#‘Bupkis’ Review: Pete Davidson Plays Himself in an Uneven But Endearing Peacock Series

What is it about Pete Davidson?

That’s the question that comes up every time the tabloids report on his dating life, every time we hear about Lorne Michaels taking him on vacation or Jeff Bezos promising to shoot him into space. It sometimes seems even to extend to his roles — like his signature Saturday Night Live character Chad, a totally unremarkable dude who nevertheless attracts attention and adoration everywhere he goes.

It’s a question that might find its way to your lips again as you scan the eye-watering list of cameos for Davidson’s new Peacock dramedy Bupkis — everyone from Machine Gun Kelly (of course) to Ray Romano (why not) to Al Gore (what?). Heck, it’s more or less the premise of Bupkis, created by Davidson (alongside Judah Miller and David Sirus) and starring Davidson as a fictionalized version of himself. Based on the season’s eight uneven episodes, it’s not clear Davidson knows how to answer it either. But it’s occasionally fascinating to watch him try.

If you’re familiar with the basics of Davidson’s bio, much of Bupkis will sound familiar. There’s the Staten Island home he shares with his mother (Edie Falco), and the firefighter dad (Joshua Bitton) he lost in 9/11. Like Davidson, Pete (as I’ll call the fictionalized character) is a comedian and actor with a notoriously prolific love life; like the version of Davidson we got in his other semi-autobiographical work, The King of Staten Island, he spends most of his down time doing drugs with his friends in the basement. And like basically every iteration of the Pete Davidson type we’ve seen onscreen (including in Big Time Adolescence, helmed by Bupkis director Jason Orley) Pete tends toward fecklessness — though at 29, he seems increasingly aware that it isn’t as cute as it used to be.

But if most of Davidson’s earlier work has framed him as a relatable everyslacker, Bupkis tilts, tantalizingly, in the opposite direction. The dramedy is very much about Davidson’s own showbiz celebrity, which his avatar wears as uncomfortably as Davidson appears to. Sometimes it’s a minor inconvenience, like when a fan interrupts Pete’s family outing to ask for a selfie. Occasionally, it’s a perk he doesn’t seem to realize he’s enjoying; only someone as rich and famous as Pete could make it someone else’s job to coordinate the hiring of a sex worker (Lynn Koplitz) when he decides that what his dying grandfather, Joe (Joe Pesci), needs is to get laid.

Mostly, it looks like a profoundly alienating experience. “Every guy who has a family is fucking fantasizing about having your life,” an uncle (Bobby Cannavale) tells Pete. But this isn’t Entourage; we see little of this movie star enjoying his job or the glitzy parties and supermodel dates that come with it. What we do get are storylines about Pete sussing out which of his friends are ratting out his location to the paparazzi. Or one about Pete spending Christmas all alone on the Canadian set of a movie that sees his character getting killed off ten minutes in — and, in his loneliness, getting so drugged up that fantasy and reality begin to blur together in sequences that call to mind Shia LaBeouf’s Honey Boy.

Often, the experience of watching Bupkis feels akin to thumbing through someone’s diary. Not in the sense that it’s bursting with juicy secrets (you’ll get no Kardashian tea here), but in its shagginess. Ongoing storylines shift in and out of focus. So do moods and themes. Character arcs take shape only in retrospect, if at all — it isn’t until late in the season that it becomes apparent Pete’s journey is one not of growth but of deterioration into addiction and depression. Much of the series comes across as a first-draft effort, which is to say a jumble of ideas that probably could’ve used a firmer hand to pare away its excesses and dig deeper into its complications. It’s unfortunate for Bupkis that its flaws are most glaring in its premiere, which runs only a half-hour but meanders so aimlessly around its juvenile sex jokes that it makes King of Staten Island look taut by comparison.

Yet there’s also something endearing about its willingness to try stuff just for the heck of it. There’s an entire episode riffing on The Fast and the Furious series for seemingly no other reason than the guys making this show thought it’d be fun to zip around in sports cars to a Don Omar soundtrack, and another that casts Pete’s rehab stay in stark, dour black-and-white. Now and then, it finds an exposed nerve amid its goofy antics. A storyline about Pete’s burning desire to have a child is predictably played for laughs, when he discovers that merely babysitting an 8-year-old (Delaney Quinn) is more than he can handle. But when he asks, “Am I that crazy to think that I could take care of something and love something?” his voice is so sincere, it’s bound to make one’s heart break a little.

Bupkis is less convincing when it comes to the characters surrounding Pete. Though he’s surrounded by a fairly consistent inner circle — which include his sister Casey (Oona Roche), his assistant/bestie Evan (Philip Ettinger) and his on-off girlfriend Nikki (Chase Sui Wonders, Davidson’s Bodies Bodies Bodies costar and now girlfriend) — none are afforded nearly the same level of curiosity that Pete enjoys. Pesci steals scenes as Pete’s no-nonsense grandpa, but is nevertheless underutilized in a cancer storyline that often plays like an afterthought. Ditto Falco, whose only plots not revolving around Pete are about her resolving to get less of her life to revolve around Pete.

Then again, can you blame Davidson for being engrossed in the project of being Pete Davidson when everyone else seems taken by it too? In a brunch conversation that plays like an unexpected companion piece to Baby J, Pete and his pal John Mulaney (playing himself) trade notes on addiction, rehab and public opinion, and John remarks on how “fascinating” he finds Pete’s life. “I mean, I don’t know what it’s like to live it,” he concedes. “But goddamn, do we have fun watching it. It’s a good time.” We’ll probably never totally know what it’s like to be in Pete’s shoes, or Davidson’s for that matter. Though we come to know Pete’s scars intimately, his inner workings remain opaque perhaps even to himself. But in its raw, chaotic, occasionally disarming attempts to understand it, Bupkis makes it interesting to imagine all the same.