Golden Globes 2021 Review: 8 Ups & 6 Downs
This year's Golden Globes was part-disaster, part-triumph.
Above all else, this year's Golden Globes ceremony is likely to go down in history as its strangest yet.
The ongoing pandemic naturally made a conventional jam-packed awards show impossible, forcing producers to pivot to a hybrid of socially distanced in-person presentations and video links to nominees in their homes.
Unlike the Emmys, which sent professional camera equipment to all nominees, the Globes was a decidedly more ramshackle affair, relying instead on Zoom calls and nominees' personal Internet connections, which unsurprisingly ensured the night ran anything but smoothly.
Dropped connections and poorly mixed audio was just the beginning of an exceptionally odd Golden Globes show, which with its more reserved tone and lack of booze-soaked acceptance speeches lacked a little of its typically grandiose lustre.
The winners list was meanwhile a wildly mixed bag of worthy victors, pleasant surprises, and baffling selections, and the night as a whole had an undeniably dour pall cast over it per a recent expose of the awards' voting body, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
Between dubious journalistic ethics and the revelation the HFPA hasn't had a Black member in at least 20 years, much of the night saw presenters and winners alike dunking on the Globes' lack of inclusion, underlining the ceremony's bafflingly high esteem in the industry.
Nevertheless, the Globes are an undeniably significant stop on the road to the Oscars, and if nothing else, the show suggested this year's Academy Awards are anything but sewn up...