Benito Skinner, whose historical past is basically in bite-sized web comedy, has damaged out into old-school media, making a standard-issue, eight-episode sitcom, “Overcompensating,” premiering Thursday on Prime Video. Skinner performs Benny, a closeted school freshman, and that his character is a late-blooming harmless from Idaho provides the collection an air of old style modesty — regardless of the truth that characters are frequently speaking about intercourse and typically having it. The values it espouses are friendship, honesty, loyalty, kindness, being true to your self and so to others — values its heroes will battle to uphold in a world of “bruhs” and “bitches” and acquired concepts about what issues.
That Benny is homosexual — nobody within the present is aware of, and he isn’t precisely positive himself — is signaled early on with just a few vital glances and gulps, as he arrives within the wider world of school beneath the burden of parental expectations. (You recognize earlier than Benny does that he’s not lower out to be a enterprise main.) Already at fictional Yates College is his sister, Grace (Mary Beth Barone, Skinner’s podcasting associate on “Ride with Benito Skinner and Mary Beth Barone”), who is just not pleased to have her highschool hero brother invading her ivy-covered house; her boyfriend, Pete (Adam DiMarco), is in truth a enterprise main, which endears him to Benny’s father (Kyle MacLachlan), however he’s not as large a person on campus as he imagines.
At orientation, Benny meets Carmen (Wally Baram), a candy common lady from New Jersey, whose highschool boyfriend has been posting photos from his new life. Below strain to grow to be new individuals in school — which is to say, new individuals like different individuals — they try to hook up, and a complicated, shut relationship begins. She’s marginally extra refined, or maybe simply much less conflicted than he’s, however each are babes within the woods and a temperamentally matched set.
Although it’s mined for comedy, there’s something tragic on this denial — tragic for the character, and for a tradition through which such deception and self-deception continues to be felt mandatory — and one feels for Benny in his confusion. (It took Skinner, now 31, till his senior 12 months at Georgetown College to come back out, although one hopes the schedule can be considerably accelerated for the collection; the viewer might grow to be impatient.)
Kyle MacLachlan, left, and Connie Britton play Benny’s dad and mom in “Overcompensating.”
(Courtesy of Prime Video)
Skinner, who has had just a few straight appearing roles alongside his antic web movies, through which he may seem as a Kardashian or the forged of “Queer Eye,” is charming as his bottled-up, crazy-making youthful self. Baram, a humorist who wrote for “Shrinking” and “What We Do in the Shadows,” was promoted into the forged out of the “Overcompensating” writers room and demonstrates spectacular vary and depth in her first appearing function. As Grace, Barone, who maintains a stand-up profession, begins primarily as a cliche, straightforward to dismiss, however creates a personality you are taking extra critically as she begins to take herself extra critically; it’s maybe the present’s most transferring efficiency — even poignant, although that’s probably a phrase each Grace and Barone would reject — from an sudden quarter. Then once more, virtually all of those individuals — the principle characters and minor — are needier than they’d wish to let on.
The arc of the collection is concerned primarily with their sorting and resorting themselves into {couples}, nevertheless briefly, as they navigate numerous youth rituals and rites of passage, like beer pong and getting faux IDs. A great deal of the season issues a ridiculous secret society referred to as Flesh & Gold, which Benny and Carmen have, for unclear causes, been invited to hitch and appear all too wanting to pledge — one would suppose membership extra a humiliation than a privilege. However the present will get some mileage out of it, together with a visitor spot by James Van Der Beek, Dawson himself, as a dissolute older member.
Skinner is already sufficient of a cultural personage to have tempted Jennifer Aniston into collaborating in a prank video; right here his cultural mojo is signaled by the presence of Charli XCX (additionally the music supervisor) in a humorous prolonged cameo as herself, which can excite youthful viewers, because the presence of MacLachlan and Connie Britton as Benny’s dad and mom might impress older. Different well-known faces briefly seen embody Andrea Martin as the college’s dean, Didi Conn as Grace’s “adopt-a-grandmother,” Megan Fox as a speaking Megan Fox poster, Bowen Yang, Matt Rogers and Lukas Gage because the boy who received away earlier than Benny knew what he was on the lookout for. Rish Shah performs Miles, a good-looking classmate with whom Benny connects, and one of many collection’ extra grounded individuals. Barely recognizable from “Welcome to Flatch” is Holmes as Carmen’s roommate Hailee, a rococo ice cream sundae of an individual, speaking a mile a minute, candy and dim; as on “Flatch,” she is kind of fantastic.
Some crises, particularly later within the season, can really feel a bit manufactured so as to maintain the balls within the air, dramatically talking — to maintain these individuals from settling down into a cushty relationship. (The season ends on a be aware of irresolution.) How this may play out throughout 4 seasons — assuming the purpose is to see Benny and Carmen all over school — is a good level, however Skinner is a fan of “Gossip Girl,” through which betrayals and realignments have been simply weekly enterprise, so, you already know, he may discover a method. All in all, it’s a pleasant place to go to, energetic and good-natured, with numerous humorous enterprise across the edges, even because it makes one glad to have put one’s personal school days prior to now.
