Amy and Tina Hold Our Globes Expectations in the Palms of their Hands

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Amy Poehler and Tina Fey will surely be great at the Golden Globes on Sunday, but what if they aren't? 

Perhaps we are being alarmist, but there is slight reason to believe that Poehler and Fey will not live up to the unreasonable expectations set by their first time around. That's not to say they'll be bad—it's hard to imagine that—but they have a lot to live up to. Remember how disappointing it was to see Neil Patrick Harris bomb at the Emmys after his bang up performance at the Tonys?

Last year, Poehler and Fey had a lot to contend with: they were the first team to host following three years of Ricky Gervais barbs, tensions were raised over the Zero Dark Thirty torture debate, and Seth MacFarlane had just antagonized a whole bunch of people when reading out the Oscar nominations. They handled it all with aplomb. Their Ricky joke via Fey: "Ricky Gervais could not be here tonight because he is no longer technically in show business." Their Zero Dark Thirty joke via Poehler: "I haven't really been following the controversy over Zero Dark Thirty, but when it comes to torture, I trust the lady who spent three years married to James Cameron." 

This year, even though they'll have plenty of material to mine from the many nominees, they are coming in as old pros with no one standout controversy to address, even though Nikki Finke labeled it the "meanest Oscar season battle in memory." They'll be able to tease Jennifer Lawrence about her consistent presence at these things. We can only hope they'll get Meryl Streep and Emma Thompson up on stage for some sort of feminist pow wow. God help us all if they get into the glorification/condemnation Wolf of Wall Street debate.

Poehler, when giving her half of The Hollywood Reporter's pre-Globes interview, seemed, well, sort of over it, not willing to answer the sillier questions thrown at her by the reporter. Perhaps that's a sign. Or maybe we should just lower expectations so we are just as thrilled when Poehler and Fey knock it out of the park again. 

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.