Editor’s Note: In the event that you find yourself endlessly scrolling through a gauntlet of streaming services for something to watch, and you come across a comedy special you may not be familiar with, chances are the first question you ask yourself, as you contemplate your next move will be something to the effect of ‘Is this something worth an hour that I can’t get back?’ — and we are here to help you shuffle through the latest and greatest comedy releases to make sure that hour and change is well spent. Welcome to The ReVue Stage. Here in this little corner carved out in Vanyaland’s comedy coverage, we have you covered when it comes to dishing out the good word on everything from new specials and albums, to books and even recaps of live shows. It’s all killer no filler around these parts, comrade. So kick back and let us help you figure out your next dose of comedic relief.
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For every reason Pete Davidson has been in the news for in recent years, he could’ve made his sophomore full-length Netflix special a venerable “who’s who” tell-all of salacious dirty laundry and gloating about his elbow-rubbing with pop culture royalty. But lucky for us — and good on him — he didn’t.
Instead, the historically embattled Staten Island native used Turbo Fonzarelli, which debuted on January 9, to introduce us to a less intense and more silly version of his comedic approach. The black and white delivery offers a cozier feel than that of his dimly lit 2019 special Alive from New York, so the feeling was immediately different before he even started in on his latest offering. With a plethora of stories focusing on a range of topics, largely that of his mother, her naivety and her friend introduced to us as “Female Terri,” Davidson weaves together a strong tapestry of reflections and thoughts that become increasingly more relatable, or at the very least more understandable, as the hour progresses.
Even as he dedicates a good chunk of the first half of the show to something as cringe-inducing as his mother’s vacant sex life, which in turn suggests a comically reluctant, or rather tongue-in-cheek Oedipus complex in the name of being a good son, Davidson remains as unfiltered and flippant as ever — but it sure does feel like he’s approaching things with a bit of a lighter gaze these days.
His constant injection of “sorry” at the end of his more gallows-leaning humor still shows a slight flinch, if you will, but also a maturity in the direction of “maybe that was unnecessary.” All the while, he also doubles down on punchlines and often shines the spotlight on his own cringeworthy moments, like his experience of attending Aretha Franklin’s funeral while high on Ketamine. His realizations of not being able to use hard drugs anymore add even more weight to the evident maturity in both his personal and professional lives, but even those reflections are spun out with a glow that we haven’t seen from him in a long time, if ever.
There are still naturally dark portions of the hour, like his experience with a relentless stalker who eventually wound up in his mother’s living room posing as one of his “friends” while he was out of the country, but he approaches it with such a potent comedic flair that it almost feels like he simply shrugs it off as he sticks the landing at the end of the tale.
The intense nature of that story works as the bridge to the closing bits of the hour, as Davidson recounts the process of buying his house and subsequently exhausting his real estate agent, both with his searching and subsequent antics, and dealing with the technological deficiencies of his mother and her fake Twitter handle.
The world of Pete Davidson is still as wild as ever. Maybe not as high profile as it was before, but still speckled with a level of celebrity-powered chaos that is just less worrisome now. Whatever chapter of his life this slate of material represents, it’s refreshing, and even triumphant to see Davidson in a better head space than before. We can only hope it carries into the next part of his comedic journey.