Jibes aplenty

The host of the Golden Globes next year, whoever it is, has some huge shoes to fill.

Comediennes Tina Fey and Amy Poehler have said they will no longer host the ceremony after their third consecutive and final Globes gig this year, a decision that led even the esteemed Meryl Streep to comment on stage on Sunday: "I just want to say, how much are we going to miss Amy and Tina?"

Fey, 44, and Poehler, 43, certainly did not hold back in their final outing. As Poehler joked on the red carpet before the show: "What are they going to do? Fire us?"

Which meant that anything was up for mocking, from the usual jibes at certain celebrities to the thornier topics such as the Bill Cosby sexual harassment charges.

Most jokes worked, some not so much, but what was clear was that the audience did not get enough of them throughout the night.

BEST

Their digs at the nominees and at themselves

Fey: "Steve Carell's Foxcatcher look took two hours to put on, including his hairstyling and make-up. Just for comparison, it took me three hours today to prepare for my role as Human Woman."

Poehler: "The Theory Of Everything. Wonderful movie this year. It combines the two things that audiences love - a crippling nerve disease and supercomplicated math."

Poehler: "I didn't like Gone Girl. I go to the movies to escape - I don't want to just see myself up there on the screen."

Female power all the way

They celebrated a lot of women, including Frances McDormand, whom Poehler described as "the only person in this room that I'll save in a fire", and Patricia Arquette, the 46-year-old star of Boyhood, which won Best Drama.

Poehler said of Arquette's film, which was filmed over 12 years: "Boyhood proves that there are still great roles for women over 40, as long as you get hired when you're under 40."

The 'Who'd You Rather' game

The hosts revealed that in the long time that they've known each other (Fey: "For like, 50 years?"), they have never had an overlap when it comes to the guys they like.

To prove this, they started playing "Who'd You Rather", where they name two men and each of them picks their preferred one. For example:

Fey: "Richard Linklater or Alejandro Inarritu?"

Poehler: "I'm gonna say Inarritu. One take, two hours straight, no stopping."

Fey: "Linklater. Five minutes, once a year."

Their impersonations of Bill Cosby

There was some nervous tittering at first, but soon, everyone was laughing.

Fey started off with a forcibly shoddy impersonation of Cosby, saying: "I put the pills in the people. The people did not want the pills in them."

Poehler immediately shook her head and said, "Tina, hey, that's not right", as if reprimanding her friend. That is, until she started launching into her own impersonation of Cosby with the same line.

When they picked Benedict Cumberbatch to present the first award alongside Jennifer Aniston

Aniston was slated to present the award alone, but the hosts gave the audience a chance to be her co-presenter. A bewildered Cumberbatch, who was the first person to raise his hand for the honour, said that he felt like he "won a competition".

WORST

Getting Margaret Cho to act as a North Korean general

Many of their jokes about the North Korean attack on Sony movie The Interview were genius, including this barb from Fey: "North Korea referred to The Interview as 'absolutely intolerable' and 'a wanton act of terror'. Even more amazing - not the worst review the movie got."

But one attempt flopped: the enlistment of Korean-American comedienne Cho to appear not once, but twice as a North Korean general, complete with the stereotyped accent and expressionless face.

It was a cheap gag, and netizens clearly felt the same - many social media users took to Twitter to complain about how the sketch promoted Asian stereotypes and was "so not funny".

This article was first published on January 13, 2015.
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