LGBTQ+ Pride 2025: Overcompensating

Benny (Benito Skinner) is a former high school football player, prom king and valedictorian from Idaho, who harbors a secret.  He is gay.  To hide this fact, he overcompensates by trying to emulate his sister Grace’s (Mary Beth Barone) jock boyfriend Peter (Adam DiMarco).  Benny is starting his freshman year at Yates College where Grace is a junior.  On his first day, he meets Carmen (Wally Baram) another freshman from New Jersey who was an outsider in high school, partially because of the death of her brother.  Benny also meets Miles (Rish Shah), a very handsome student who he is instantly attracted to.  Benny and Carmen must learn to navigate their first year of college, which involves the ups and downs of relationships and finding your true self.

Overcompensating is a 2025 comedy-drama series created by and starring Benito Skinner, streaming on Amazon Prime Video.  The story is loosely based on Skinner’s own college experiences. With eight episodes, Overcompensating blends humor and heartfelt storytelling to explore themes of identity, belonging, and the lengths people go to overcompensate while finding themselves. Critics have lauded the series as a standout coming-of-age comedy that deftly balances sharp humor with emotional depth. The series has achieved a 95% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with the consensus stating: “As ribald as any self-respecting campus comedy but with a disarmingly sweet core, Overcompensating has nothing to make up for as it proves creator-star Benito Skinner to be the real deal”. Daniel Fienberg of The Hollywood Reporter commended Skinner’s confident debut, highlighting the ensemble cast’s breakout performances and the show’s blend of humor and heart. Emma Kiely of Collider awarded the series an 8 out of 10, describing it as “a hilarious, warm, and honest show from one of comedy’s most exciting voices.” And The New Yorker praised the show for satirizing traditional masculinity and exploring themes of identity and queerness through Benny’s journey, noting its mix of satire, absurdist sequences, and early-2000s pop culture references. Vulture highlighted the show’s portrayal of Benny as an “overachieving sponge,” absorbing conflicting societal messages, and commended its nuanced take on queer awakening.

This romantic comedy touched me in a lot of ways.  Within the first two episodes I watched, I laughed out loud several times, mainly due to the farcical nature of some of the scenes.  Overcompensating is over the top on many levels, and it is meant to be.  It is a satire that looks at the classic masculine roles and ramps them up to a thousand.  And the dreamy shallowness of many of the female characters are just as much caricatures as the men.  The performances are really strong with Benito and Wally both being standouts, showing great talent and amazing range.  Through all the bravado we begin to slowly see each character’s real personality. The person they truly are under all the masks and walls they put up, and the raw emotions they have been holding back. They are learning that the popularity and achievements they accomplished in high school, those things they felt defined them and what they thought were important, mean very little.  The facades put up in the effort to conform and fit in start to crumble and what is left is who you really are.  This is a hard lesson to learn and sometimes, seeing what was underneath, isn’t always a pleasant experience, but with it, comes change, freedom and growth.  These themes are expertly explored in an engaging and entertaining way.  Although the show can be crass and some of the characters begin to be annoying it is also funny, tender, witty and smart.