We all have off days at work — but none as bad as Jo Koy hosting the Golden Globes. After this year’s fiasco of Matt Rife being the actual worst, you’d think award shows would stop letting mediocre white men host these things, but alas, we are still stuck with rampant sexism. Worst of all — it’s not even funny.
From start to finish, it was the kind of monologue you couldn’t help but grimace at. For starters, Koy opened with the usual shouting out of nominees, but all of his jokes fell short. Everything he said was bland or obvious, like when he made fun of Oppenheimer’s run time and how he’d finish it in 2025. As a generation that was raised on Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, nobody cares about the length of movies, as long as they’re good. After this, it appears that he began to realize how bad he was doing and tried to backpedal: “Yo, I got the gig ten days ago. You want a perfect monologue? Shut up … I wrote some of these, and they’re the ones you’re laughing at.” This is a common comedian approach to win over your audience, but in Koy’s case, it deservedly backfired.
Koy’s hosting took a major hit when he deviated from his script and started publicly criticizing his writers. While comedians have faced challenges at the Golden Globes before, Koy’s performance didn’t just stumble; it suffered a particularly dramatic setback. Koy missed his timing, repeated punch lines, and failed to firmly stand behind his jokes as he went into panic mode, blaming his writers and sliding into a hilariously bad open-mic mode.
To no one’s surprise, he did what almost every alpha male comedian likes to do these days: revert to bullying Taylor Swift and trying to diminish women! What a joy! After saying there was extensive footage of her at the Chief’s NFL games (which Swift never asked for), she made a face and the joke garnered a few laughs from the crowd. A lackluster response to a lackluster joke. Then, Koy tells the audience “Barbie is based on a plastic doll with big boobies,” and how he is uncomfortably turned on by it. Raise your hand if you completely missed the entire point of the movie. I’m looking at you, Jo!
Greta Gerwig did everything in her power to create a beautiful film that demonstrates how impossible it is to be a woman in society, and break down the core ideas of feminism in an easily understood manner. And the best you can think of is sexualizing a doll that doesn’t even have genitalia? It’s so easy to do better. If you’re going to write jokes based on the humiliation of others, at least make sure we can laugh at them!
It’s a continuous cycle of seeing male comedians make the same baseless jokes at the expense of women time and time again, and still expect to be praised for it. There are millions of comedians out there who can actually tell a joke that’s funny, and are yet overlooked each time. I personally know hundreds of people who could’ve done better (and not blame their writers!), and it’s so discouraging to see unfunny male comedians keep getting chances at redemptions.
So Golden Globes, Grammy’s, Oscar’s, and more, on behalf of myself and the people, please hire actually funny comedians. You have a year to redeem yourself, and find people who won’t consistently get canceled.