There may have been knives on the tables in the audience at the 73rd Golden Globe Awards on NBC Sunday night, but host Ricky Gervais did most of the cutting, thanks to his razor-sharp, pointed jabs at celebrities and the world of entertainment.
"Shut up, you disgusting, pill-popping sexual deviant scum," he addressed the glittering, grinning crowd while taking a sip from a glass of fizzing beer in his opening remarks. "I'm going to do this monologue and then go into hiding."
And if that surprises anyone, clearly they haven't been paying attention: Gervais drew fire every time he hosted the Globes before (in 2010, 2011 and 2012) and promised on TODAY Friday that he would "bite the hand that feeds me."
He did, noting that NBC had no nominations of its own, which made it a "fair and impartial" network to host the show. "Nothing in it for them tonight; they don't care," he noted.
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He went on to let everyone know he has no time, or interest in the Golden Globes themselves. "If you do win tonight, remember that no one cares about that award as much as you do," he said. "Don't get emotional; it's embarrassing, OK? That award is, no offense, worthless."
He casually laid into a wide swath of people and addressed current events at the same time. Gervais said he believed in equal pay for women in Hollywood — "I'm getting paid exactly the same as [co-hosts] Tina [Fey] and Amy [Poehler] did last year ... It's not my fault if they want to share the money."
"It's an honor to be gone after by him," Steve Carell told TODAY's Matt Lauer on the red carpet before the show.
Well, Carell got a pass, but Gervais noted that Caitlin Jenner had had a memorable year. "She became a role model for trans people everywhere ... She didn't do a lot for women drivers, but you can't have everything," he quipped, referring to Jenner's run-in with the law after a traffic accident.
Also up for note were Jennifer Lawrence, "Spotlight," the "hilarious comedy" of Matt Damon's "The Martian," Roman Polanski, "Ghostbusters" and Jeffrey Tambor.
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But it was the show itself that took the biggest drubbing from Gervais, who told a groaning audience, "Shut up, I don't care." He noted that he was qualified to say what he did about the uselessness of the award since he had three of his own.
"One's a doorstop, one I use to hit burglars with and one I keep by the bed," he said ... and then clarified explicitly why it would be near his bed. (We are not telling you that here.)
Perhaps Gervais was ready to hit the stage running because he did a little warm-up on social media. He posted this Instagram early in the day with the caption, "Better get dressed and offend some humourless [expletive] I suppose."
But then later proved he cleans up well (both his image and his language) with this tweet:
We expect far better, and far worse, from Gervais before the evening is out.
Follow Randee Dawn on Twitter.