We tune in to awards ceremonies for the soaring moments — the history-making wins, upset victories, redemption stories, heartfelt speeches, and killer performances. But mixed in with all those highs are some dreadful lows. And 2024 had its fill, from the Oscars (a baffling In Memoriam segment, Killers of the Flower Moon going home empty-handed), Golden Globes (Jo Koy‘s performance as host, the Cinematic and Box Office Achievement Award), Emmys (under-recognition for Curb Your Enthusiasm and Better Call Saul), and the Grammys (Taylor Swift‘s Album of the Year victory).
Enjoy (or cringe at) the 16 moments Gold Derby has chosen as the year’s lowlights:
Look, we get it: The combined actors’ and writers’ strikes threw a significant wrench into the awards-industrial complex. And the right decision was canceling the 2023 Emmys. But the wrong decision was blind adherence to “the show must go on” and staging an Emmys ceremony in early 2024 — five months after the votes had been cast, and setting the stage for two Emmy ceremonies in the same year. Cue needless confusion and handwringing about which season of which series were eligible in which cycle, not to mention cramming an already packed lineup of winter awards shows. What a Bear.
— Debra Birnbaum
Boring. Lazy. Repetitive. Just a few of thoughts running through our heads as the TV Academy rewarded the same series over and over during what’s supposed to be Peak TV. Perhaps there are just too many shows for voters to keep up with these days, but watching Shōgun, admittedly a fantastic drama series, steamroll its way to a record 18 Emmys felt like overkill. It surpassed previous drama series record-holder Game of Thrones by a half-dozen and topped the overall leader, John Adams, by five. Here’s hoping the Emmys spread the wealth in 2025.
— Denton Davidson
No offense to Taylor Swift, who is a fabulously talented artist and deserving of acclaim, but we’ve had enough with the Recording Academy’s lazy decision to reward her for a fourth time for Midnights. Based on the results of recent Album of the Year voting, you’d be forgiven if you thought that no one else was making notable music. Who needs to reward the innovative sounds of boygenius for the record, SZA for SOS, Olivia Rodrigo for GUTS, or Janelle Monáe for The Age of Pleasure when you can go back to the same well time and time again? Swift’s victory further shows how truly ridiculous the Grammys have been, though that’s not really that difficult to do. Not only does she have the most wins in this category (besting the old record held by Stevie Wonder) but this also makes her 2015 win for 1989 all the more egregious as that should have gone, without question, to Kendrick Lamar for his masterpiece, To Pimp a Butterfly. Sorry, Swifties, but we wouldn’t mind celebrating someone new for a change.
— Charlie Bright
No disrespect to Jo Koy. The actor-comedian is hailed for his stand-up comedy specials and television appearances, known for his energetic humor, observational comedy, and personal storytelling, often drawing on his Filipino heritage and family dynamics as key subjects. He’s a really funny guy. But just not on that night. Koy was given the Globes gig a mere two weeks before to the ceremony, and expectations were measured for the comedian — that he’d do a commendable job with what he had to work with as the last-minute choice. Unfortunately for Koy, he was on the back foot within seconds of stepping out on stage that night, as he opened with a few off-color jokes from which he was never able to recover. The backlash was swift; he was slammed for his tone-deaf humor and jokes that alienated both the A-list audience in the room and viewers at home. Kudos to Koy for giving it his best shot, but we’re glad he’s passing the mic to Nikki Glaser for 2025.
— Rob Licuria
We admire the various awards shows for taking time out of their celebrations to honor those we’ve lost in the intervening year. But due to questionable creative choices, the 2024 Oscars did more to dishonor the deceased. The ceremony producers and director’s decision to highlight the accompanying singers and dancers resulted in several awkward camera shots that obscured the identities of the dead. Let’s hope the 2025 ceremony abandons this approach and refocuses the memoriam segment on the names and faces that matter.
— Chris Beachum
Six years ago, the Academy proposed the category of Best Popular Film at the Oscars only to be met with such blowback the idea was rescinded a month afterwards. The industry saw the move as pandering to more mainstream, commercial audiences in the wake of declining ratings and a stain on the prestige of Oscar. That didn’t stop the Golden Globes, though. This year’s ceremony saw the inaugural presentation of the loftily dubbed Cinematic and Box Office Achievement Award, bestowed at the expense of the honorary tribute awards for film and television icons (Cecil B. DeMille Award and Carol Burnett Award). The only Golden Globe category designated for eight nominees, the race included some questionable contenders, including the underperforming Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning: Part One and the concert movie Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, choosing star power over actual box office. In the end a worthy film did win: Barbie, the highest-grossing blockbuster of 2023. However, it was seen as a consolation prize as the film only earned one other statuette, for Best Original Song, despite a leading nine nominations.
— Christopher Tsang
With the SAG Awards now airing on Netflix, the streamer had to build in “commercial breaks” for its ad-tier subscribers. Its solution was to dispatch Queer Eye’s Tan France to conduct interviews with freshly minted winners backstage. Sounds OK in theory but not in execution. France did his best, but these people hadn’t had a second to collect their thoughts after collecting their trophies and the interviews were interminable, making for awkward exchanges all around and deadening the momentum of the show. Not that commercials are better, but maybe come up with some other options next time.
— Joyce Eng
After the ends of the writers’ and actors’ strikes in the fall of 2023, Hollywood was in a celebratory mood, and rightfully so. But during the January awards shows, nearly every winner received a standing ovation from their peers. Sure, it was great seeing artists celebrate one another after a near-existential crisis. But at some point standing-Os are meaningless if practically everybody gets one. And the worst part? Not everyone was included in the O-athon. Elizabeth Debicki at the Golden Globes and Jennifer Coolidge at the delayed 2023 Emmys were given the cold shoulder when they accepted their awards. Ouch.
— Luca Giliberti
Better Call Saul is one of the most acclaimed TV spin-offs of all time, taking place before, during, and after the events of Emmy favorite Breaking Bad. That’s why it was so surprising — and, frankly, disappointing — when BCS officially ended its run without winning a single Emmy Award. Its final five chances were at the strike-delayed 75th Primetime Emmys in January, but Saul lost out to the likes of Succession and The White Lotus. In the final tally, Better Call Saul goes down as a 53-time Emmy loser.
— Marcus James Dixon
Curb Your Enthusiasm received its 11th nomination for Best Comedy Series at the Emmys this year. That means every season has been nominated in the top category since Season 2, which aired 22 years ago, which is pretty, pretty good. But once again Larry David & Co. missed out. Since the show wrapped up this year, Curb has the dubious distinction of being the most-nominated comedy series never to have won the big prize. Overall, the TV Academy didn’t have much enthusiasm for Curb; over the course of its 12-season run, the show received a whopping 55 nominations but only won twice, for direction and single-camera editing.
— Matt Noble
We already mentioned the baffling decision of the Globes to add an award for Cinematic and Box Office Achievement. But there was another new category that was even more cringeworthy: Best TV Stand-Up Comedy Performance. The prize was bestowed upon the conspicuously absent Ricky Gervais. The former Golden Globes host surely would have delivered an unforgettable speech had he been present, but the ratings ploy fell so flat that it’s a wonder the category wasn’t instantly retired.
— Matthew Stewart
Yes, he is inarguably the biggest artist in Country Music. Yes, he sells out arenas and dominates the charts and airwaves. And yes, “I Had Some Help,” his chart-topping collab with Post Malone, is undeniably catchy. So while it wasn’t shocking that Morgan Wallen received seven nominations for the 2024 CMA Awards, it was galling that he took home night’s biggest honor, Entertainer of the Year. This award celebrates an artist who displays “the greatest competence in all aspects of the entertainment field,” and voters are asked to consider the performer’s “in-person performance, public acceptance, leadership, and overall contribution to Country Music.” Wallen, who was banned from the awards circuit in 2021 following racial slurs, made headlines in 2024 for his arrest on three felony counts for throwing a chair of the rooftop of a six-story bar, nearly hitting some police officers below. For our money, the winner should have been Chris Stapleton, who has been nominated eight times without winning, and continues to be the consummate vocalist, musician, and songwriter in the genre.
— Tony Ruiz
To quote Rodney Dangerfield, Martin Scorsese doesn’t get any respect… at least not from the Academy, that is. The man who has a legitimate claim to greatest living filmmaker finally won his long-overdue Oscar for directing The Departed, but since then he’s gone unacknowledged despite lots of nominations. Case in point: his latest epic, Killers of the Flower Moon, amassed 10 total bids, including Best Picture and Best Director, only to go home empty-handed (just like Gangs of New York and The Irishman before them). No Best Actress win for Lily Gladstone’s heartbreaking performance as a Native American woman whose husband (Leonard DiCaprio) poisons her to take her fortune. No victory for Scorsese’s late friend, Robbie Robertson, who was posthumously nominated for his final completed score, nor any first-time prize for legendary production designer Jack Fisk, who rebuilt 1920s Oklahoma from the ground up. At 82 years old, any new Marty movie is a thing to be cherished, whether the Oscars agree or not.
— Zach Laws
Liza Colón-Zayas is an incredible actor. That she received an Emmy Award for her empathic performance as Tina on The Bear is right and good. But that Emmy victory should have come next year for the show’s third season when Tina had a standout episode that filled in some of the blanks in her life before the events of the show. Instead, Colón-Zayas won this year for the second season of The Bear, an outcome that left Hannah Einbinder without her deserved Emmy win for Season 3 of Hacks. Einbinder is arguably the “heart and soul” of the Max comedy series, and the show’s third season was not only its best — something Television Academy members obviously clocked since the series pulled off the shocking upset in Best Comedy Series over The Bear — but the best yet for its co-lead. Einbinder was giving Matthew Macfadyen in Succession Season 3 or Kieran Culkin for Succession Season 4 and those guys won Emmys during their show’s series-winning years. She matched Emmy winner Jean Smart step for step, and the argument could be made that Smart isn’t as good on the show without Einbinder on the opposite side of the table. Now, it’s very likely Einbinder will once again face off against Colón-Zayas at next year’s Emmys, with Colón-Zayas’ better material a leader in the clubhouse. It’s a tough beat, but maybe one Einbinder’s Ava Daniels would appreciate.
— Christopher Rosen
How weird was it to have Ebon Moss-Bachrach (Emmy winner for his supporting work in The Bear) and Taylor Zakhar Perez (Red, White, and Royal Blue) placed at a bar with a bottle of Johnnie Walker before introducing the Best Movie/Limited Writing category? While television is a business, can we just say that that was uncomfortable product placement? Hats off to Bachrach for acknowledging the awkwardness with, “That was so much fun.” Both actors are known for their charisma on their respective projects but that charm fell short in the intro to their Emmys moment.
— Rasha Goel
The Country Music Association egregiously snubbed one of the biggest country artists of the year: Beyoncé. Sure, the CMAs might have viewed Bey’s foray into country, Cowboy Carter, as a temporary detour from her pop/R&B career and decided to overlook her. But how then to explain the organization’s embrace of Post Malone with four nominations? The double standard highlights Nashville’s inauspicious record of downplaying the contributiuons of Black artists.
— Daniel Montgomery
