Why Expectations for Sandra Oh and Andy Samberg’s Golden Globes Hosting Gig Are Sky-High

There’s a ton riding on Andy Samberg and Sandra Oh to kill it tonight at the Golden Globes. Why? Two words: Kevin Hart.

Okay, also two more words: The Oscars.

The Hart hosting fiasco has been nothing short of an epic disaster for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Oscars’ parent organization has managed to look, at different turns, unprepared, out of touch, and desperate. That they’re now apparently just going hostless entirely, while a potential fresh take on the ceremony, speaks to how thoroughly they flubbed this. The common wisdom is now that hosting the Oscars is a hellish experience absolutely no one would want to take on — wisdom that could, in turn, affect other awards shows.

Enter Oh and Samberg, an out-of-the-box pairing likely chosen based on how well they presented together during last year’s awards season. The general reaction to Samberg and Oh has been nothing short of ecstatic, and every bit of pre-show material we’ve gotten from them has only upped the expectations. This video, in particular, I’ve watched no fewer than 200 times:

So even without the Hart situation, Oh and Samberg would be walking into tonight with a lot of enthusiasm to live up to. But the added pressure comes from proving that, put simply, hosts for awards shows are still a good idea.

Luckily, these two have great chemistry, killer comic timing, and already have the media on their side. (Seriously, I haven’t seen such good press for awards show hosts since the halcyon days of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.) As long as they walk into tonight confident and ready to have fun, I think they’ll be — pardon the pun — golden.