A humble prediction: these two are going to be the least talked-about Globe attendees – and one of them won.
Not that I think anything should have gone down differently. Elisabeth Moss was deservedly beat by Sandra Oh, which got us one of the greatest moments of the broadcast. And Rachel Brosnahan, performance-wise? Well, I can buy that she’s consistently funny and the best choice in her weird-ass category – Bergen and Messing are out because if you didn’t like the show the first time around, it’s not gonna be better now (plus people hate revivals) – and The Good Place and GLOW are both odd, offbeat shows, so it follows.
But, as I wrote back at the Emmys in September, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is technically excellent, but still not telling us a story we really need to hear right now. A side benefit of our horrific dystopian world is that entertainment is, more than ever, supposed to have something to say – and the fact that Midge is Practically Perfect in Every Way doesn’t exactly fill that mandate.
Consequently, it might seem ridiculous to pair Rachel Brosnahan and Mrs. Maisel with Elisabeth Moss and The Handmaid’s Tale but to me they go hand in hand, in terms of not doing much for us, because where Mrs. Maisel is too rosy, Handmaids is unrelentingly, toxically brutal. Which can be fine and necessary and I watched Bandersnatch too – but it isn’t entertaining. Which, you know, is kind of the other side of entertainment. Some people finished Season 2 of Handmaids and will even watch Season 3 but I defy you to find someone who’s really, truly looking forward to it.
So to me, Moss is an established talent and Brosnahan a fairly new one, but they’re both kind of standing on the sidelines of the party, because they’re both way better than their material (and in my opinion, they each know it) at a time when that’s not at all in vogue.
Speaking of vogue (check that transition!) neither of these looks light me on fire – maybe by design. We often talk about how you dress when you know you’re not going to win, and Moss’s category was stacked, but this super-short Dior is somehow weird and unmemorable at the same time?
Brosnahan, on the other hand, did choose a ‘what if you win’ dress, and unlike most people I don’t hate the yellow (it’s Prada), but if you’re gonna do a big yellow dress you need the hair and jewels to balance it out. Maybe her ‘throw on a dress and run out the door’ vibe is contributing to my feeling that she’s not 100% sure the HFPA made the right choice. Just me?
