Though it still feels like I’ve been moving slowly through both movies and TV shows this year, I saw the briefest ad for this new series and knew I needed to check it out. Plus, comedies like Overcompensating are a low time commitment, so why not give it a go!
Admittedly, I’d never heard of the shows’ creator, writer, and star, Bennito Skinner, but based on the amount of stars showing up in this series, it’s clear that maybe I had been missing out. He plays Benny, a college freshman who is so terrified of fitting in that he desperately stays in the closet. Back home in Idaho, he was a macho football star who encountered a bit of a gay awakening just before his final summer. It doesn’t help that he’s attending the same college as his older sister, Grace, going through her own bit of artificial identity crisis, and her dumb frat boyfriend, Peter.
In an effort not to be labeled a loser, he sets his sights on Carmen, a fellow freshman he meets during orientation. While she seems cool on the surface, it’s clear she’s also dealing with a lot of trauma and neglect from home, and is not quite sure who she is without her brother around. The two attempt to hook up by the end of the first episode but end up best friends in the process. While Carmen genuinely likes spending time with Benny, and he does, too, he also uses Carmen as an excuse to avoid a classmate he has a massive crush on. He’s not even remotely ready to accept his queerness, so instead he decides to join the co-ed service fraternity led by Peter.
As someone who was in the most laid-back co-ed service fraternity in college, this one made me laugh pretty hard. No one took it seriously. In this show, this seems like the frat that people who failed to get into real ones end up in. Peter is the ultimate douche bag, and after being treated more like a thing instead of a person, Grace slowly starts to come back to herself. I ended up really enjoying her journey throughout the series. As funny and complex as Benny and Carmen were, they were truly bad friends. And at the end of the day, all of that is impacted by the ability to communicate. Both of these teens are so, so bad at it!
I don’t know if a second season was confirmed early or not, but they made a bold choice with how to end the first season. Carmen kind of accidentally drops Benny’s secret to a whole load of people. It shocks them all, but for vastly different reasons. I know he was gaining confidence with who is he, but he definitely was not ready to be fully transparent to everyone yet. I’ll be interested in the fallout in the next season. Here’s hoping we don’t have to wait too long for it!