Anyone who knows me knows how I am very into awards season. Every winter I get ready for the entire awards show circuit, watching as much as I can of movies and television shows that have awards season buzz. This time of the year always begins with the Golden Globe Awards, traditionally held in January but pushed back to end of February this year due to the pandemic. While I expected the show to be very different this year for obvious reasons, something about it this year just didn't stick.
Hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler were hosting for the fourth time together, with Fey hosting from the Rainbow Room in New York City while Poehler hosted from the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles (where the Golden Globes are normally held). It was an interesting premise for the show and they did the best they could to make it appear as if Fey and Poehler were together, but for me the side by side did not match up well and was distracting. A good thing about each audience was that it was comprised of first responders, the true heroes of the pandemic. I think Fey and Poehler's monologue was pretty good, their chemistry quite obvious hosting for the fourth time, getting some good shots out at the nominees (Emily in Paris and Music in particular), while calling out the HFPA (Hollywood Foreign Press Association) due to its recent controversy of having no black members in its ranks. After the monologue was over, the rest of the show was a bit of a bumpy ride.
Right off the bat, Daniel Kaluuya's win for Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture for Judas and the Black Messiah was cut out at the beginning due to audio glitches. He returned to give the rest of his speech, only after presenter Laura Dern accepted it on his behalf. When Catherine O'Hara won for Best Lead Actress in a Comedy Series, she and her husband did a rather bizarre bit where he played her off with music or applause or...whatever that was. I couldn't really tell if it was meant to be that awkward, but the music sounded awful and very loud through zoom. Mark Ruffalo's acceptance speech also appeared to have some glitches, especially when he had some important things to say about advocating for Mother Earth and the environment. Now if this show took place at the beginning of the pandemic, I could forgive some of these technical glitches, and they are always part of anything Zoom for the past year. However, it is as if the Golden Globes didn't learn from any of the awards shows and events before it such as the Emmy's. Yes, glitches are going to happen. But with a little more planning, they could be less occurrences of them.
I also wasn't a big fan of the "Zoom calls" between the nominees of the upcoming categories. Some of the actors and actresses didn't even seem to be sure of how long they were going to be on screen for, let alone have anything to talk about. I mean come on, Al Pacino seemed to be asleep during his segment! Maya Rudolph and Kenan Thompson's bit "presenting" the award for Least Original Song fell flat and went on way too long, as did the bit of actors calling first responders that described their "symptoms" as popular movies. I know some of these things wouldn't happen in a normal Golden Globes show, but I applaud the effort of the producers trying to make the show the best they could given the circumstances, although I feel a lot of it fell flat.
Not all of the show fell flat though. Norman Lear and Jane Fonda both gave great speeches for their honorary awards, with Fonda in particular using her speech to call out the industry to serve marginalized voices better. Lear spoke about a lifetime's worth (he is 99 years old!) of great collaborators who helped make him the best version of himself that cemented him as a television icon. Various nominees' kids and pets crashed their Zoom screens to the delight of many viewers. Jason Sudeikis pulled off a surprise win for Best Actor in a Comedy Series and was presented and acted just like we all are during this pandemic, groggy and dressed super casual. Sacha Baron Cohen won for both playing Borat in Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm and for that film winning Best Motion Picture- Comedy. He became the first performer to win for playing the same character twice, an impressive feat given that there was fourteen years in between the two films. Chloe Zhao became the second woman to win Best Director for Nomadland, which in turn won the award for Best Motion Picture- Drama, cementing its case as the front runner for Best Picture at the Oscars for the time being. Perhaps the most emotional moment of the night came when Chadwick Boseman posthumously won the Best Actor in a Motion Picture- Drama for his performance in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. His widow Taylor Simone Ledward accepted the award on his behalf in an emotional speech that probably left everyone teary eyed. The sting of Boseman's passing is just as strong as it was six months ago when he tragically passed. I hope he picks up a lot more awards on the circuit over the next few weeks.
One last thing to note about this years awards is that viewership fell to an all time low with only 6.9 million viewers. Is this a cause for concern? Maybe a little bit, or at least it should serve as a warning for upcoming award shows such as the Oscars. I think part of the reason no one really tuned in is that it just isn't the same as a in-person show. Another possibility is that with movie theaters basically closed for the past year, people haven't been able to access some of the award contenders unless they are available to stream. We will have to see how this plays out with upcoming award shows in the next few weeks. All in all, I think this year's Golden Globes were a bit of a mess and hopefully by this time next year things are relatively back to normal. The best way I can put the experience was what my fiancé said to me in the middle of the show: "If it weren't for you watching them right now, I would have already shut this off".
What did you think of the Golden Globes this year? Did you even watch them? Let me know in the comments below!
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