Overcompensating is Benito Skinner’s toughest impression yet — a straight guy

When the world shut down in 2020, Benito Skinner’s comedy career opened up like never before. Operating under the name Benny Drama, Skinner was one of a wave of comedians that turned the millions of people doomscrolling through the pandemic into a ready-made audience. His madcap impersonations of celebrities like Kris Jenner and Drew Barrymore earned him a legion of fans and, in what now feels like a fever dream, a call-up by the Biden administration to encourage Americans to get the COVID vaccine.

No front-facing comedian hits record with the dream of working for the White House, though. The tidal hose of impressions, skits, and chatter existed online with the hope of breaking out of phone screens and securing an opportunity like Overcompensating, Skinner’s new autobiographical sitcom that launched today, May 15, on Amazon Prime Video. The eight-episode, A24-produced show is an often hilarious, but also charmingly sentimental, story of a closeted gay guy trying to keep his sexuality a secret while embedding himself into life at the fictional Yates University. “Hey, what’s up everybody. I’m Benny, I love pussy,” he says unconvincingly as a way of introduction. If that doesn’t sway the students of his hetero-credentials then maybe strapping on a helmet will. Benny reasons that the college football team uniform can act as padded camouflage in his mission to pass as straight.

Skinner himself was a football player in Boise, Idaho, and drew inspiration for the series from his own efforts at keeping his sexuality under wraps as a teenager. Admittedly, there is a certain suspension of disbelief required in buying 31-year-old Skinner as a college freshman. While the premise doesn’t reach PEN15 levels of adults-playing-kids, it is amusing that Daniel Gray Longino, who worked on Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle’s comedy, also directs half of this first season.

Taking its cues from millennial movies such as American Pie and Mean Girls, Overcompensating feels like a necessary queering of a genre that often used gay people as a punchline. All of the college tropes are here: Fake IDs, frat parties, hazing, etc., but Overcompensating also pulls from more modern and enlightened series such as Heartstopper or The Sex Lives of College Girls in its breezy and inclusive depiction of campus life.

Anyone coming into Overcompensating expecting more of the unhinged comedy that made Skinner famous online may be a little disappointed to find him playing it straight in more ways than one. The Benny in the show is so preoccupied with keeping his big secret that there isn’t much space for him to be funny; he’s wholesome and homecoming-king handsome, bearing a striking resemblance to a young David Byrne. He becomes a heartthrob on campus, something that only worsens his efforts to fly under the radar. He does let it rip in one standout scene in episode two, though, showcasing his rap skills with a full-throated rendition of Nicki Minaj’s “Super Bass” in front of a group of nonplussed bros.

Where Benny is repressed, those around him are anything but. He is joined on campus by his sister, and fellow student, Grace (played by Skinners Ride podcast co-host Mary Beth Barone), as well as her boyfriend Peter (The White Lotus’s Adam DiMarco). Peter acts as a vessel for the most cringe-worthy straight male behavior with his chest-thumping determination to get his buddy “Bento” laid as quickly as possible. Overcompensating is sharp in its depiction of masculinity being inherently performative, regardless of the ways it’s being utilized.

There is a love interest for Benny: Miles, a British film bro whose presence is fleeting. But the true romance of Overcompensating is a platonic one. Wally Baram, a writer and stand-up with no previous acting experience, plays Carmen, who first tries to hook up with Benny (it doesn’t go well) and later bonds with him over their favorite video game, Slut Slayer: Berlin. The bond between a gay teen and his girlfriend is captured on both sides as Benny finds comfort in being himself at last and Carmen enjoys the company of a man she knows isn’t going to make any sudden moves. In true rom-com style, conflict ensues when Benny lies to Carmen and the couple must work their way back to one another.

Outside of the core cast, Overcompensating is stuffed with cameos and guest stars. Benny’s parents are played by TV royalty Kyle MacLachlan and Connie Britton, while comedians Caleb Hearon and Las Culturistas duo Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers appearing on screen feels a bit like an Avengers for fans of a certain type of podcast. Elsewhere, Megan Fox goes from a sexy poster on a locker room wall to giving Benny a pep talk IRL. Charli xcx goes the other way and plays a two-dimensional diva version of herself in an episode set around one of her concerts.

Overcompensating has an interesting relationship with music, something Charli contributed to as the show’s executive music producer. Though the show is set in the present day (the characters post on Instagram Stories and go to the Brat tour), much of the music harks back well over a decade. Each episode is named after a different mid-2000s song (“Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites”, “Crown on the Ground”), and in one memorable scene Barone’s Grace, an uptight ice queen, lets loose with a karaoke performance of My Chemical Romance’s 2006 hit “Welcome to the Black Parade.”

Perhaps this is Skinner’s nod to the comforts he found during his own teenage years in a show that underlines the difficulties he also faced around that time. If college is a time when people get to define themselves in a new environment, Benny’s determination to be anything else but his true self is something of a tragedy. Overcompensating is his chance to revisit the past and take some ownership back, even if his comedy loses some of its sharpness.