Bring Back the Old Golden Globes

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association was a bunch of corrupt glad-handers who were elevated to a pedestal far higher than they deserved because Dick Clark Productions put on a hell of an entertaining TV show that became the most visible pit stop on the road to the Oscar. There is no reason the industry should have put up with their bullshit for as long as it did. It is probably right that they have been removed from the equation when it comes to the Golden Globe Awards.

That said.

I miss the old Golden Globes, and I want to go back.

This is mostly about the TV awards. The movie winners this year were actually kind of great, due in no small part to enthusiasm for movies like The Brutalist and The Substance. If you said this time last year that the four winners in lead acting for film at the Golden Globes would be Demi Moore, Sebastian Stan, Fernanda Torres, and Adrien Brody, you’d have watched Sunday night’s show from some kind of asylum.

The TV awards, on the other hand, could not have been more sane. Shōgun is an incredible show. It was worthy of its record Emmys haul back in September. It was the deserving winner in every Globes category where it triumphed (that would be all of them, completing a four-for-four sweep). But when did we ever come to the Golden Globes for a carbon copy of the Emmy winners? Jean Smart, Jeremy Allen White, Jodie Foster, Jessica Gunning, Hacks in Comedy Series, Baby Reindeer in Miniseries. Every single one an Emmy winner rubber-stamped by the Globes. Colin Farrell’s win for The Penguin was the one occasion where the Emmys’ shadow didn’t hold any sway.

This wasn’t always the case. Sure, the Globes threw plenty of trophies at The Sopranos, Sex and the City, and Breaking Bad. But those awards joined wins for shows and performers who never had a shot with the more high-minded Emmys. What happened to the voting body that once awarded Mozart in the Jungle and The Kominsky Method as Best Comedy or Nip/Tuck and The Affair as Best Drama? A show content to duplicate last year’s Emmy winners would have never awarded Kelsey Grammer for Boss, Anna Paquin for True Blood, Katey Sagal for Sons of Anarchy, or Matt LeBlanc for Episodes. Sure, we laughed at a lot of these. Or we got incredibly angry when Emily in Paris got nominated over more deserving shows. But our blood was pumping! We felt alive!

And it wasn’t always “LOL, those crazy Globes” stuff, either. The HFPA, in all its corrupt foolishness, was the one that awarded Claire Danes for My So-Called Life, Jason Bateman for Arrested Development, Jennifer Garner for Alias, Keri Russell for Felicity, Michaela Jae Rodriguez for Pose, and Rachel Bloom for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. The Emmys never had the sense to give Sandra Oh anything for acting, yet she has Golden Globes for Grey’s Anatomy and Killing Eve. Atlanta never won a Best Comedy Emmy, but the Globes took care of that. Twin Peaks was passed over by the Emmys for Best Drama, but not by the Globes. Was giving Party of Five a Best Drama Series win necessary? No. Was it more fun than watching NYPD Blue win a repeat from the Emmys a few months earlier? Undisputedly yes.

Here’s the thing: The Golden Globe Awards are inherently without value. They’re not awarded by anyone’s peers or industry professionals or even those dreaded critics. There’s nothing meaningful about being voted the best by the Golden Globe voters. But for movies, the value of winning an award and making a speech in front of a national TV audience and also everybody who’s going to be voting for the Oscars has given the Golden Globes some ricochet value. It’s why all of us (or most of us, anyway) play along.

That’s not the case for the TV awards. The Emmys are nine months away. They’re closer in the rearview than they are on the horizon. Meticulously awarding the already anointed TV shows for their unimpeachable quality is admirable, I suppose, but it’s ultimately worthless. So why not gag us with some surprise winners and left-field choices? The party line on the “old” Globes was that they’d just award whatever TV show was newest and buzziest. Which was often true. But what was wrong with that? Now we remember that there was a show called Mozart in the Jungle. Now we get to click over to YouTube and watch Geena Davis give a devilishly funny acceptance speech for a show (Commander in Chief) nobody remembers.

The “new” Golden Globes are marginally more respectable now, I suppose. They’re less scandalous. That’s good. But they should strive to be more interesting, too.