Comedian Ricky Gervais hosted the 77th Golden Globes for his fifth time—and possibly the last, as he constantly reminded us—on Sunday.
Not everyone was amused by the jokes in his opening monologue (Tom Hanks, for one, was unimpressed), but regardless of one's enjoyment of Gervais' shtick, his monologue was comfortingly on-brand, a mixture of lightweight jabs (James Corden is fat, Leonardo DiCaprio's girlfriends are young) and body blows (jokes about Apple's sweatshops and Jeffrey Epstein's suicide), topped off with the forceful suggestion that celebrities should keep their noses out of politics. It was also hugely popular with conservative media, which hailed him as a preacher of moral truth rather than a peddler of jokes.
Brendan O'Neill at the Spectator wrote that through “our very own Ricky Gervais,” “Hollywood has received the thrashing it so richly deserves,” and described the monologue as a “takedown of Hollywood hypocrisy.” He expressed the hope that the monologue would be a “turning point in woke nonsense.”
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