Nikki Glaser and the truly unpredictable winners saved the 2025 Golden Globes

After last year complete disaster on the Golden Globes opening—old, crass, almost booed by the host at the jokes Jo Koy—It was a wonderful thrill to watch this year’s host, Nikki Glaser, right the ship and then some at the top of the The show airs Sunday night.

Glaser comes to the Globes after a hugely successful 2024 that saw the debut of her Globe-nominated special and, most notably, a star-raising performance at the barbecue Tom Brady. Her jokes are lewd, crude, and precisely choreographed, but that precise style is perhaps not quite ready for primetime airing. And certainly not for an awards show that’s allowed to poke fun at celebrities in the audience, but it can’t go too far. There was some question as to how Glaser would adapt her typically raunchy, raunchy comedy for a lighter show.

As it turns out, she calculated correctly. Her outfit was sharp and smartincludes a number of articles exploring the depravity of Hollywood culture framed broadly enough not to offend anyone in particular (other than Diddy, I guess). The doc was presented with a modest reverence for the year’s big films and their shining talents, all the while bursting the crowd’s gilded bubble. She knows which celebrities to target—games enough to play with her for a bit, or at least laugh along with her—which requires a special kind of skill that Glaser, of course, has honed over the years—albeit in more extreme ways—at the many grills she’s done.

The highest praise I can give is that Glaser’s opening and subsequent onstage numbers were reminiscent of the three glorious years when the Globes were hosted by Tina Fey And Amy Poehler, a series of lovably barbed Hollywood taunts that is perhaps unprecedented. Glaser doesn’t engage in Fey and Poehler’s brand of crazy absurdism, but many of her referential jokes are just as biting. And she added some slightly abstract silliness to other spots in the show, especially in an inspired bit where she started, then stopped in embarrassment, a hokey musical parody reminiscent of Oscar days long gone.

Glaser’s confident command of the stage was reminiscent of the effortless gliding of yesteryear, when many awards shows played out with a buzzy professionalism that was truly lacking in an age of unnecessary tinkering and poor organization. our present.

That’s not to say the entire broadcast was a resounding success. There have actually been some bad tweaks to the recipe, especially the leftovers from last year that really need to go. Why can’t we have the presenter standing in full view of the stage, facing the audience? Why did the show’s producers instead choose to shoot close-ups of the presenters, with their backs to the megawatts in the room? That staging undermines the impact of any funny scripted jokes (and there have been a few this year!). If the people in the room aren’t actually invited in on the joke, they won’t laugh as much, which makes people laugh less at home.

The night was quiet first award presentation— to an outpouring, weeping Zoe Saldaña, delivers old-fashioned seriousness in the best way—immediately stopping the momentum that Glaser was going. The cluttered visuals, horribly complemented by the tinny sound, did a disservice to the viewer and the work recognized in the room. They were even criticized by the nice Canadian guy Seth Rogen! Stop trying to reinvent the wheel, award shows. Just give it to us straight. And by direct, I mean directly towards the people sitting in the audience.

However, Glaser’s top routine went a long way toward addressing those issues, as did some lovely speeches from the likes of Saldaña, Demi Moore, and, yes, even past awards show misery Adrien Brody. The show had a real sense of occasion, a meeting of fun and intrigue that so many post-pandemic awards shows have lacked. (Perhaps even before that.)