The new series Overcompensating opens with a young child’s sexual awakening. He’s watching Brendan Fraser swing around in a loin cloth in George of the Jungle, rewinding the scene over and over again. He doesn’t know why he’s intrigued; he’s far too young. But he’s spellbound.
Eventually, the other boys at his sleepover get annoyed at this looping of perfect, glistening abs, so he puts on something else. The booming opening notes are instantly, euphorically familiar to any gay millennial: He cued up the music video for Britney Spears’ “Lucky.”
The underrated anthem blasts as we’re transported 10-12 years into the future, where now-18-year-old Benny is a closeted jock on the way to his freshman year of college. I’ve never seen a more relatable opening to a TV show. It still can feel rare, as a gay man, to feel seen on TV. It’s even rarer to see your child self reflected. And for it to be this funny, too.
Overcompensating was created by and stars Benito Skinner, a comedian known for his viral videos for whom this Prime Video series, out now, is a huge break.
The show essentially has Skinner, who is 31, acting out his own experience coming to terms with his sexuality while at university in the early-to-mid 2010s. (Overcompensating doesn’t place itself in a specific year, but the references—from sheepish admittance to liking Glee to…sheepish admittance to liking Nicki Minaj’s “Super Bass”—are brutally recognizable from that time.)
I’m [redacted] years older than Skinner, but there’s a familiarity to his endearing skittishness and messy performance of “straightness” that immediately endeared me to the show. As in, from that opening scene.
There are arguments that a college coming out story that might have been profound 10 or 15 years ago is tired in 2025, but I reject that.
There should be a variety of stories about the gay experience being told, and they shouldn’t all focus on a traumatic coming-out journey. We’re lucky that we’re at a place where those other stories now do exist in TV and film, but that doesn’t mean we need to erase this other aspect. Has there been a plea to stop making straight rom-coms just because we’ve already explored that? Should we stop making mob movies because Scorsese’s already covered it? I don’t understand the exasperation.
Now that my insufferable little TED Talk is over, back to Overcompensating. What makes it work is both the most basic thing—it is hilarious, with a whiplash joke pace and a stacked cast of quirky scene-stealers—and something that’s new for the genre: It is incredibly horny!
The straight ones, the gay ones, the questioning ones: They’re all having sex, and thinking about it when they aren’t. The show doesn’t divorce coming to terms with sexuality from college hormones. Yes, there’s a desire to live openly and truthfully. There’s also a desire to get laid, preferably with the gender you’re actually attracted to.
So many series about coming out are woefully chaste about it. With all of its characters, including Benny’s best friend Carmen (Wally Baram), the complicated nature of learning who you are while navigating a burgeoning libido is a devastatingly resonant aspect of Overcompensating.
A lot of attention is being paid to the fact that Skinner and several of his co-stars are in their thirties and playing college students. Is it weird that, generally, I’ve never cared about that? Of course, it’s effective—and vaguely traumatizing—when, on a series like the original UK run of Skins, the teens were being played by actual teens.
But I’m a student of Stockard Channing’s Rizzo. Older actors playing high schoolers and college students is such a tried-and-true Hollywood tradition that I feel rather anesthetized to it. Plus, it makes me feel better about wanting to see the actors’ butts. And thank God Skinner understands what gays what from a show like this. They want to see the butts, and Overcompensating delivers.
The show’s not perfect. It will be a lightning rod among gay people, and fairly so. Seeing ourselves on screen is still fairly new, and it’s an affront when we don’t think we’re being represented in a way that reflects our own experience—or what we want other audiences to see about our lives and lifestyles. I get it.
But also…it’s fun. It’s sweet, sexy, and a breeze to watch. A four-hour binge well-spent, plus you get to hear Britney Spears’ “Lucky.”
