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The Golden Globes Ended With A Bummer That Left Us In The Bad Place

Oh, my dear deluded Golden Globes, you almost got there!

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Maureen Ryan

Oh, my dear deluded Golden Globes, you almost got there! You were so close!

That said, for the Globes telecast to perk along nicely and then do a spectacular face-plant is actually pretty on brand, all things considered. The Golden Globes ceremony is usually fun except for when it's totally mystifying or deeply annoying, and Sunday's NBC broadcast was no exception to those general rules.

The first two thirds of Sunday's telecast were actually reasonably crisp and entertaining. There were many earnest words of gratitude to parents, mentors, spouses and God, a lot of jokes from co-hosts Andy Samberg and Sandra Oh landed reasonably well, and it simply wasn't possible to be mad whenSpider-Man: Into the Spider-Verseand Lady Gaga won shiny awards that they absolutely deserved.

But then, like an ambitious TV drama gone awry, the whole thing just went on too long, many strange choices were made and some men just would not stop monologuing.

Jeff Bridges
Paul Drinkwater/NBCUniversal via Getty Images

The tipping point -- where the whole thing went from frisky to freaky -- arrived around the time Jeff Bridges referenced Buckminster Fuller, because of course he did. Bridges is a legend and of course should be given as many awards as legally allowable. But my goodness, between his speech, the clips from his films and the sincere introduction from Chris Pine, the whole thing went on so long I hoped that Ben Stiller would spontaneously create a drama called Escape from Beverly Hilton.

Speaking of sincerity, that was the vibe of the night for long stretches. When Sandra Oh won for her truly great performance in Killing Eve, her joy leaped off the screen and into my heart. "I'm so grateful," she said breathlessly, and then thanked her exuberantly proud parents, who were beaming in the audience.

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Oh was one of many presenters and winners who referenced the work that the industry has done to become more inclusive -- and the work that needs to be done before Hollywood more accurately reflects America in front of and behind the camera. "I'm not fooling myself, next year could be different. It probably will be different," Oh said. "But right now this moment is real -- trust me, it is real."

The emotion felt real when Chuck Lorre said he was "trembling like a leaf" whenThe Kominsky Method won the award for best TV comedy. And maybe some could forgive the Globes that one oddball choice, because the Globes always make some odd picks (and they love any TV project starring a Hollywood Film Star). At least the decision to bestow a statue on Lorre's show wasn't as loopy as giving an award toMozart in the Junglea few years ago. (Ah, who am I kidding?The Good Place was robbed.)

If you were in a forgiving mood -- and I usually am when I'm judging the formalwear of rich, attractive, famous people -- you could kind of almost forgive the cringe-y things that started to crop up, especially in the second half of the broadcast. Moments like the Dude's long speech, the flu-shot bit, and Peter Farrelly solving racism in his tin-eared Green Bookacceptance speech landed with a thud, but there were many other worthy things in the mix.

Regina King
Paul Drinkwater/NBCUniversal via Getty Images

The Americans won for its final season! Ben Whishaw got a Golden Globe for his truly exceptional work in A Very English Scandal! The always-great Regina King, who was recognized for her work inIf Beale Street Could Talk, challenged everyone in the industry to hire creative teams that were at least 50 percent female!

Honest-to-god legend Carol Burnett got the inaugural Carol Burnett Award, which was lovely, and Christian Bale insulted Dick Cheney ("Thank you to Satan for giving me inspiration in this role"), which is the best thing Bale could have done in that moment. Olivia Colman was palpably, engagingly excited to win for her work in The Favourite, and the actress calling castmates Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz her "bitches" set a new acceptance-speech standard all other award winners should try to meet.

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But then suddenly, we were all in the Bad Place, and we couldn't get out.

Perhaps it was somehow fitting that a broadcast that had begun with so many on-target, intelligent jokes and jabs about the worst aspects of Hollywood culture ended with a white man giving a rambling acceptance speech after a movie directed by Bryan Singer won a major award.

Jim Beach, Roger Taylor, Brian May, Rami Malek, Graham King and Mike Myers
Steve Granitz/WireImage

Producer Graham King didn't mention Singer, who was fired from Bohemian Rhapsody and who has been dogged for some time by stomach-churning allegations (which he denies). I'm not saying no one should see Bohemian Rhapsody, but I am saying that giving a film directed by Singer an award -- when many other worthier films were right there -- is a very blinkered, backward-looking, depressing thing to do. As Evan Rachel Wood put it in a Sunday evening tweet: "So we just..we are all still supposed to be pretending we don't know about Bryan Singer? Cause it worked out really well with #Spacey and #Weinstein." Didn't it though?

Samberg asserted in the hosts' opening monologue that "this is live television, no take-backs!" So there's no alternate timeline: The broadcast definitely ended with that deflating moment. Maybe we needed one more bit of proof that in an industry fitfully trying to evolve, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

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Danai Gurira, Nicole Kidman, Lady Gaga
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