Bupkis (Peacock)

0:01 Voyage. Welcome to watch this tonight. I'm your host, Dan Bettimore. I'm a produced writer of film and television and now a podcast producer. And despite having every streaming service, I never know what to watch. So anytime I watch something good, I talk about it on the show. This way, you'll never have the same problem I do. I watched this tonight. There's always something good to watch. Let's get started today. In the show, we are talking about buck Kiss, the new Peacock series starring Pete Dudes and Edie Falco and Joe Pesci. So this is actually a change in programming.

0:50 I was supposed to have my interview with a really cool guest. This is why I don't tell you because I want to make sure it actually happens. We had to reschedule at the last minute. So it looks like that's still going to happen. When it happens, I will shout it from the rooftops. So we'll just keep that in the back burner. But I was able to pivot to bubb Kiss. Peacock was actually the only streaming service that I did not have, but now I do have it. Because my wife wanted to watch Real Housewives on there. So now we have Peacock. It's a very Judd Apatow esque show, which is probably not a surprise if you've seen The King of Satin Island with Pete Davidson. Obviously a lot of this will feel familiar if you've seen Pete Davidson stand up The X Factor, though, this whole thing is Joe Peshi. Joe Peschi is the reason to watch the show around Joe Peshi. There's similar ideas and themes that we've seen in Pete Davidson's stuff where it's autobiographical. He's trying to process the death of his father, who everybody tells him as a hero, but it sounds like it was basically just a regular guy and it was, you know, a flawed, normal person, and he's trying to sort of compute that in his head.

1:57 I feel like I remember it in stand up one of his dad's and telling him like about his dad doing cocaine, and and in the second episode of bubb Kiss. So this is I'm talking about the first and second episode. There's something I'm going to say here that's, you know, a spoiler, like you could totally it won't spoil it for you. In the second episode, we have Bobby Kindivali, who plays Pete's uncle, and Pete is trying to pee in the bathroom and because he doesn't have his dad, there's nobody to like tell him the right way to do it, and Bobby helps him and then he does quickly does a little cocaine and clearly Pete, David said, who's a little kid at the time, it's like a flashback sees him doing it, and Bobby got all He's like, do as I say, not as I do. And then there they go for a car ride.

2:40 He's singing Creed passionately in the car and it's it's just a really funny character. But the notion in general of you know, his dad died a hero. Everyone tells him your dad, Oh, he was the best, and after his death they talk about him as if it was this saintly leave it to beaver kind of character, and clearly he is not, nor was his friends, the people in his orbit. So you know, it's a it is a powerful thing to explore. Obviously, Pete has explored it in his stand up and his Jed Apatow film, so there's a sense of familiarity to this that we're just kind of like exploring it in a different way or more detail again, familiar themes from his stand up, in his movies, sexual humor, his relationship with his mom. And then you got Pesci right, and it's like, what is Peshi even doing in the show? First of all, when was the last time we've seen Peshi? So I'm gonna look it up real quick, because I don't I feel like we haven't seen Joe Pesci forever. Let's see. So Joe Pesci obviously was in The Irishman in twenty nineteen. Prior to that, he did a voice role in some sort of weird obscure animated film, presumably just for money. And then really, you got to go back to Love Ranch in twenty ten, which is a movie that I don't think many people saw. So if you really want to talk about, what's the movie that he was in that at least some people saw, you got to go all the way back to The Good Shepherd in two thousand and six, which he's barely in. So it's like, if you want to go back to a movie that he's in a lot and

4:12 a lot of people saw, you basically got to go back to ninety eight to leave the weapon. Four point being we haven't seen Joe Pesci a lot, right, We've basically seen him in The Irishman, and then before that pretty much nobody really saw him until you go back to ninety eight, So seeing him is a rarity. It's sort of a rare treat. And the role that he's playing in this, it's so interesting how the meta element of it, right, because he's Pete Davidson's grandfather and he tells Pete Davidson the pilot episode again not a spoiler, it's the essential idea of his character that he's dying and he wants to spend some time with Pete Davidson before he dies. In real life. Let's see how old is Joe Phi. Joe Pesci is eighty years old in real life. We were not going to get you know, this may be the last role that Joe Pesci plays that we see, or it maybe one of the last, but you know, time is running out with us getting to see Joe Peschi and it's almost like we are getting to spend time with Joe Peschi before he dies. Like that's the emotional weight that we bring to it in terms of cinematic baggage, right, And I have to say again, it reminds me so much of Harrison Ford and shrinking. Joe Pesci's eighty and he is the coolest guy in the room the whole show, no matter where he is. There's a part where someone tries to take a picture with Pete Davidson and Joe. She tells the guy to fuck off, and it's very satisfying. He's still intimidating, he's still cool.

5:34 He's also very charming. He can be vulnerable, he can kind of do it all again, very much like Harrison Ford to drinking, Like, these guys still have it, they still have that thing that made them so special and so memorable. And Joe Pesci's a really, really, really good actor. I think that it can be. We sort of took him for granted. I think that people took it as, oh, well, he's he has a certain stick that he's always doing, and that's not true if you look at the breadth of his work. He's done a lot of different kinds of characters. You know, most recently The Irishman, where he plays very different than he plays and you know, Good Fellows were Casino and in this he's so charming, he's so likable. It's just so fun to be around him. I'm just glad he did it, because again, it's like, that's the reason to watch the show is to see Peschi and to just hang out with Peshi. Like Peshi is our cinematic grandfather, and we're hanging out with him before God forbid, he dies. And I would say the other thing about the show, and this reminds me a lot of you know, what Apple was doing with sort of ted Lasso esque stuff. The part about Pete Davidson that I think is underrated and not really talked about that much, and I would argue also explains his success with women, which is something that's a big conversational topic right is he's very emotionally open. He's very he's sensitive, he is empathetic, and he's very honest in a way that is very Jed Appto esque, makes him appealing, makes him relatable. He's very honest about himself in ways that I think, again make him very easy to

7:08 empathize with. So this is a show where it's like, in between dick jokes, there's a lot of human emotional stuff going on that I think is effective. There's a part in the second episode where we've seen Pete and Bobby kind Of Alley when Pete was a kid. Now we see Pete as an adult with Bobby kind of Alley, and it's clear that Bobby kind Of Valley is just as much of a mess as he was back then as he is now. At Pete gives him this speech where he's like, look, you know, you always think you're going to have your life figured out in a couple of years. When when you're eighteen, you think when you're twenty one you'll have it figured out. When you're twenty five, you think when you're thirty you'll have it figured out, And then you get to that age and you still haven't figured out. But that's okay. You don't have to feel bad about that. And he's sort of it's very emotionally mature of him, and I think, again, that's that's the part of him that I think that you know, he kind of doesn't get a fair shake on, and it's the part that makes the show kind of warm and appealing. It's also very personal. At the end of the second episode, you see real photos of him as a little kid dancing at this wedding that we've seen an actor playing him do in the episode, so it's there's a little bit of a family album sense to it, which is consistent with a lot of Pieze stuff.

8:22 So I would say overall the show is good. That is familiar, it feels kind of safe, and I think that the X factor the reason to watch it is Peshi. You know, it's a it's a fun kind of comfort food watch. But the thing that makes it really I think important is Peshi because there's a real chance this will be the last thing that most people see Pshi in and he's still awesome. He's still fantastic in it, so it's a real pleasure to see him. I would say he's kind of my exhibit A for why I watch the show. But overall, I liked it. I'll probably watch more of it, and I think it's it's worth checking out if you have Peacock. That is a show for a day. As always, I want to thank you for listening. If you enjoy the show, please drop us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, and you can always reach out to me at dan ad voyagemedia dot com. Watch this tonight on Instagram Ben more Dan on Twitter, Watch This Night podcast on TikTok, or you can join our Facebook group Watch This Tonight on Facebook. Thanks for listening until next time. Bye bye,