- Network: Prime Video
- Series Premiere Date: May 15, 2025
Critic Reviews
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Overcompensating and Adults take divergent approaches to the Gen Z sitcom. Both play on coming-of-age tropes, but Overcompensating feels more old-fashioned in its coming-out storyline and earnestness about being true to oneself.
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Overcompensating does a pretty good job of it, while also throwing in American Pie–level humor about drinking beer out of a giant penis for a frat initiation. Still, that’s where the vagueness about time becomes all the more frustrating: If a character’s experience in the closet is so defined by the culture he’s absorbing, then that experience will transform depending on the moment in which the character exists.
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“Overcompensating,” which was showrun by “Mad TV” alum Scott King, seems to suffer from its own uncertainty about what kind of show it wants to be. There are hints of the more arch, camp show one might expect from a performer with Skinner’s sensibilities.
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It’s simultaneously too self-serious to be a strict comedy and too surface-level to contain any great dramatic heft. What we’re left with, ultimately, is a show that is as confused as its repressed protagonist.
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Age mismatches crush the heart of Overcompensating. The viewer cannot invest in Benny’s college realizations, primarily because he doesn’t look like he’s in college. Nor can they invest in the show’s side characters, simply because their ages are splattered across two decades, destroying any sense of realism. Sure, the jokes land. But the emotional resonance that Skinner clearly wants to strike has gone missing. Maybe some better casting would have helped.
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