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 faculty freshman, and that his character is a late-blooming harmless from Idaho offers the collection an air of old school modesty — despite the truth that characters are regularly 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 wrestle 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 certain himself — is signaled early on with a couple of vital glances and gulps, as he arrives within the wider world of school underneath the load of parental expectations. (You understand earlier than Benny does that he’s not reduce out to be a enterprise main.) Already at fictional Yates College is his sister, Grace (Mary Beth Barone, Skinner’s podcasting accomplice 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 isn’t 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 footage from his new life. Below stress to turn into new folks in faculty — which is to say, new folks like different folks — they try to hook up, and a complicated, shut relationship begins. She’s marginally extra subtle, 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 wherein such deception and self-deception continues to be felt crucial — and one feels for Benny in his confusion. (It took Skinner, now 31, till his senior yr at Georgetown College to return out, although one hopes the schedule might be considerably accelerated for the collection; the viewer might turn into impatient.)
Kyle MacLachlan, left, and Connie Britton play Benny’s dad and mom in “Overcompensating.”
(Courtesy of Prime Video)
Skinner, who has had a couple of straight performing roles alongside his antic web movies, wherein he would possibly seem as a Kardashian or the forged of “Queer Eye,” is charming as his bottled-up, crazy-making youthful self. Baram, a slapstick comedian 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 performing position. As Grace, Barone, who maintains a stand-up profession, begins basically as a cliche, simple to dismiss, however creates a personality you’re taking extra significantly as she begins to take herself extra significantly; it’s maybe the present’s most shifting efficiency — even poignant, although that’s presumably a phrase each Grace and Barone would reject — from an sudden quarter. Then once more, virtually all of those folks — the primary characters and minor — are needier than they’d prefer to let on.
The arc of the collection is concerned primarily with their sorting and resorting themselves into {couples}, nonetheless briefly, as they navigate varied youth rituals and rites of passage, like beer pong and getting faux IDs. A great deal of the season issues a ridiculous secret society known as Flesh & Gold, which Benny and Carmen have, for unclear causes, been invited to hitch and appear all too desperate to pledge — one would assume 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 embrace Andrea Martin as the varsity’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 acquired away earlier than Benny knew what he was in search of. 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 sort of fantastic.
Some crises, particularly later within the season, can really feel a bit manufactured to be able to hold the balls within the air, dramatically talking — to maintain these folks from settling down into a snug relationship. (The season ends on a observe of irresolution.) How this would possibly play out throughout 4 seasons — assuming the purpose is to see Benny and Carmen right through faculty — is a good level, however Skinner is a fan of “Gossip Girl,” wherein betrayals and realignments have been simply weekly enterprise, so, you already know, he would possibly discover a means. 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 faculty days previously.
