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When Is Overcompensating?
As far as I can tell, Benito Skinner’s college comedy exists in a bubble of stretched time.
That’s how it feels to watch A24’s Amazon Prime Video college comedy Overcompensating, a charming enough and pretty well-written show that also seems to exist in a bubble of warped space and time, simultaneously 2015 and 2025 and everywhere between all at once. It’s easy to understand why the show is like this: Overcompensating stars and is built around the persona of comedian Benito Skinner, age 31, who grew up as a closeted football star in Idaho and has talked to GQ about arriving in college and “getting drunk at parties in straight boys’ houses and finding himself in fratty bathrooms with posters of aughts-era bombshells like Megan Fox and Kate Upton on the walls.” The show ports Skinner’s history into that of his character, also named Benny, also from Idaho, also posturing as obsessed with Megan Fox — his character has a pin-up poster of her in his dorm room and in fantasy sequences she talks to him and offers advice. Overcompensating understands that Benny exists in a universe where other queer guys have been able to come out without major complications ( Theater Camp ’s Owen Thiele plays a sort of fairy godfather to him), but also sympathizes with how he would have trouble breaking out of the tough-guy image he’s curated.
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