Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Pete Davidson: Turbo Fonzarelli’ On Netflix, Stuck Between His Mom And His Stalker

Pete Davidson may have closed out his 2023 by cancelling live dates on his stand-up tour, but before that, he managed to film his third solo comedy special and second for Netflix, where he jokes about turning 30, trying to find someone to love his widowed mom while also avoiding his insane stalker. This may not be the hot gossip you came here expecting to hear, but this is what he’s dishing about.

PETE DAVIDSON: TURBO FONZARELLI: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Shot in black-and-white, Pete Davidson took the stage a week after turning 30 and a month after returning to 30 Rock to host Saturday Night Live for the first time since leaving that show in May 2022.

This may be Davidson’s second solo hour for Netflix, following his 2020 Alive From New York, but he also more recently hosted the 2022 showcase, Pete Davidson Presents: The Best Friends, filmed at the Netflix Is A Joke: The Festival.

What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: Davidson has been touring off and on with John Mulaney, and although they present themselves quite differently onstage and in front of the cameras, hearing them deal with their personal tabloid-fodder lives, and what they choose to say or not say about it, makes them a compelling comparison.

Memorable Jokes: Of course, hearing Davidson open his set by joking about having to quit “hard drugs” and revealing he’d spent the better part of the previous three years taking ketamine might stop you in your tracks to think of Matthew Perry. But not enough to leave a lingering impression upon you as much as Davidson’s bits about how his mother hasn’t had sex since Pete’s firefighter died on Sept. 11, 2001, where he compares her 55-year-old sexual organs to a refurbished iPhone or a classic car with low mileage.

Davidson also makes fun of himself for thinking he might have been gay as a pre-pubescent boy simply for worshipping Leonardo DiCaprio, which leads into graphic bits both then (at age 10 hearing his mom describe gay sexual acts) and now (imagining DiCaprio “slowly morphing into Jack Nicholson”).

He quips that he’s an unlikely celebrity to pick for a Make-A-Wish kid, but that he took that gig anyhow because he needed some good press after driving his car into a home: “In my defense, that house cut me off.”

And then there’s the curious case of Davidson’s stalker, which he describes in excruciating details involving not just the woman who hounded him, but also his mom’s misguided attempts to help, his childhood friend-turned-cop who intervened, and what happened when he tried to take his stalker to court, and where she is now. Hopefully not stalking Matt Rife. “If you become a Matt Rife fan, I’ll f—ing kill myself, I swear to God.” 

Our Take: Davidson adds “a couple of legal disclaimers” which sound less like legalities and more like shrewd self-awareness of how the media treats comedians in the wake of that whole Hasan Minhaj “scandal,” clarifying what his stalker actually gave him as a present one time, disavowing a part he added about Jack Harlow, saying “I just made that up for hilarity,” and then adding a third qualifier, because comedy!

But when he claims also, “I never win in life,” that sounds made up to anyone who follows his dating history, even though we know he sincerely does mislead himself into believing this about himself.

Which ultimately separates Davidson’s material about participating in the Make-A-Wish program with similar jokes released to Netflix a couple of weeks ago by Ricky Gervais. While Gervais comes across as a cynical atheist a-hole who doesn’t care about dying kids, Davidson makes himself the butt of the joke right from the start. “Believe it or not, it’a nor a lot of people’s dying wish to meet me,” Davidson jokes, adding that more people wish him dead instead.

Which is funny, but also sad.

Davidson at one point wonders if he could find a gimmick as cool as Dave Chappelle’s slapping the microphone onto his thigh to punctuate a punchline. Like Chappelle, Davidson does seem to have his own custom monogram/logo P over D on the chest of his jacket, so that’s a start.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Any chance to try to understand Pete Davidson a bit better is an opportunity worth taking, especially if you’re the type to absorb all of the tabloid fodder about him.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat. He also podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.