Well, the best and worst thing that can be said of Jo Koy’s disappointing stint as host of the 2024 Golden Globe Awards is that he’s trending. Sadly, he’s trending for the wrong reasons. Feedback from netizens has been scathing. It’s best not to repeat their comments . Netizens are much nastier than movie and TV critics.
Jo Koy’s 10-minute monologue is posted on YouTube. From what I saw, he wasn’t really terrible. He just wasn’t at par with previous hosts, most notably Ricky Gervais who had set the bar in hosting the show. Gervais was notorious for poking fun at the stars in the audience. He could be unkind but his delivery is so dry and deadpan he makes the jab seem endearing. The timing is flawless and the lilting British accent is also a help. So for those who’ve been following the Golden Globes year after year, Jo Koy was a letdown.
Jo Koy’s digs at the Best Picture nominees and some of the stars were amusing at best. His one-liners might have elicited a big smile from the audience and not big laughs and applause. His jokes would have only worked well at a corporate Christmas party. Adding salt to the wound is the fact that Vietnamese-American standup comic Ali Wong won the Golden Globe that night for her sterling performance in Beef. Meanwhile, our Fil-American standup comic had lost the audience.
His jokes would have only worked well at a corporate Christmas party
Previous hosts also died onstage due to one unfunny punch line but they did recover with the next one. I just wish Jo Koy had found a way to salvage himself, but he didn’t seem to have any backup jokes to win back the audience. Could his jokes about his dear mother and Fil-Americans have worked? They might have. It was those jokes that earned him a lot of fans and followers. But would they have won over a woke A-list celebrity like Meryl Streep, whose several memorable acceptance speeches sparkled with wit? That’s a big question mark.
Perhaps Jo Koy’s brand of comedy is really just meant for the stage. His stand-up shows are side-splittingly funny. I’m not an avid fan but, I do almost fall off the chair whenever I see his shows on Netflix. So far, his kind of humor hasn’t translated well on other mediums, like film (re: the mediocre Easter Sunday) and TV (re: last Sunday’s Golden Globes).
The announcement that he was hosting the show was a source of pride for us, despite the snide remarks from Hollywood pundits
The announcement that he was hosting the show was a source of pride for us, despite the snide remarks from Hollywood pundits. It was said that Jo Koy was given the job because the more famous hosts had turned it down. Or he was merely hired for the sake of representation. Somehow, we sensed that Jo Koy was out to prove the cynics wrong. He would bring down the house if only to show them. But he didn’t. The jokes fell flat and at a certain point he blamed the writers for the disaster. He did that on the show and on live TV.
The writers are indeed also at fault. Our present culture of wokeness and inclusion is also partly to blame. Yes, Jo Koy may have been hired to place emphasis on representation. The Globes had been under fire for not having had black members throughout its long history. Hiring a Fil-American for the first time was good PR. The Academy Awards is also taking inclusion very seriously. This year, films that failed to hire enough minorities won’t be eligible to be nominated for Best Picture. Hirings would then be based on race and gender, and not qualifications.
Also to blame are the awards shows like the Emmys, Oscars, and Golden Globes. They now have a collective taste for irreverent hosts who tend to turn the formal affairs into standup shows. It started with Billy Crystal—considered one of the finest hosts the Oscar show has ever had. Today, everyone wants a Billy Crystal type to enliven the proceedings. Gimmicky gags and mockery has become the order of the day. This does work most of the time—when it’s Billy Crystal hosting. It doesn’t if the host isn’t Billy Crystal hosting and if the writer isn’t the talented Bruce Villanche.
There was a time when awards shows didn’t need to pose as a standup comedy hour. The Golden Globes were once hosted by Hollywood luminaries like Charlton Heston, Michael York, Faye Dunaway, Raquel Welch, and Andy Williams. They didn’t try to be funny but they did elicit a few laughs without trying too hard. Their primary goal was to get the show rolling and they did so with grace and dignity.
A show like the Golden Globes doesn’t even need a funny host . The audience is already drunk by the time the show starts. It has an open bar policy and it’s a major reason it’s well-attended. By the time a winner accepts his Golden Globe, he’s tipsy and he’s at his unrehearsed best. In 1985, Golden Globe winner Dudley Moore hilariously chastised his fellow nominees for not being at par that year. Several years later, Best Picture presenter Elizabeth Taylor was so drunk she was slurring her words and having difficulty reading the list of nominees. The audience forgave her because she was funny and because she was screen legend Elizabeth Taylor! As Warren Beatty said, the Golden Globes is a party, the Oscars is work.
In fairness to Jo Koy, he wasn’t the only host who died onstage. David Letterman’s brand of humor didn’t translate well at the Oscars. The critics murdered him. James Franco also got appalling reviews when he did Oscar hosting duties . Even Bob Hope’s writers weren’t at their best on certain years. The beloved host relied on a laugh track to make it seem like he was killing it. But they emerged from their respective catastrophes and continued on with their careers.
I think it’s reasonable to believe that Jo Koy will also survive this.
