Gervais was predictably smug in his monologue at tonight’s Golden Globes—though unlike in years past even he didn’t seem to be having much fun. Most of his jokes were, in some way, about how Hollywood takes itself too seriously and it shouldn’t, because no one cares and awards don’t really mean anything. Which is true! The only problem is that all of the jokes were delivered as if Gervais is somehow superior to these self-serious people for telling them the hard, unimportant truth that lol nothing matters. The only shocking thing about his monologue was that he didn’t refer to God as a “fairy tale.”
The only thing that seemed to really interest Gervais, besides telling everyone how little he cares, was making jokes about trans people. His first and second non-Gervais-based jokes were about Caitlyn Jenner. Later, he spent a few minutes dinging an unimpressed Jeffrey Tambor about dressing up like a woman on Transparent. That, alongside the joke about Sean Penn he was pretty much legally required to do after the events of Saturday night and a not terrible joke about the Golden Globes being fixed, was pretty much it.