When "Problem" won Best Pop Video, the assumption was that Ariana Grande and Iggy Azalea would accept together. Not so! Grande took the stage by herself, and although she thanked Azalea, the Australian rapper remained seated with a weird look on her face the whole time.

The first thing Usher did on stage was a loud, abrasive attempt at rapping in the Migos flow. Mercifully, that ended quickly, but it only gave way to an obnoxious faux "Blurred Lines" production that turned out to be his new single "She Came To Give It To You." Nicki Minaj, back for yet another performance, hopped on stage in a bunny outfit with a pair of giant ears flopped down the front. Usher then grabbed a bass and started vamping through some simplistic riff while Minaj was rapping. Then for some reason Usher kneeled down as if he were shredding his way through a momentous guitar solo, then decided to repeatedly bump his body against Minaj's legendary behind, which he then slapped for good measure.

Unannounced, a series of Robin Williams stills aired before one of the commercial breaks to the sound of Coldplay's "A Sky Full Of Stars." There have been many moving tributes to Williams in the wake of his suicide, but this -- tacked onto a video awards show for no apparent reason -- was not one of them.

Common and Drake famously feuded over Serena Williams in 2011. So imagine the collective cringing delight when Common showed up to present Best Rap Video, "Hold On, We're Going Home" won, and this sentence followed: "Drake couldn't be here tonight, so I accept this award on his behalf."

The effect was very… geometric.

The VMAs are so youth-obsessed that when any bona fide adults are on screen, they look paleolithic. Even 24-year-old Taylor Swift looks like a soccer mom next to Becky G; perhaps that's why Drake stayed home. So when the stars of Dumb & Dumber emerged to make dad jokes about Sia and Burning Man, present Best Pop Video, and hype the sequel to their 20-year-old movie, the question that sprung to mind was: Do kids these days even know what Dumb & Dumber is? They might as well have been promoting Frumpy Old Men.

Jody Highroller seemed primed for a breakout night when he rolled up to the red carpet in a Lambo as Katy Perry's date -- wearing diamond-studded denim in tribute to Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake, no less. He even got a seat at the front row alongside Perry. Then Perry and Juicy J won the broadcast's first award for their "Dark Horse" video, and she didn't even acknowledge poor Riif's presence. So it went for the rest of the evening, celeb after celeb staring straight through Riff Raff as if he wasn't even there.

Jessie J, Ariana Grande, and Nicki Minaj's show-opening performance of "Bang Bang" was touted as "explosive" in the promos (#pun), but with our girl Onika clutching her chest the whole time to keep her dress shut -- which at first seemed like the prelude to some salacious reveal, then turned out to be a Nicki's-ass-sized gaffe -- the whole thing fizzled. Of course, Minaj had already rendered the "Bang Bang" portion of the performance a smoking crater before it even started via her hump-heavy, GIF-worthy run through "Anaconda."

If only SNL cast member Jay Pharaoh could come up with jokes worthy of his killer impressions, he'd be a legend. Instead, the world was laughing at Pharoah's series of appearances for all the wrong reasons Sunday night. Playing the Kevin Hart pseudo-host role for the evening, Pharoah first emerged to deliver a creepy monologue about how aroused he gets whenever he sees Ariana Grande. Then he came back to do his on-point Jay Z impersonation, which fell flat when it became apparent he spent all his effort mimicking Jay's tics and none crafting punchlines. His third time on stage, Pharoah revived the Kanye West routine that has served him well on SNL -- with Kim Kardashian West looking on, no less -- but without the support of a professional writing staff, he bricked harder than Yeezus' sales figures. When Pharoah returned for a fourth time, he wisely didn't even try to be funny.

The joke of the "Shake It Off" video is supposed to be that Taylor Swift can't dance, at least not like a professional. So why did she then turn around and try to dance like a professional at the VMAs? She looked like a fool up there -- desperate, deranged, and out of her league, which is no way for Taylor Swift to be. (To her credit, the mid-song joke about how she's not willing to leap from a giant statue into her dancers' arms was pretty funny.)

"From the driving sounds of Imagine Dragons to the inventive new vibe of Lorde, this has been an amazing new vibe for rock." After those lines, delivered by Nina Dobrev through clenched teeth, the Best Rock Video portion of this year's VMAs proceeded with Trey Songz making a joke about doing Dobrev in the ass, saying "Black Eyes" instead of "Black Keys," and interrupting the big reveal to wish his grandmother a happy 70th birthday. Then Imagine Dragons, Arctic Monkeys, Linkin Park, and the Eyes/Keys lost Best Rock Video to "Royals," which, impending monogenre aside, is not a rock song by any modern definition. Due to the lack of a podium, Lorde then asked, "Is there, like, a specific place I'm supposed to be looking?" After some confusion, she delivered an abbreviated acceptance speech into the wrong camera.