We Don't Have To Do This
It doesn't get any worse than Jo Koy hosting the Golden Globes.
I hate when things are awkward.
Now, that might seem like an obvious thing to say, but I have a true dread of uncomfortable situations. I once turned off an episode of Drake & Josh when the situation the two characters were in was getting to be too much for me, so let’s just say that this past weekend’s Golden Globes Jo Koy monologue was my living hell.
Jo Koy’s “hosting” of the drunkest of the awards shows can be best described through many words, the simplest of which is bad.
I’m linking this here in case you missed it, but please don’t click it. I don’t want to subject you to such evil. Instead, watch anything else. Perhaps this dog running in his sleep?
It’s one thing to make bad jokes that don’t work—I mean, I think … I’ve certainly never made a bad joke—but making so many terrible jokes one after another without any understanding of the moment so as to alienate the entire famous audience which is inebriated and locked in one room is so disastrous of an event that it almost seems like a Nathan Fielder bit.
Here are a few of Jo Koy’s brilliant witticisms:
"Oppenheimer is based on a 721-page Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the Manhattan Project, and Barbie is on a plastic doll with big boobies.”
“The big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL? At the Golden Globes, we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift.”
“I loved Oppenheimer. I just got one complaint: Needed another hour."
These aren’t just crass and lame; they’re not even well thought-out. These seem like jokes and ideas that could come from Twitter bots or your out-of-touch family member. I don’t know much about Jo Koy, but this certainly isn’t it.
He then proceeded to throw his writers under the bus saying “Yo, I got the gig ten days ago! You want a perfect monologue? Yo, shut up! You’re kidding me, right? I wrote some of these, and they’re the ones you’re laughing at.” Just pure professionalism.
Now, Jo Koy is beyond rotten, but this is just the latest example of awards shows not knowing what the hell people want. I know I’m in a small class of seeing all of the movies before Awards Season and diving into this world like an Olympian, but these kind of thin, emotionally dead bits can turn people off of these shows and these movies and TV shows at large.
Shouldn’t the people who host these shows like what they’re presenting?
I’m not saying that every joke has to be a positive, glowing review—far from it—but there should be a level of love for the art form from those running the show. You don’t see people presenting something saying how much they dislike the topic before getting into it. Imagine that Best Man speech…
In recent years, this type of indifferent roast comedy has become the norm for these events. Ricky Gervais brought it to the forefront and we’ve had quite a few disasters from James Franco to Amy Schumer to Seth MacFarlane. It actually reminds me a bit of some of the pushback when it comes to NBA coverage.
Pundits and TV hosts go into detail about everything wrong with the NBA incessantly. It becomes a long line of grievances and eventually tunes a lot of die-hard and Johnny-come-latelys out when all you’re hearing about is how bad things are now compared to what they used to be. It’s a tough look for the product and why would these players want to partake when there’s no chance for something good to happen?
That’s what these award shows have become. Complaints about how long movies are or frankly sexist comments that reveal a pure misunderstanding about movies (in this instance Barbie).
There are ways to be funny and biting and not a piece of shit. It probably doesn’t get better than Hugh Jackman’s opening number at the 2009 Oscars:
Wow. Pomp and circumstance, an immediate connection with the crowd and some actual humor. I’m not expecting Jo Koy to do a song-and-dance number—he can’t even do his job of stand-up comedy—but perhaps a bit of fun and adoration for what you’re talking about could be a nice start.
It’s especially odd because it was an exceptionally good year for movies. The films themselves but also the eventizing of the theatrical experience. We had Barbenheimer, a load of strong December releases and indie hits from Bottoms to Past Lives. Turning what is essentially a year-end review into a bevy of bigoted and inconsiderate feels like the wrong approach.
Truly abysmal stuff from Jo Koy, but at least we had Paul Giamatti taking his award with him to In-N-Out.
That’s the kind of content we need.