Hello World–Anthony here to wrap up everything that had us all talking this week in pop culture.

MTV took their annual break from showing mind-numbing reality TV and attempted to remind everyone that it is still a music network.

The Video Music Awards kicked off last Thursday with comedian host Kevin Hart. The pint sized funny man brought big laughs in his opening monologue and throughout the show with skits featuring several music artists.

To the surprise of no one under the age of 18, British pop band One Direction took home all three of the awards for which they were nominated. Could we be on the verge of another mini British invasion? Somewhere in the world, Adele is sitting under her case full of trophies laughing and shaking her head.

The show went off without a hitch with performances from Rihanna, Pink, One Direction and Taylor Swift. The show went so smoothly that some would even call it boring.

No fights, no shade during acceptance speeches and no drunken Kanye acting a fool. This is the VMA’s and not the Grammy’s right? For some strange reason, everyone was on his or her best behavior last night. As a matter of fact, what little drama there was happened off camera.

With all the drama surrounding Rihanna, Drake and Chris Brown (remember that club fight that Drizzy and Breezy got into in New York?), viewers tuned in to see if anything was going to pop off considering that all three were seated just a few feet apart from each other.

Cue crickets—not ONE side eye, flip of the bird or a mouthing of profanity was caught by a MTV camera.

After the ceremony, the blogosphere lit up after a video surfaced of Rihanna giving former boyfriend Brown a hug AND a kiss on the cheek after accepting her award for video of the year. The moment wasn’t televised because MTV had gone to commercial right after RiRi’s speech.  Well played you two–well played.

I guess we’re all just going to be stuck in this guessing game/love triangle.

While the show went smoothly, that was quickly over shadowed the next morning when the ratings came in. This year’s telecast averaged 6.1 million viewers–that’s a 50 percent drop from last year’s broadcast. Ouch!

Some are saying the drop in viewers is due to the fact that the Democratic National Convention aired at the same time as the award show. MTV started the show at 8 p.m. and ended it promptly at 10 p.m., leaving viewers free to tune in to hear Barack Obama’s speech–which was scheduled to start at 10:15.

Another reason could be that the ceremony was moved from Sunday night to Thursday night. How dare MTV get in the way of Thirsty Thursday.

Whatever the reason, the show was a snooze fest. Maybe if MTV went back to actually showing music, then viewers would be more inclined to watch an award show centered on music–just a thought.  Until then I guess we will all have to settle for watching our favorite overpaid celebrities on Jersey Shore and knocked up teenagers– who aren’t really teenagers anymore–on Teen Mom.

Be sure to tune into Pop Addict next week! Fall is coming, and when the seasons change celebrities tend to act up–there’s no telling what will happen!

Slang used:

Shade: to act in a jealous nature

Drizzy: Drake (rapper)

Breezy: Chris Brown (rapper)

RiRi: Rihanna- pop artist; singer and dancer

Side eye- a distasteful look given to another