Watching Pete Davidson’s new comedy, Bupkis, another title suggested itself: Adventures in Being a Knucklehead.

How else to describe a series where the very first joke involves Davidson’s mom Amy, played by the always excellent Edie Falco, walking in on him while he’s, um, pleasuring himself?

Or the scene where his agent, played by Chris O’Donnell, isn’t sure Pete can be trusted to deliver a key stand-up gig sober, because he’s getting high on nitrous gas in the office while they’re talking?

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Awkward moments like this are the backbone for a lot of the comedy in Bupkis, which streams on Peacock and features the Saturday Night Live alum playing a fictionalized version of himself, stumbling through situations like a grownup comedy star with the attention span – and drug habits – of an at-risk teenager.

But a funny thing happens on the way to jokes about hiring a sex worker for his dying grandfather and hanging out with a motor-mouthed hustler in Miami. We get a close-up look at Davidson’s tortured life as a celebrity.

Facing a world that doesn’t understand him

Before his mom walked in on him, Davidson started his online session by scrolling through seriously insulting headlines about himself (“The Rise of The Scumbro,” an actual headline in Vanity Fair, was a particular standout).

In another sequence, a media outlet falsely reports his death, sending his mother into a panic attack. And the public’s misunderstanding of his life leads to anger and self-destructive behavior, as he explains in an emotional therapy session.

“I get really f—–g mad at things I can’t control,” Davidson says. “People online are, like, Pete’s a cokehead, Pete’s on coke, because I move my jaw a lot when I get nervous. And I wasn’t even on coke. … Like, if you came up to me [and said] ‘Yo, do you do coke?’ I’d be, like, ‘No.’ But, like, if someone said ‘Do you want to do a bump?’ I’d be, like, ‘Yeah.’ “

So it’s kind of like a drug-fueled, Gen Z version of Curb Your Enthusiasm set in Staten Island.

This fictionalized Pete Davidson lives in the basement of his mother’s house, just like the real comic once did. And he also struggles with thoughts of suicide while the death of his father, a firefighter killed responding to the Sept. 11 attacks, still looms over the family.

But the show’s real casting coup is getting Goodfellas alum Joe Pesci to play Davidson’s grandfather – a no-nonsense Italian guy dying of cancer who is always ready with some tough love when his grandson needs it.

“People think I’m, like, a joke for some reason,” Davidson tells him in one scene.

“They see you as a joke because you are a joke,” Pesci answers. “You act like a f—–g joke. You run around like a kid and you’re not a kid any