to be the farcical, self-promoting awards show it always is, but this year's performance was a caricature of even that. The channel seems primarily focused on dramatizing the lives of privileged teenagers and, as a result, has forgotten how to showcase music. Throughout the night, we considered changing the channel but it wasn't until the ladies from the reality television series The Hills (Lauren Conrad, Audrina Patridge, and Whitney Port) walked out that we felt MTV had truly lost the plot. For those few minutes, the show seemed paced and in complete control. That's probably because it had nothing to do with music.

Watch Britney's VMA performance: