After last year’s utter catastrophe of a Golden Globes opening—stale, crass, practically booed-at jokes by host Jo Koy—what a wonderful bit of whiplash it was to watch this year’s host, Nikki Glaser, right the ship and then some at the top of Sunday night’s broadcast.
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Glaser came to the Globes after a banger 2024, which saw the release of her Globe-nominated stand-up special and, most notably, a star-elevating performance at the roast of Tom Brady. Her roast jokes were lewd, crude, and precisely crafted, but that exact style was probably not quite ready for broadcast prime time. And certainly not for an awards show that is allowed to poke some light fun at the celebrities in the audience, but can’t travel too far below the belt. There was some question as to just how Glaser would calibrate her typically raunchy, biting comedy for a gentler show.
Turns out, she nailed the calculation. Her set was sharp and clever, including some digs at the depravity of Hollywood culture that were framed broadly enough not to offend anyone in particular (beyond Diddy, I guess). The material was pitched with a modest reverence for the big movies of the year and their glowing talent, while at the same time bursting the crowd’s gilded bubble. She knew which celebrities to target—the ones game enough to do a bit with her, or at least laugh along with hers—which takes a special kind of skill that Glaser has, of course, honed over the years—albeit in more extreme ways—at the many roasts she’s done.
The highest compliment I can give is that Glaser’s opening set, and subsequent onstage bits, brought to mind the three glorious years when the Globes were hosted by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, a perhaps unparalleled run of lovingly barbed Hollywood mockery. Glaser didn’t traffic in the same loopy absurdism that Fey and Poehler did, but many of her referential jokes were just as tart. And she did add some slightly abstract silliness at other points in the show, particularly during an inspired bit in which she started, then stopped in shame, a hokey musical parody number reminiscent of Oscar days now long past.
Glaser’s confident hold of the stage called to mind the smooth glide of yesteryear, when many awards shows ran with a humming professionalism sincerely lacking in our current age of needless tinkering and poor hosting.
Which isn’t to say that the whole broadcast was a roaring success. There were indeed some bad tweaks to the formula, particularly a holdover from last year that really needs to be discarded. Why can’t we just have presenters stand in full view onstage, facing the audience? Why have the show’s producers instead chosen to put presenters in harsh close-up, with their backs to the mega-watt famous folks in the room? That staging deadens the effect of any amusing scripted banter (and there was some this year!). If the people in the room aren’t really invited into the joke, they don’t laugh as much, which then makes one less compelled to laugh at home.
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The night’s stilted first award presentation—to a gushing, weeping Zoe Saldaña, giving old-fashioned earnestness in the best way—immediately halted the momentum Glaser got going. The janky visuals, terribly complemented by tinny sound, did a disservice to viewers and to the work being recognized in the room. They were even criticized by Canadian nice guy Seth Rogen! Stop trying to reinvent the wheel, awards shows. Just give it to us straight. And by straight, I mean straight toward the people sitting in the auditorium.
Still, the early high of Glaser’s routine went a long way in pasting over those problems, as did a handful of lovely speeches from the likes of Saldaña, Demi Moore, and, yes, even former awards show pariah Adrien Brody. There was a real sense of occasion to the show, a meeting of merriment and gravity, that has been lacking in a lot of awards shows post-pandemic. (Probably since even before then.)
Perhaps that’s at least partly owed to an innate suspense that not even the most skilled ceremony producer could create. This is a movie awards season unlike any in recent memory, in which several major categories are complete toss-ups. The TV winners at the Globes were dull and predictable, but the film side delivered. Tonight we got the fun surprises of Moore winning for The Substance and Fernanda Torres emerging victorious for I’m Still Here. Sure, we all saw Kieran Culkin’s win coming, but Saldaña’s supporting triumph seemed less certain than it once had, due to the looming Wicked juggernaut. But Wicked’s loss was top nominee Emilia Pérez’s gain. I suppose it’s not all that shocking that the most nominated movie at the Globes won big, but there was still some doubt coursing through the night that made it, I daresay, genuinely exciting to watch.
All of that tension, cut through with Glaser’s effervescent comedy, made for a near-perfect cocktail. I’ve grown rather cynical and jaded about these broadcasts in my many years of covering them for work. I was, after last year’s debacle, not sure I’d ever truly enjoy another Globes (or even Oscars) ceremony again. But tonight renewed my faith, at least to some degree. The host appealed to the show’s core audience, rather than glumly trying to court the attention of people who wouldn’t care anyway. It was energizing. There were some newly introduced kinks yet to be ironed out, but at heart these Globes provided what we come to these things for: a sense of dramatic stakes happily offset by frivolity, the giddy feeling that all of this matters a great deal while somehow not mattering at all.
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