• by Ed Martin , January 13, 2014

Every year when I watch the Golden Globe Awards -- and especially these last two years when they have been boosted by the invaluable and irreplaceable Tina Fey and Amy Poehler as co-hosts -- I can't help but wonder why so many of the other big award shows that fail to impress on an annual basis simply cannot get it right.

Reliably, the two biggest busts of the year are the Academy Awards and the Emmy Awards. Even when the Oscar telecast tries to loosen up -- as it did in 2011 with Anne Hathaway and James Franco as hosts and again last year with Seth MacFarlane as the master of ceremonies -- it remains a chore to sit through. And the Emmys are more often than not an embarrassment. I still can't get over the fact that somebody thought it would be a good idea last year to overstuff the show with miserable memorial segments that made everyone watching feel sad without for a moment celebrating the decades of joy that the departed had given us.

The Tony Awards really deliver when Neil Patrick Harris or Hugh Jackman serve as hosts, but are less impressive in other years. The entertainment quotient of the Grammy Awards rises and falls in direct proportion to the musical acts on stage. The People’s Choice Awards and the SAG Awards can be easily missed (if not totally forgotten) without regret. The MTV Awards come alive only during deliberately shocking performances by the likes of Madonna and Miley Cyrus. The American Music Awards have become irrelevant. The many and interchangeable country music award shows don't make much of an impression, except for the CMT Awards, which are consistently creative and satisfying in the way that the MTV Awards used to be, perhaps because CMT always tries harder.

But the Globes never disappoint. They have been an annual hot topic since 1982, the year I began watching them, when Pia Zadora was famously given an award for her performance in a trashy little movie titled “Butterfly” as a result, “observers” sniped, of her very wealthy husband financing a massive promotional campaign on her behalf. Her “win” suggested that members of the Hollywood Foreign Press had no integrity at all, but since then the Globes have never failed to excite their audience, generate much water cooler and social media talk, and vigorously reinforce the idea that they are completely pointless as anything other than an evening's mindless entertainment.

Fey and Poehler are the perfect hosts for this show, as they are not afraid to mock it throughout without coming down too hard on anyone or anything. Even if one cares little for movies or television –- and I daresay there are very few people out there who don’t enjoy one or the other -- the Globes (which honor both) are worth watching just to see and hear these two ladies in action. They were never so funny as the moment last night when they ran through a list of names and publications of typical HFP members, including Sven Kendervomit from Purple Magazine, Jurgen Funderfinger from Der Frunt Magazine and Jeremy Watson Stewart from Das Tits.

Poehler in particular was priceless when she appeared (after Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick had introduced their daughter Sosie Bacon as this year's Miss Golden Globes) as a young man named Randy -- who in addition to being Mr. Golden Globes was also revealed to be Fey's illegitimate son. “Randy” then scurried about the room in search of her father, drawn first to “Luther” star Idris Elba and then to mega-producer Harvey Weinstein.

Neither Fey or Poehler made quite as strong an impression as actress Jacqueline Bisset, whose long, strange trip to the stage and bizarre acceptance speech -- one of the strangest on any awards show ever -- will be remembered 11 months from now when media outlets compile the year's most tweeted-about moments in popular culture. (Ellen DeGeneres tweeted: “I helped write Jacqueline Bisset's speech. Did you like it?”)

Plainly, Bisset was overwhelmed by such high-profile recognition after a career spanning six decades. “For people who gave me shit, go to hell and don't come back!” she ordered. The s-bomb got by NBC's fumble-fingered censors, adding to the fun. This long-underappreciated actress is about to enjoy media attention the likes of which she hasn't experienced since her news-making appearance in a wet T-shirt in the 1977 adventure movie “The Deep.”

The already forgotten People's Choice Awards aside, the Golden Globes with Fey and Poehler front and center kick off the annual awards season in grand fashion. 

 But they also make everything that follows feel like a lot less fun. Much is made of the fact that big-time Hollywood stars love attending the Globes because they get to sit around and drink together and make the night a big party. In other words, they get to be themselves. And yet, whenever the Oscars (or to a lesser extent, the Emmys) lighten up, half of Hollywood (along with most critics) has seizures -- wailing about how disrespectful the show is to all those wonderful stars who bring so much enjoyment to the masses and add so much money to studio executive bonuses.

When I watch the Globes I can't help but think that I'm watching celebrities be themselves. In that regard I don't see how any of them could ever be offended by anything that has ever been done on the Oscars or the Emmys -- two mammoth productions that could do worse than bring in Fey and Poehler and any number of their fellow alumni from “Saturday Night Live” as consultants.

Speaking of “SNL,” did anyone notice how many past and present members of that cast were having the time of their lives last night in the International Ballroom at the Beverly Hilton Hotel? They were there as hosts, presenters and nominees, and there was even one big winner in their ranks: Andy Samberg, who took home the award for Best Actor in a Comedy Series for his starring role in Fox's “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.”