Comedian Pete Davidson, currently the youngest cast member on Saturday Night Live (SNL), brought his lauded unfiltered comedic style to UCR on Thursday, May 25 at HUB 302 for ASPB’s “The Last Laugh with Pete Davidson” event. Known for incorporating personal topics such as marijuana, sex and drugs into his routine, Davidson didn’t disappoint despite suffering from a bad case of allergies from dog hair on stage, which he even took upon as an opportunity for dog jokes.
The crowd was granted an unexpected surprise, for Davidson brought two unannounced comedian friends to open for him: Heavvy, a stand up comedian and rising Instagram foodie, and Ryan Dalton from Comedy Central’s “Live at Gotham.”
Officially initiating the night full of laughs was Heavvy, who was wearing a “Step Brothers” shirt and, upon stepping on the stage, instantly complained about how “driving up the 10 was a pain in the ass.” He gave a fueled rant about the vileness of putting raisins, which are too often mistaken for chocolate chips, in muffins, similar to the disappointing inclusion of Three Musketeers in chocolate value packs. Partway through his performance, he had to open up his notebook for ideas, uttering, “I smoked so much weed I have to look at my notes for a 10-minute set.”
Maintaining the laughs, Dalton began by recognizing UCR as a metaphor for the college experience; he jested that the people who designed the school must have put up many random buildings to mess people up when getting from “Point A to Point B, just like your education: It’s not so easy getting from Point A to Point B. Some of you major in mathematics, others in gym.” He then reflected on his relationship with his grandfather, who recently passed away at age 103 and whom he humorously claimed told him to stop calling whenever he checked in to see how he was doing. “At least if you live up to 103, no one will ask how it happened,” he joked.
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The moment everyone was waiting for finally arrived with Pete Davidson strolling to the center of the stage wearing a Spring Splash shirt and matching cap. Immediately, he noticed a few photographers squirming around the front of the stage to snap pictures of him, exclaiming, “Look at these ninja photographers, thinking they look all stealthy. Is this for your paper? What’s it called? ‘Two fucking hours away from Los Angeles?’”
Throughout the event, he had to refer to his phone for his notes because, as he revealed, “I just did a special so there’s no new stuff. It’s not like being a singer where you don’t have to worry about that.” Therefore, a majority of his set consisted of impromptu tangents built off of random, one-line comments about drugs, TV shows and old people, such as when, completely out of nowhere, he asked the crowd, “So, who likes mommy porn?” He followed this up by differentiating between two kinds of so-called “mommy porn”: “The kind where you fuck your friend’s mom … and then there’s the kind where you fuck your own mom.”
I gave up on watching that show because it’s seven seasons in and no one’s fucked a zombie yet. Unrealistic.
He also expressed his frustration with the TV show, “The Walking Dead,” sharing, “I gave up on watching that show because it’s seven seasons in and no one’s fucked a zombie yet. Unrealistic.” When an audience member told him that their reason for not watching the show anymore was that “too many people died,” Davidson replied with perhaps his most controversial statement of the night, which was, “It’s just like an anime film, where everyone gets raped.”
He also underwent an allergic reaction to dog hair that was on the stage throughout the entire hour, muttering, “Fucking dogs … I’m allergic to them but they’re so fucking cute.” Dalton even had to return to the stage to offer him a box of tissues. When Davidson noticed that the tissue box was “Frozen”-themed, he expressed his distaste for the movie even though he admitted to never having watched the whole thing. He ridiculed the scene where the two sisters, Anna and Elsa, were talking to each other from opposite sides of the bedroom door, claiming how, if he were in that scene, he would have said, “Stop being a cunt to your sister and open the fucking door!”
For the last 10 minutes of his performance, Davidson asked if the lights could be turned on so that he could conduct a Q-and-A session. Before he did so, however, he couldn’t close his set without talking about his dad, who died in service during the September 11 attacks and who he recurringly brings up in his performances. He shared how he just recently discovered his father was a cokehead and how it comforts him to think that his last words were, “Let’s fucking go!” as though he were coked out before running up the staircase of the Marriott World Trade Center.
When the lights turned on, the Q-and-A session began. Many of the questions were SNL-related, asking him about his co-workers and the guest appearances. Especially with the female audience members, affection was expressed toward him, and when one female gushed how her friend is in love with him, he modestly replied, “I’m sorry.” Another female audience member asked him to say hello to her friend, Kayley Fagan, on video, to which he looked into the phone camera and said, “Hey Kayley Fagan, go fuck yourself.” Then he provided a more decent message and said, “Hey Kayley Fagan, you’re making your friend embarrass herself.” The final question was, “What is the best pick-up line?” to which he responded, “Pete Davidson,” and left the stage.
What stood out about Davidson’s presence was his millennial-style comedy that many students could relate to (he is the first SNL cast member to have been born in the 1990s). First-year biology major Summaya Khugyani expressed, “I’m a huge fan of SNL in general, but what I like about Pete Davidson is how he’s genuine, young and relatable.” Others admired him for his bold demeanor, such as first-year neuroscience major Dulce Hartwig, who enjoyed his performance because he was “really genuine and didn’t hold back. I think he noticed when the crowd didn’t like something and he would hold back a little out of respect. But overall, he was not that apologetic.”
