The 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation stars will bring a warmer, hipper brand of comedy to awards-show stage compared to the no-longer-cutting-edge snark of the Family Guy creator.
Did the Golden Globes just beat the Oscars at its own game? Thanks to of the shrewd hiring of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler as hosts of its 2013 ceremony, it might have. High-fiving a million angels!
The Motion Picture Academy's ceaseless struggle to produce an Oscars telecast that appeals to younger viewers while still maintaining some traditional pomp and circumstance is, by now, a point of ridicule. First there was the parading of a Tiger Beat troupe made up of High School Musical stars and Miley Cyrus onto the broadcast. Then, the fateful hiring of Anne Hathaway and James Franco as hosts. Last year featured the tremendous crash-and-burn of the Brett Ratner/Eddie Murphy "edgy" producing/hosting team. Yet the Academy recently announced it was making another attempt at reaching the 18-24 demo, booking Seth MacFarlane, the man behind Family Guy, Ted, and nearly nothing that a majority of the aging Academy members have ever heard of, to preside over this year's telecast.
It was a risky choice, and one that might have ended up seeming wise in the long run. That is, until the Hollywood Foreign Press ruined everything by landing what may be the most perfect combination of awards-show hosts that there has ever been: Fey and Poehler. The Golden Globes and the Academy Awards, in recent years at least, seem to want what the other has. The Globes crave the Oscars' legitimacy and respect; the Oscars, the Globes' currency and coolness. The respective ceremonies' new hosts represent those competing desires. But with Fey and Poehler, the Globes may just succeed in getting what it wants, while MacFarlane seems destined to go down as yet another failed Oscar experiment.