This may be jumping the gun, since Oscar nominations aren’t being announced until Monday and the show is still more than six weeks away, but I just don’t see how the Academy Awards are going to avoid the curse of pandemic-era awards shows.

We don’t know the details of what producers Jesse Collins, Stacey Sher and Steven Soderbergh are planning, except that it’ll involve multiple locations. And we don’t know what the climate will be like for large gatherings in Los Angeles County in late April, except that things seem to be getting better. We do know that almost every awards show before the Oscars has already committed to a virtual ceremony, with the Screen Actors Guild Awards taking the most drastic approach — and to my mind, the smartest: Instead of trying to do a virtual version of a regular awards show, they’re going to announce the winners in a one-hour, pretaped special.