Usually, Duana would write this post and critique the Golden Globes as a telecast, with her expertise as a television writer, directress, and producer in her own right, but this year, the Golden Globes telecast was so f-cking janky even we peons with our untrained, non-professional eyes could see there was a problem. The show just looked cheap. The camera angles were bad, the cutaways were bad, they did obnoxious add-ins like have a geo-locator to show where famous people were sitting in the audience, an idea that probably sounded good in a meeting but should have been nixed after someone took a look at it in practice. The Golden Globes were basically wet fireworks, no sparkle, no pizzazz, just a soggy thud in lieu of an explosion.

 

None of this is on host Nikki Glaser, though. She came to do a job, and she did the job. Especially after the last couple years, from Jerrod Carmichael using his perch as host to lambast the silliness of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association—which was still in charge of the Globes at the time—to last year’s disastrous showing by Jo Koy, when he blamed his own writers and the audience for not laughing at his jokes, Nikki Glaser was more or less a breath of fresh air. Her opening monologue was solid, with a particularly good joke about Ben Affleck off the top:

 

 

For sure, the Diddy jokes won’t age well. But that aside, Nikki Glaser is not the problem.

No, the problem was and remains the Golden Globes themselves. I have written before about the behind-the-scenes shadiness around the Globes and its new parent company—which may or may not have control of the organization, pending an investigation by the California attorney general’s office—and last night’s telecast is the proof in the pudding. 

Something isn’t right at the Golden Globes, and it’s showing in the work. Never mind some questions about the charitable giving of the newly formed Golden Globes Foundation which, per Richard Rushfield’s The Ankler pledged to uphold the HFPA’s standard to their charitable partners, but now there are claims that support has been “severely reduced”. The Golden Globes Foundation said they donated $5 million for 2023-24, so how that fits in with “severely reduced” support is unclear, but it sure seems like something a real journalist should look into.

 

To me, a cynic, it looks like the billionaires who bought the organization are squeezing every last drop of blood from this particular stone, cutting corners and cutting costs, the kind of cost-cutting that is inevitably evident in the output. The telecast was unpolished, the show was overblown and self-important—which, for all their faults, was never really the HFPA’s vibe—and EVERYONE could see there was less than stellar production quality.

Seth Rogen straight up called out the bizarre and unflattering angle of the camera on the presenters:

 

 

One of the big problems for the telecast is that the presenter bits were not only awkward—they often are—but they went on WAY too long. Rogen and Catherine O’Hara provided the only really funny bit of the night, riffing on the inherently vapid nature of awards shows with a series of increasingly dirty puns. I’m not sure that bit works as well, though, if the other presenter bits hadn’t fallen so flat. It was just such a relief to get a genuinely good laugh out of a bit! Rogen and O’Hara presented together not only because they’re Canadian legends, but because they’re co-starring in an upcoming Apple TV+ series about a movie studio called, appropriately, The Studio. They shot a commercial for the series and it looks better than anything the Globes put on air last night.

 

Flattering lighting! Dynamic setting! It’s amazing what a good camera angle will do! Maybe let Seth Rogen direct the Golden Globes? 

 

Another presenter bit that went well was Awkwafina and Melissa McCarthy presenting Best Musical/Comedy Series. I was a little concerned that McCarthy’s cloak was going to absorb Awkwafina like The Substance blob, but other than that, they had good rapport, and again, naturally funny people make the jokes work.

 

But these are the lone bright spots in a three-hour telecast (that sprinted to the finish like someone was going to turn the lights off). Vin Diesel is undoubtedly the lowest of the low. He’s a slow talker to start with, and his introduction for “Cinematic and Box Office Achievement”—a silly award for a movie that’s one of the top-grossing films of the year—was interminable as he dragged out every word. 

 

“Hey Dwayne” might live forever in GIF heaven, but I was yelling at my TV to get on with it by the end of the first sentence. Maybe he was more on the ball in rehearsals and was, er, impeded in the moment, debate amongst yourselves about that, but even still, the intro was just plain written long.

 

It’s not just a delivery problem, these intros were written, and they were LONG. Is this why they cut the presentation of the Cecil B. DeMille and Carol Burnett Awards on the live telecast? Viola Davis received the DeMille Award and Ted Danson got the Burnett Award. They’re two legends, you’re telling me people don’t want to see their speeches? I want to see their speeches! (You can see them here and here, they’re both touching and funny.) Why were they booted off the telecast, except to save time? Time that was then WASTED on these long-ass presenter intros.

Excessive presenter bits aren’t exactly unusual on the awards show circuit, but when there is such an obvious lack of production value, such long-winded intros stand out even more as another problem. It’s just not entertaining, and at the end of the day, we’re at home watching this, it can at least be entertaining. It should be entertaining! Yes, it’s famous people handing other famous people trophies, but that’s for them. The trophy part is theirs. 

The telecast part, the show part, is for us. We’re the audience! We’re the ones seated, we’re the ones tuning in to watch. Last night’s Golden Globes, though, were not for us. It felt most like the new leadership trying to inject some gravitas into the proceedings, but the Globes were never known for their gravitas. They were known for Christine Lahti having toilet paper stuck to her heel that one time, and sometimes people get drunk. It’s the show where people get drunk. If it must be anything, let it be that, and nothing more.