“Ricky Gervais’s monologue is over, and we’ve heard all we need to about Jodie Foster’s Beaver. Can I stop watching the #goldenglobes now?”
So I tweeted roughly five minutes into the ceremony. I did watch the entire evening, and because they kept Gervais locked in a cupboard (or occupied at the bar) all night, it never reached that same level of amusement, but it at least did not sink to absolute wretchedness and languish the way last year’s Oscars did.
But what the evening lacked was a clear winner or any convincing surprises that would give us a deeper insight into the Oscars.
Any Oscar prognosticator would tell you that it’s the various guild awards that truly matter in terms of voter overlap, and rarely do the Globes amount to more than a hill of beans in determining the Oscars. But had “The Artist” danced away with all of the evening’s awards rather than the three it received for Best Score, Best Actor and Best Movie in a Comedy/Musical (of which it is kind of neither, but whatever), or had there been a massive upset, it would’ve given a clearer sense of a shaken up race.
“Midnight in Paris” was maybe the biggest surprise, beating out “The Artist” and “The Descendants,” although it will only run against “The Artist” in the Oscars. And Martin Scorsese won Best Director for “Hugo,” if anything signaling that there will be a split between this year’s Best Director winner and Best Picture winner at the Oscars.
Octavia Spencer took her first major prize after the Critics’ Choice Awards, and she’s appearing to be the clear frontrunner in a category without even a solid field of nominees. Christopher Plummer is in a similar boat.
Meryl Streep gave a speech last night that indicates she’ll vote for Viola Davis come Oscar time, so even that doesn’t mean a whole bunch. I don’t know what to think with Clooney.
Even the TV categories were a relative toss up, with only “Homeland” coming away with two awards. And frankly, “Louie” and “Community” are nowhere in this conversation, so I couldn’t care less.
Beyond that, the show remained pretty uneventful. Aside from Jodie Foster’s aforementioned Beaver, I’m more likely to come away with bad memories of seeing that Sofia Vergara Pepsi commercial a half dozen times in one evening. It was cute to see Jean Dujardin bring up Ugie the dog and do a brief silent shtick, and Meryl actually getting censored and played off stage to get the show into a manageable three hours was fairly amusing as well.
As always, the lifeblood of these shows exists on Twitter and in discussions like these before and after the anti-climactic mess that it is.
So keep playing along at home, follow me on Twitter (@brianwelk), and help me make the whole act of watching this a little more tolerable.
It needed more Ricky. Honestly, this is the first time I watched the Golden Globes or even cared because Ricky was hosting and all I saw was a hodgepodge of categories and awards that renforced how much I dont care.