Making an argument for the irrelevance of the Golden Globes isn't hard. (It involves the words "Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie for The Tourist.") But this is also the organization that nominated Vicky Cristina Barcelona, In Bruges, Burn After Reading, and Happy-Go-Lucky in the same category for Best Picture all in one year, and that just awarded The Grand Budapest Hotel the very same prize.
Quirky? Maybe. But the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's choices are also a rare breed in the awards show industry: provocative. Nowhere was that more evident at Sunday's ceremony than in the Best Television Series, Comedy/Musical categories. The CW won its first major award ever, and for a show with a Latina lead. A streaming service finally won a Best Series prize—and that service wasn't even Netflix. And a performer playing a transgender character won a Best Actor prize.
To call the Golden Globes irrelevant fails to recognize that in many ways, the Globes are on the cutting edge when it comes to the often staid world of awards—making the Emmys look positively stick-in-the-mud in comparison.
Look at what the Emmys celebrated last year: Bryan Cranston won his fourth award for Breaking Bad. Julia Louis-Dreyfus won her third for Veep. Modern Family won its fifth consecutive Best Comedy Series Emmy. Certainly, these performers and shows deserve recognition, but with so much new energy coming from performances like Matthew McConaughey's in True Detective or the ensemble cast of Orange Is the New Black, the awards felt a little stale.