Current:Home > MyShowbiz knucklehead Pete Davidson explains himself – again – in 'Bupkis' -Prime Capital Blueprint
Showbiz knucklehead Pete Davidson explains himself – again – in 'Bupkis'
View
Date:2025-04-15 08:20:06
Watching Pete Davidson's new comedy,–again– Bupkis, another title suggested itself: Adventures in Being a Knucklehead.
How else to describe a series where the very first joke involves Davidson's mom Amy, played by the always excellent Edie Falco, walking in on him while he's, um, pleasuring himself?
Or the scene where his agent, played by Chris O'Donnell, isn't sure Pete can be trusted to deliver a key stand-up gig sober, because he's getting high on nitrous gas in the office while they're talking?
Awkward moments like this are the backbone for a lot of the comedy in Bupkis, which streams on Peacock and features the Saturday Night Live alum playing a fictionalized version of himself, stumbling through situations like a grownup comedy star with the attention span – and drug habits – of an at-risk teenager.
But a funny thing happens on the way to jokes about hiring a sex worker for his dying grandfather and hanging out with a motor-mouthed hustler in Miami. We get a close-up look at Davidson's tortured life as a celebrity.
Facing a world that doesn't understand him
Before his mom walked in on him, Davidson started his online session by scrolling through seriously insulting headlines about himself ("The Rise of The Scumbro," an actual headline in Vanity Fair, was a particular standout).
In another sequence, a media outlet falsely reports his death, sending his mother into a panic attack. And the public's misunderstanding of his life leads to anger and self-destructive behavior, as he explains in an emotional therapy session.
"I get really f-----g mad at things I can't control," Davidson says. "People online are, like, Pete's a cokehead, Pete's on coke, because I move my jaw a lot when I get nervous. And I wasn't even on coke. ... Like, if you came up to me [and said] 'Yo, do you do coke?' I'd be, like, 'No.' But, like, if someone said 'Do you want to do a bump?' I'd be, like, 'Yeah.' "
So it's kind of like a drug-fueled, Gen Z version of Curb Your Enthusiasm set in Staten Island.
This fictionalized Pete Davidson lives in the basement of his mother's house, just like the real comic once did. And he also struggles with thoughts of suicide while the death of his father, a firefighter killed responding to the Sept. 11 attacks, still looms over the family.
But the show's real casting coup is getting Goodfellas alum Joe Pesci to play Davidson's grandfather – a no-nonsense Italian guy dying of cancer who is always ready with some tough love when his grandson needs it.
"People think I'm, like, a joke for some reason," Davidson tells him in one scene.
"They see you as a joke because you are a joke," Pesci answers. "You act like a f-----g joke. You run around like a kid and you're not a kid anymore. You're a man."
In other words, stop being a knucklehead.
Explaining himself through comedy
This isn't the first time Davidson has tried to tell his life story on a bigger canvas; he played a more heavily fictionalized version of himself in the 2020 film The King of Staten Island.
But, in his scenes with Pesci especially, Davidson presents his clearest attempt yet to explain himself to a world determined to write him off as a talentless slacker. He doesn't hold back on depicting the stuff that makes him look terrible – blowing off work on a film shoot because he can't handle the situation without getting high.
Still, Bupkis also reminds the viewer constantly that there's a human being at the center of all the paparazzi shots and tabloid stories – even if he's a guy with terrible impulse control, a mountainous drug tolerance and a talent for surrounding himself with even worse knuckleheads.
There's a boatload of other great cameos here – from Brad Garrett and Bobby Cannavale playing his relatives to inspired turns by Ray Romano, J.J. Abrams, Steve Buscemi, Kenan Thompson and more.
Sometimes, they're just comic relief – like when Sebastian Stan beats up Davidson in a coffee shop. But in other moments, they show off the twisted male role models and bizarre personal connections of a man-child celebrity coming to terms with his own strange life.
One of the series' most affecting episodes depicts Davidson as a kid, not long after the death of his father, attending the wedding of relatives and learning how adults pretend to have one set of values, but often live their lives in a different way. The episode title, "Do As I Say, Not As I Do," kinda says it all.
Thanks to the writers' strike, we won't get to see Davidson come full circle and return to host Saturday Night Live with his comedic sensibility front and center.
So fans will have to settle for Bupkis, which gathers all the contradictions of Davidson's world into one comic stew, showing that even he's not exactly sure how he got here – but the story isn't exactly what everyone expects.
veryGood! (7899)
Related
- Toyota to invest $922 million to build a new paint facility at its Kentucky complex
- Bengals RB Joe Mixon found not guilty of aggravated menacing during traffic dispute
- Kim Kardashian Says the Latest SKIMS Launch Is “Like a Boob Job in a Bra”
- Composer Bernstein’s children defend Bradley Cooper’s prosthetic nose after ‘Maestro’ is criticized
- Are Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp down? Meta says most issues resolved after outages
- Billy Dee Williams' new memoir is nearly here—preorder your copy today
- Residents ordered to evacuate the capital of Canada’s Northwest Territories as wildfires near
- 3 suspected spies for Russia arrested in the U.K.
- What do we know about the mysterious drones reported flying over New Jersey?
- Miley Cyrus to Share Personal Stories of Her Life Amid Release of New Single Used to Be Young
Ranking
- Apple iOS 18.2: What to know about top features, including Genmoji, AI updates
- South Dakota state senator resigns and agrees to repay $500,000 in pandemic aid
- Why The White Lotus’ Meghann Fahy Was “So Embarrassed” Meeting Taylor Swift
- US Army soldier accused of killing his wife in Alaska faces court hearing
- Federal hiring is about to get the Trump treatment
- Dear Bookseller: Why 'The Secret Keepers' is the best book for precocious kids
- The Gaza Strip gets its first cat cafe, a cozy refuge from life under blockade
- The risk-free money move most Americans are missing out on
Recommendation
Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie return for an 'Encore,' reminisce about 'The Simple Life'
NBA releases its schedule for the coming season, with an eye on player rest and travel
How 5th Circuit Court of Appeals mifepristone ruling pokes holes in wider FDA authority
Kellie Pickler Breaks Silence on Husband Kyle Jacobs' Death
Finally, good retirement news! Southwest pilots' plan is a bright spot, experts say
Material seized in police raid of Kansas newspaper should be returned, prosecutor says
Girl With No Job’s Claudia Oshry Reveals She’s “Obviously” Using Ozempic
Biden’s approval rating on the economy stagnates despite slowing inflation, AP-NORC poll shows