It’s January, and that means awards season has officially kicked off with Hollywood’s…fourth biggest night!

It had put up a good fight, but the Golden Globes was irreparably wounded and ready to go the way of a lame horse.

In recent years, that’s what the Golden Globes ceremony felt like: an afterthought. The show has long been the subject of jest among both the Hollywood elite and at-home viewers. Even couch pundits had begun to dread sitting through the Globes, despite the telecast formerly being required viewing for anyone who wanted to see what might happen if celebs were sat next to their competitors and plied with enough expensive champagne.

It didn’t help that years of controversy have marred the Globes, mainly a 2021 investigation by the “Los Angeles Times,” which revealed that the show’s voting body — then called the Hollywood Foreign Press Association — had no Black members. There was also Brenden Fraser alleging that the HFPA’s former president had sexually assaulted him, a long history of an extremely white winner base and a slew of hosting gigs that ranged from tepid to utterly futile. When NBC decided not to air the 2022 Globes ceremony following the voting party controversy, viewers barely batted an eye. Gee, what would be missed the most: another lame button-pusher from Ricky Gervais, or another award given to one of Hollywood’s millions of brave, white men?

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After sacking Gervais, shuttering the HFPA to rebrand as the Golden Globes Association and being acquired by Dick Clark Productions, it seemed like there might be one final gasp of life left in this relic of an awards show. While a one-off 2023 hosting stint saw Jerrod Carmichael doing his best to revitalize the whole affair, last year’s host Jo Koy crashed and burned during a particularly abysmal telecast. It had put up a good fight, but the Golden Globes was irreparably wounded and ready to go the way of a lame horse. But before anyone could finish loading the shotgun, we got a surprise that no one saw coming with a Golden Globes ceremony that was as close to phenomenal as the show has been in well over a decade.

The Jan. 5 ceremony was far from the tired, foot-dragging telecast that it was expected to be. Instead, a bevy of intriguing new production tricks, a superbly charismatic host in Nikki Glaser, and a handful of exciting, unexpected wins managed to rejuvenate the show as well as any Beverly Hills plastic surgeon could. The ceremony didn’t bashfully suggest the show’s potential, rather, it kicked awards season’s door wide open, telling viewers........

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