Congrats to Ramy and Awkwafina on their Golden Globe Awards, and a look at the final Ricky Gervais monologue

Huge ups to Ramy Youssef and Awkwafina, who took home their first Golden Globe Awards over the weekend.

Youssef won Best Actor in a TV Comedy for playing a fictionalized version of his younger self in the Hulu series, Ramy. Awkwafina won Best Actress in a Motion Picture (Musical or Comedy) for her role in the wonderful film, The Farewell. For all of my and your complaints about the Globes and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for all of their ass-kissing of A-listers, they do also have a tendency to reward great new performers.

As for Ricky Gervais, returning for his fifth and presumably final time as host? Gervais definitely let us know he didn’t care and never did, and perhaps that tone undermined the effectiveness of some of his punchlines. Because he came with some great jokes. Right from the top, noting how the Oscars couldn’t let Kevin Hart host without an apology, while NBC gladly kept coming back to Gervais. He also plugged his own Netflix series without mentioning it was a plug — although he did follow that up with a killer Epstein gag. You can watch his full monologue here, and see how he had them howling with a Dame Judi Dench bit, and got supportive reaction shots from Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio on his jabs at them.

Of course, Youssef winning the first award moments after the Gervais monologue allowed him to play off of the host.

And here’s Awkwafina.

Oh, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge got to accept two awards for her Fleabag, first for best TV actress in a comedy, and then for best TV comedy.

Sean L. McCarthy

Editor and publisher since 2007, when he was named New York's Funniest Reporter. Former newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News, Boston Herald and smaller dailies and community papers across America. Loves comedy so much he founded this site.

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