‘Overcompensating’ overview: Benito Skinner’s faculty comedy is a raunchy, considerate chortle riot

School is commonly touted because the time when you possibly can determine “who you really are.” However what occurs once you spend that point mendacity — to your self, to your loved ones, to your folks?

That is the crux of Prime Video and A24’s Overcompensating, a superb faculty comedy the place everyone seems to be mendacity or overdoing it so as to slot in.

What’s Overcompensating about?

Take Benny, performed by sequence creator and web comic Benito Skinner. As a highschool soccer star and homecoming king, Benny’s pre-college years had been outlined by all-American recognition. However when he arrives at Yates College, he is realizing that he is homosexual — and that he is not fairly able to be open about that a part of himself but. As an alternative, he is taken beneath the wing of his sister Grace’s (Mary Beth Barone) bro-y boyfriend Peter (Adam DiMarco), who ushers him right into a fratty secret society whose members dwell and die by “no homo.”

Is Benny doomed to stay within the field of heteronormative frat boy? Or will he reap the benefits of faculty so as to determine himself out?

Satirically, it is an try to keep up his facade of straightness that results in the potential for reinvention. Peter stresses that Benny has to have intercourse on the primary night time of faculty, in any other case he is DOA socially. Elsewhere on campus, shy outsider Carmen (Wally Baram) is feeling the strain too, particularly after her highschool boyfriend broke issues off. She and Benny discover one another, and whereas their try at hooking up is disastrous to say the least, it is the beginning of a friendship the place they’ll each be their genuine selves — even when they typically current inauthentic fronts to the remainder of Yates.

Overcompensating is a hilarious and poignant story of faculty coming-of-age.

Benito Skinner and Wally Baram in “Overcompensating.”
Credit score: Sabrina Lantos / Prime

There’s at all times an additional layer of scrutiny on a undertaking when it is led by a content material creator making the bounce from web areas to extra “traditional” media like TV. How do the talents they’ve honed on the web translate to different initiatives?

With Skinner and Overcompensating, that translation feels pretty seamless. In case you’re acquainted with Skinner’s on-line comedy sketches the place he completely impersonates popular culture figures or comes up with hyper-specific characters, it’s going to come as no shock that Overcompensating is fun riot. Popular culture zingers abound (naturally), as do heightened send-ups of campus life and frat tradition. Whereas not the entire gags are notably new — like a movie class filled with males saying The Godfather is their favourite film — it is the execution, typically centered on Benny’s social anxieties about becoming in, that retains Overcompensating feeling recent and humorous.

Skinner has proven again and again that he can ship hysterical narratives in just some minutes, however with a half-hour comedy, he additionally proves he can nail longer-form laughs and character work. Look no additional than the connection between Benny and Carmen, which blossoms right into a candy, grounded friendship.

A larger runtime additionally affords up extra probabilities for drama. Benny and Carmen could also be quick buddies, however the social pressures of faculty typically get to them and immediate them (principally Benny) to harm or lie to 1 one other. Every betrayal, even when it is one thing seemingly as small as mendacity about night plans, may have you screaming at your display. The identical goes for the numerous, many social fake pas that occur over the course of the sequence. The second-hand embarrassment is off the charts — actually because we have all been in related conditions.

All these embarrassing blunders boil down to 1 fact: Benny, Carmen, and albeit everybody round them are messes. They’re flawed, egocentric younger adults coming into their very own, making an attempt to mannequin themselves on blueprints that they suppose are proper, however that actually do them no favors. That is a core a part of the school expertise. For each second of self-discovery, there are errors. Overcompensating relishes in these errors, permitting all its characters to screw up large time and dwell with the results — typically heartbreaking, typically hilarious, however at all times engrossing.

Overcompensating‘s forged is downright phenomenal.

Kyle MacLachlan, Benito Skinner, and Connie Britton in “Overcompensating.”
Credit score: Courtesy of Prime

Guiding us by way of the ups and downs of faculty life are Skinner, Baram, and the remainder of Overcompensating‘s terrific ensemble. Skinner and Baram’s chemistry is splendidly pure, and it is thrilling to observe Skinner play a degree of vulnerability you do not often see in his sketches. Baram is the right mix of awkward and charming, and he or she additionally gracefully shoulders the problem of Carmen’s sadder household backstory. Components of that backstory might flip to cliché, however Baram handles them with simply the correct quantity of coronary heart to make them land.

They’re joined by DiMarco and Barone as catastrophe couple Peter and Grace. Barone, a frequent collaborator of Skinner’s, delivers deadpan perfection as Grace, whereas nonetheless making clear the emotional turmoil that lurks beneath the floor. She’s repressed herself simply as a lot as Benny, tamping down her buddies and pursuits so as to stick with Peter. She’s a cautionary story for her brother, at the same time as she delivers one sniping remark after one other. In the meantime, DiMarco brings sleaze galore to Peter, whose fratty nastiness covers up anxieties about class and psychological well being. See, everybody in Overcompensating is hiding one thing — though Peter’s flip from frat star to presumably redeemable man is among the many present’s most abrupt.

The core forged will get help from a sprawling ensemble, from Rish Shah as Benny’s heartthrob crush Miles to Holmes as Carmen’s free cannon roommate Hailee. Casting is especially savvy throughout the board, mixing TV legends like Kyle MacLachlan and Connie Britton with present It Women like Kaia Gerber and Charli XCX, enjoying herself in an unhinged, unforgettable cameo. However that is simply the beginning of Overcompensating‘s appreciable slate of visitor stars, all of whom are recreation to play within the typically surreal world of Yates.

Overcompensating could emphasize its characters’ struggles with identification, however that is not a battle the present itself shares. Raunchy but considerate, that is an instantly assured coming-of-age story bursting with laughs and comedic stars on the rise. Enroll early at Yates and expertise it for your self.

Overcompensating is now streaming on Prime Video.