Jodie Foster Is Great but Her Golden Globe Win Is a Travesty

Jodie Foster has won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Limited Series for her work in True Detective: Night Country. This is the iconic actor’s third Golden Globe win (out of more than 10 nominations). She has also won two Academy Awards, three BAFTA Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award for her exquisite work throughout half a century, so I don’t feel particularly bad in writing this — someone else should’ve won (even fellow nominee Sofía Vergara heckled the actor as she walked to the stage, half-joking that Foster had won too many awards). Specifically, Cristin Milioti of The Penguin should’ve won, but honestly, every other nominee deserved this award more than Foster.

The other nominees in the category were the aforementioned Milioti for The Penguin, Cate Blanchett for Disclaimer, Sofía Vergara for Griselda, Kate Winslet for The Regime, and Naomi Watts for Feud: Capote vs. The Swans. Each of them gave fantastic performances of varying degrees. Naomi Watts completely transformed herself as usual, this time playing the magazine editor and socialite Barbara “Babe” Paley in the second season of Ryan Murphy’s Feud anthology series. She was glamorous, witty, and perfectly attuned to the period-specific production.

Griselda is one of the few projects to successfully tap into the dramatic potential of Sofía Vergara, because the actress is so much more than a repetitive Modern Family joke about the quality of her English. Kate Winslet, also great in last year’s Lee, was regal, intimidating, and sly in The Regime; the series itself is a mixed bag, but almost everyone agreed that she gave an incredible performance. Cate Blanchett was staggeringly complex in Alfonso Cuarón’s masterful miniseries, incorporating her usual cold intellect but with a much more wounded, emotional bent.

13 years before ‘The Penguin,’ Cristin Milioti gave us one of the best episodes of ’30 Rock,’ and it’s one of her favorites, too.

The biggest upset among all these nominees, though, is Cristin Milioti, whose ingenious performance as Sofia Falcone in The Penguin was pointed to as the main highlight in an already great show. Her beautiful, angry, multidimensional character gave Colin Farrell’s Oz Cobb a run for his money. While Farrell won Best Actor in a Limited Series for his performance, he was gifted with an incredible makeup department (which he thanked profusely in his acceptance speech). Milioti did not have that to work with, and yet transformed into someone so different from anything we’ve seen before in her career (or on television, frankly).

‘True Detective: Night Country’ Started Great but Became Ridiculous

After two seasons of (sometimes undeserved) criticisms, fans of True Detective‘s iconic first season thought that the show had gotten back on track with its wintry fourth season, dubbed Night Country. The very different, snowy setting, the Easter eggs and callbacks to the first season, the wild body horror of the “corpsicle,” and more aspects of the season kept viewers hooked, proclaiming it to be the best narrative since everyone fell in love with Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey’s detectives a decade ago.

Things went downhill halfway through Night Country though, something one could predict from increasingly ridiculous subplots and annoying characters. Jodie Foster’s performance as police Chief Liz Danvers becomes pretty one-note, with her hokey accent, inappropriately oversexed demeanor, and lazy dialogue becoming grating by the end of the show. And let’s not even get into the annoying scenes with her stepdaughter.

With its befuddling and ridiculous conclusion, True Detective: Night Country became, as Forbes wrote, “one of the most disappointing mystery shows ever made,” and Foster contributed to that let-down. So, with all due respect to Ms. Jodie Foster (brilliant in so many other things), The Penguin‘s Cristin Milioti deserves much better.

True Detective

True Detective is an anthology series exploring intricate criminal investigations through multiple timelines. Each season examines dark personal and professional secrets revealed during the course of solving complex cases, highlighting the impact of crime on individuals both within and outside the law enforcement community.

Rating  TV-MA

Main Genre  Drama

Genres  Drama, Mystery, Crime

Network  HBO Max

Creator(s)  Nic Pizzolatto, Issa López

Cast  Finn Bennett, Isabella Star LaBlanc, Dana Gourrier, Kali Reis, J.D. Evermore, Afemo Omilami, Chris Kerson, Tory Kittles, Madison Wolfe, Christopher Eccleston, James Frain, Taylor Kitsch, Matthew McConaughey, Rachel McAdams, Mahershala Ali, Woody Harrelson, Colin Farrell, Scoot McNairy, Ray Fisher, Christopher James Baker, Michael Potts, Ritchie Coster, Fiona Shaw, Abigail Spencer, Vince Vaughn, Stephen Dorff, Michelle Monaghan, Kelly Reilly, John Hawkes, Jodie Foster, Carmen Ejogo