Alright, I'll be
the first to own it. My predictions for this years Golden Globes were almost
entirely off this year. But that is one of the reasons I often prefer watching
them to the Emmys (though I'll be honest, the last couple of years the Emmys
have been getting more relevant): sometimes they can serve as a precursor to
next seasons awards, other times, they recognize series that get shut out
because of brighter suns.
And there were
definitely some promising trends over this years awards. For starters, for the
first time in all the years I've been watching them, HBO was completely shut
out. They've had some rough patches over the last few years, but for them to go
0 for 14 is practically unheard of, even though they had some solid series this
time out.
However, we can
also see that the future seems to lie in FX. Even though, The Americans was shut out and People
Vs. O.J. Simpson won fewer awards than expected (more on that later) it
still had the best night of any of the network, taking four awards. Two of them
went to the critically acclaimed (and now on my watch list) Atlanta and the brilliant hyphenate
Donald Glover, who seems so accomplished in so many fields, he makes Aziz
Ansari look like an underachiever (and when does Master of None come back?).
But AMC
managed to get back into the game, winning three major acting awards for the
extraordinary Night Manager. While I wanted Olivia Colman to win rather
badly, I was delighted to see Hugh Laurie prevail for his magnificent
performance as Richard Roper. Always delightful as a speechmaker, he had the
most amusing speech of the night, saying he was glad to prevail at "the
last Golden Globes" and added "the words 'Hollywood '
, 'Foreign' and 'Press' are sure to be despised... Even the word 'Association'
is sure to be judged with suspicion.' Tom Hiddleston's win was even more
unexpected, but certainly not underserved in one of the stronger fields of Lead
Actors in recent memory.
After three
years of struggling to get into the major awards market, Netflix managed to
take the spotlight away from Amazon by winning Best Drama and Best Actress for The Crown. I'll admit its a little weird
seeing this series prevail where House of
Cards, Orange is the New Black and Stranger
Things have failed, but that's probably because I still have this series on
my 'to watch' list. At least Game of
Thrones was shutout..
As for the other
awards, I was overjoyed to see Tracee Ellis Ross prevail for black-ish. She's one of the finest comic
performers on screen today and she's more than deserved her turn in the
spotlight. And it really is a good to see someone prevail in the comedy lists.
I was a little perplexed in seeing Billy Bob Thornton prevail for Amazon's only
win in David E. Kelley's Goliath. He
gave a very eloquent speech and was sui generis to all his fellow nominees, but
I think he has as much chance of even being nominated by the Emmys as Gael
Garcia Bernal does for Mozart in the
Jungle. Still, it does demonstrate how surprising the Golden Globes can be.
Of course, the
Globes was particularly more politically charged, starting with Jimmy Fallon's
opening monologue, and concluding on Meryl Streep's electric speech criticizing
(without mentioning by name) our President Elect in accepting her lifetime
achievement award. (My take? She's Meryl frigging Streep, the greatest actress
of three generations, and she has more than earned the right to say whatever
the hell she wants. Besides, at this point in her career, who has she got left
to thank?). But it was more entertaining then the typical awards show, and in
its results, probably a lot more accurate than a lot of the other ones.
Alright, SAG awards, the bar has been raised. Don't screw it up.
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