Pete Davidson has BDE, but it’s Bupkis to him

The comedian is more famous for his romances with Ariana Grande and Kim Kardashian, but in his new show explores a past tragedy.

Simon Rex as Ice Pop, Pete Davidson as himself in Bupkis. Picture: Heidi Gutman/Peacock

I need to start with both a content warning and an apology. This is a story about Pete Davidson.

Pete Davidson, for those unfamiliar, is back and off the leash. Creatively and – unusually for the world’s most eligible, iron-deficient looking bachelor – romantically.

A mashup of charming schoolboy and ditzy starlet, he is more famous for his personal life than his professional achievements. And on the latter he has many.

Davidson is a former Saturday Night Live cast member and was just 20 when he joined the ensemble. At the time it made him one of the youngest regulars on the sketch comedy series since it debuted almost 50 years ago. He quit SNL to much speculation, but, as we know from TMZ and Twitter, relationships are his strongest asset. This new project, which he co-created and co-wrote, is led by SNL legend Lorne Michaels.

Davidson at the 2023 Met Gala.

Davidson’s personal life turned him into a star, an unlikely sex symbol and cultural pillar of the 2020s. He was the inspiration for the phrase “Big D..k Energy”, or the more sanitised “BDE”, a concept that broke the internet around the time his relationship with singer Ariana Grande made headlines. BDE has been described by online commentators as the embodiment of being confident but also embracing vulnerability.

The following tweet by former Twitter user @babyvietcong in 2018 went viral and spawned a plethora of thinkpieces about the star and the BDE movement: “Pete Davidson is 6’3 with dark circles, exudes big d..k energy, looks evil but ­apparently is an angel, and loves his girl publicly – the only thing wrong with him is that he’s a Scorpio but anyway … I’d marry him within a month, too.”

Davidson and Grande were engaged within months of dating but the wedding never happened. Davidson has since been linked to Kim Kardashian and model and activist Emily Ratajkowski, both of whom he was spotted talking to at this week’s Met Gala event in New York. The 29-year-old also lived with his mother, Amy, until 2021.

Now to the aforementioned warning and apology: the first scene in Davidson’s new TV show Bupkis involves the star using virtual reality while he is masturbating, in the process ­accidentally involving his mother – played by Edie Falco.

Amy Davidson is more terrifying than Carmela Soprano. “Why can’t he just date a nice, normal, average girl … Not these starlets who do yoga,” she laments.

The series is a blend of Seinfeld and Entourage. It’s a show about nothing – the title gives it away – “bupkis” is Yiddish for “absolutely nothing” – but also everything. Every one of the 24-minute episodes opens with the same disclaimer: “This program is inspired in part by real people and events but it’s mostly bupkis.”

The series is a heightened, semi-autobiographical story about Davidson’s life, in which he plays himself. Actors play real characters from his childhood and beyond. He experimented with this type of genre previously when he wrote and starred in 2020 film The King of Staten Island, which he said had “75 per cent similarities to his real life”.

Bupkis is not prestige TV and is gritty and goofy. Much like its star, it’s often eye-roll-inducing and heartwarming. It’s nice to see Davidson transition out of the BDE era and into main character energy.

Joe Pesci plays ­Davidson’s dying grandfather. Picture: Heidi Gutman/Peacock

The strength in the show is in its casting. Joe Pesci plays ­Davidson’s dying grandfather and Everybody Loves Raymond star Brad Garrett is his vile uncle. Every one of Pesci’s scenes is electric and while his schtick is classic of his characters, the shackles of good taste and big ­studio scripts are off. His foul-mouthed tirades are actually life ­lesson tutorials for Davidson and may find a more receptive audience on TikTok than TV. Time will tell.

There is a cameo by Jon Stewart, who advises Davidson against running to become the president at an Al Gore climate summit. Steve Buscemi as a stressed priest and Bobby Cannavale as his ageing uncle with the catchphrase “Do as a I say not as I do” are highlights.

Davidson’s sense of humour permeates each of the eight episodes. It is self-deprecating, dark and politically-incorrect. But the more dramatic aspects also work extremely well due to his willingness to be open and vulnerable about his ongoing mental health battles.

Davidson is a product of his Millennial, post-9/11 generation; he was severely impacted by the death of his firefighter father, who was killed attending the scene of the attacks on the World Trade Centre.

One of the scenes in Bupkis featuring a young Davidson looking out the car window, confused by the smouldering rubble in Manhattan, is haunting.

The only other show to capture the impact of the terrorist attacks on young Americans in the same way is HBO’s ­Euphoria. (The character Ru, played by Emmy-winner Zendaya, was born on 9/11 and her mother spends sleepless nights in the newborn baby bubble nursing and watching the carnage unfold on television.)

On Jon Bernthal’s Real Ones podcast last year, Davidson opened up about being treated for PTSD after learning at age 8 while watching television that his father had died.

“(My mum) didn’t tell me what was going on for like three days. She kept telling me dad’s at work, I had no idea,” he said. “My mum’s like, ‘You’re just grounded, you’re not allowed to watch TV’. I was like, ‘What? I didn’t do anything’. And then one night I turn on the TV and I saw my dad on TV. They’re like, ‘These are all the firemen who are dead’,” he said.

We all know where we were when the Twin Towers came down, but what about those who were too young to comprehend a time when the world changed forever? Some, like ­Davidson, are choosing to express themselves through art such as this. Yes, while it’s sometimes puerile and mostly vulgar, Bupkis is an expression of the under-30 version of punk.

Bupkis is streaming now on Binge.