Benito Skinner's new show Overcompensating is like 'queer Never Have I Ever'

From Pitch Perfect to Community, so many movies and TV shows have mined the dramatic and hilarious potential of those first few days on campus where new students get to re-invent themselves.

But despite everything that's come before it, Benito Skinner's new series Overcompensating manages to tread new ground.

Today on Commotion, culture writers Chris Murphy and Jackson Weaver join guest host Rad Simonpillai to talk about why the Prime Video show is so refreshing.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Rad: Chris, I'd never heard of Benito Skinner before this show, but I understand millions of people follow him on social media. So for those of us who haven't heard of him, tell me more about what made him pop. What made him stand out from all the other people on TikTok that are doing these kinds of celebrity impersonations?

Chris: Well, I was going to say, you obviously haven't been on TikTok if you haven't heard of bennydrama, Benito Skinner. But yeah, he's really a classic character comedian. He loves impersonating people in pop culture: Kourtney Kardashian, Lana Del Rey, Jennifer Coolidge, Shawn Mendes. And he also has original characters … and just a wealth of different personalities that he embodies.

I think the thing that sets him apart is that they're all very funny, but it never feels like he's really making fun of them in a mean way. A lot of these people who he does impersonate on TikTok have embraced him and have taken him in as one of their own. So he films all these videos with the Kardashians, and Jennifer Coolidge and all these people. So I think he's coming at TV not from a standup perspective, but really from a character comedy background.

Rad: Well Jackson, after impersonating all these other people, now Benito's creating this show that's about a character whose story is much like his own. So in a nutshell, what is Benny's story in this show?

Jackson: I mean, "queer Never Have I Ever" is basically how I would describe it. It's the perennial story of somebody who grows up, [but] specifically for him in the '90s as someone who's in a somewhat more accepting society for queerness, for being gay — [it's] not necessarily literally illegal — but it's still not the best thing to find out you are, especially when you're a boy among friends you're not sure are going to accept you. And then you try and cover that by being as straight as possible. You make up a fake version of yourself. And then you get to university, you see gay-straight alliances, and you flail towards some sort of authenticity, some sort of self acceptance — the divide between either becoming your true self, or harkening to the thing that has gotten you all the accolades, all the acceptance, up to that point. I think it's a pretty universal story, a pretty well-learned and well-earned experience.

There's a book called The Velvet Rage that is about how if you are a gay man and have grown up in a straight world, as all of us kind of have, you will have created this fake self, this way to hide from shame and covet validation. And when you finally get to the point where you are sort of making the baby steps towards giving up that fake version of yourself, you realize that your ability to support your own sense of self, to have your own sort of self-confidence is totally juvenile and not necessarily there. And all you need is external validation. And this show is kind of all about that, where he does not have any sort of self-confidence or ability to feel good about himself unless it's people telling him he's good at football, or he is great at hooking up with girls or he's really hot, and he needs that. But he also needs to be himself. It's a very recognizable stage of life for the young gay man, I would say.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Jess Low.