Golden Globes TV Review: Nikki Glaser-Hosted Show Avoids Lively Vs. Baldoni, Trump & Controversy In Departure From Sharp-Elbowed Ceremonies Of The Past
Coming off last year’s teetotaling ceremony, the Golden Globes continued its comeback Sunday night by popping a cork for the show and pouring out some old-fashioned primetime bubbly.
With host Nikki Glaser providing the watered-down drinks and spicules, the aspirational tone for the 82nd annual Globes was set early on. There were a lot of TV wins that replicated the Emmys and some movie wins that look Oscar bound but little controversy in a show that used to get down in the dirt and revel in it. Like last year, Sunday’s Globes was associated with the boozy, shambolic and often wonderfully mean-spirited show of yesteryear in name only.
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Thing is, awards shows, like everything else, have to evolve or die in today’s media environment, and going upmarket might be the best bet to transform Five Buck Chuck into Dom Pérignon.
Sure, there was an awkward casting-couch joke at the top of the show followed by a pretty tentative swipe at Hollywood’s backing of Kamala Harris against Donald Trump in this year’s election. Yet, after admitting she is “scared” by the prospect of Trump 2.0 and hoping for more Globes gigs, Glaser headed into monologue safe territory of calling out celebs in the room with ribbing and sexual innuendo plus some Ozempic quips.
Tonight, no one’s feelings got hurt.
If auditioning for future Globes hosting stints is Glaser’s real goal, she checked off more than enough boxes on a night of mainly predictable wins for a return invite. Sure, Nate Bargatze offered himself as an alternative while presenting the Stand-Up Comedy on Television category — won by Ali Wong — but clearly Glaser rightly sussed up the Globes ripe for her plucking.
Overshadowed momentarily right after her opening by Zoe Salda?a’s bleeped-out “Holy f*ck!” for her Emilia Pérez win, Glaser also revealed just a glimpse of how she could truly tear off some real celebrity skin with quips about the much-accused Sean “Diddy” Combs and the potential complicity of many in the ballroom with his alleged crimes and so-called “freak-offs.”
Fact is, it was a blink-and-you-missed-it moment, but don’t think Ricky Gervais is the only Globes host who can draw blood, if you know what I mean.
That said, Glaser’s Wicked and Conclave mash-up with its Elton John and Cypress Hill reference didn’t suck as much as the host joked onstage. That said, it wasn’t the classiest stance if you want to appeal to the Catholics in the heartland down the line.
Last year’s car-crash monologue by host Jo Koy aside, the 2025 Globes was a lot like the 2024 Globes.
There were lots of angled-camera star team-ups, presenters’ scripted banter, fast turnovers, a few teleprompters glitches and ticklish cuts to execs and stars in the audience (we saw that hat, Jeremy Strong, and that high five, Ted Sarandos). Returning producers Glenn Weiss and Ricky Kirshner this year threw in some old-skool 1990s MTV on-screen factoids for social media (Anya Taylor-Joy has three citizenships?) and pin drops of nominees in the crowd when their names were read out.
As that prolonged Canadian skit from Great North natives Catherine O’Hara and Seth Rogen made obvious, it was all a little too busy – which could be said of the whole CBS broadcast shindig. Which, in a move to try to trim things down for the needlessly three-hour-plus ceremony, is likely why the honorary awards to Viola Davis and Ted Danson were given out last week with just clips making it to Sunday’s show
Yet, in the work in progress that is the reinvention of the once-scandal-plagued and on-life-support Globes, better for the show run by dick clark productions (which is owned by Deadline’s parent company PMC) to throw as much as it can against the wall to see what sticks, literally and figuratively.
There were well-deserved wins Sunday by Emmy victors Hacks, The Bear, Baby Reindeer, True Detective: Night Country and the dominating Shōgun, and big boosts for Oscar hopefuls Emilia Pérez, Adrien Brody and The Brutalist, Wicked, I’m Still Here’s Fernanda Torres, Conclave and The Substance’s Demi Moore (who gave the speech of the night).
However, the absence of Deadpool and Wolverine stars and Globes nominees Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman may have dimmed things for the celeb-slobbering Globes. Maybe. C’mon, we all know it was Blake Lively who would have been the real draw.
The top talk of Hollywood and many other places the past few weeks, the drama of the It Ends with Us actress’ very public legal clash with co-star/director Justin Baldoni over allegations of sexual harassment and high-octane online smear campaign was not mentioned this evening. A Globes roasting waiting to happen by any other name in almost any other year, the apparently seedy circumstances of Lively vs. Baldoni, with its cameos by spouse Reynolds, was deemed to cross the line this year, with Glaser keeping her promise not to bring up the tailor-made topic.
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That means, in this increasingly circumspect and kowtowing industry, it probably will be mercilessly mocked by a masked Reynolds in a few years when all the appeals have dried up like Baldoni’s career. Let’s be honest, even if we all agree the IEWU dirty laundry would have been a distraction, it’s not glamtastic Glaser refusing to poke the Blake bear that’s really the issue here.
Just over two weeks before a retribution-loaded Donald Trump roars back into the White House, Hollywood is more bone-tired than chastened with anything contentious.
With a calm of sorts before the January 20 storm, mild cheek-pinching like your Great Aunt used to do at family weddings is much more in fashion in the early days of 2025 than the controversy courting that has been the cultural couture of the town for the past decade. Shivering already from the chill blowing over studio, streamers and tech boys HQs, everyone from the C-suites to the crisis PR dens to on-set craft services wants to keep their heads down.
Hell, even Sebastian Stan, who played a younger Trump in the lawsuit-threatened The Apprentice, didn’t directly mention the former Celebrity Apprentice host and soon-to-be-two-time POTUS in his speech for his A Different Man win tonight.
For the Globes, that burden means — even with a Praetorian Guard of law enforcement outside the Beverly Hilton today protecting the attendees and the ceremony — it’s still hard to be the most topical and freewheelin’ of awards shows if you won’t throw a corkscrew punch at the elephants in the room.
As Glaser herself said tonight halfway through the 2025 Golden Globes, “You lose some, you win some.” Or maybe as The Penguin star and Golden Globe winner Colin Farrell declared: “Guess it’s prosthetics from here on out.”
Raise a glass to both sentiments, because the Golden Globes show we used to love to hate is truly gone. Long live the Golden Globes.
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