The 2019 Golden Globes didn’t want any trouble.

The previous two years, the usually bubbly event found itself responding to upheavals in politics and in the power structure of Hollywood. This year a big issue hanging over the awards ceremony was another awards ceremony: the Oscars, which is still without a host after a search that included the naming and quick unnaming of Kevin Hart, after objections to the comedian’s history of homophobic jokes.

The hosts, Sandra Oh and Andy Samberg, kicked off their opening monologue declaring that they were “the only two people left in Hollywood who haven’t gotten in trouble for saying something offensive” and announcing that one lucky audience member “Will! Host! The Oscars!”

[Read our analysis from the Golden Globes ceremony | Browse the list of winners]

Their opener, amiable if a little stiff, played on the idea of aggressive niceness, “roasting” stars in the room with compliments. Even one of the zingers, a joke by Oh about Hollywood’s casting white actors as Asian characters, produced a cheerfully penitent “I’m sorry!” from Emma Stone, who played a part-Asian character in “Aloha.”