Overcompensating is a psychologically loaded word. We hear it in therapy, we hear it in business meetings, and we generally do not look at it in a positive light. Why is that? It is because overcompensation by definition points towards a certain lack—and a cover-up! It points towards excessive efforts taken by an individual to make up for their weaknesses or shortcomings. This is something we consciously or unconsciously keep doing when we feel like we are a cultural misfit in a certain time or space, or people aren’t able to see us for ourselves, or a mix of both. When does reality hit us in our face for the first time? When we are no longer children cocooned in the comfort of our homes, when we step out in the world and take the first big step towards adulthood, in short—college.
Spoilers Ahead
What Is The Series About?
Overcompensating is a whirlwind of a college drama created by Ben Skinner that is a punch cocktail of identity exploration, adolescent drama, and friendships that we make and break in our college years. Starting off as a light, slice-of-life comic commentary, it holds your hand and immerses you in nostalgia with a whiff of modern-day Gen Z problems while age-old conflicts of love triangles and frat-boy archetypes that still linger on.
Among the dorm-mates we meet, we have Ben Skinner, who stars as Benny, a freshman at Yates University, a former soccer player now in business school, who is conflicted about his sexual orientation. Benny’s sister, Grace, and her boyfriend , Peter, are seniors in the college and belong to the high-brow elite society called Flesh and Gold. Benny is relatively familiar to the college environment due to his sister’s fame; however, we meet the other freshmen, who are still trying to navigate their ways. Carmen, who is dealing with the loss of her brother Michael, is roomed with Hailee—a popular queen among the girls who immediately takes Carmen under her wing by inviting her to pregame parties and arranging blowouts as well as fake IDs for her. The college premises are charged, with a bunch of teenagers experiencing freedom for the first time, so much so that they want to get laid on the first night, chest-thump about it to ‘the boys,’ and make a mark before the year can even begin. Our protagonists, Benny and Carmen, meet on such a night, and as a rule of a freshman’s first night, they try to sleep together. However, is that the outcome, even in today’s friendships, that two friends should always be headed to?
Can a Boy and a Girl be Friends?
At the core of Overcompensating lies Benny’s dilemma about his identity, sexual orientation, and social credibility at the college. Conventionally attractive, soccer-playing economics student Benny is the perfect shot at being the popular kid. His fellow batchmates are hitting on him, but at the bottom of his heart he has deep unresolved issues. Benny is not attracted to girls; he has a poster of Megan Fox in his room that he does not drool over but has heart-to-heart conversations with. The series is subtle in its subversion of male archetypes on its head with heartfelt but comic overtones. When Benny meets Carmen, they immediately feel a spark between them—but is it a spark of love? Overcompensating leaves us questioning the inadequacy of romantic love, flowing into the territory of platonic connections and lifelong friendships that stand tall in front of many storms.
Among the hurdles the two surmount, the first is when, after their first failed night of intimacy, Benny announces to the boys that Carmen and he were indeed intimate, to make it a brave marker of his freshman year. Carmen later gets to know about this and tries to ghost Benny for a time, but they keep finding their ways back to each other. Whether it is at football games over edibles or when Carmen is driven out of the bar, the two share a quiet dinner by the curb. In a space of performative masculinity and under pressure to hide his orientation, Benny feels seen with Carmen. Attempts at physical intimacy fail, but rather than the connection wearing out, it strengthens their bond.
While Benny is a potential candidate for a popular kid, Carmen looks like an underdog in the beginning. Her parents had not accompanied her like other kids’ parents, and she says later that they are busy with “grief”–grief that she too harbors deep inside her heart, over her brother Michael’s death. While Carmen slowly starts getting accepted as a naturally popular kid, breaking bottles at a soccer game, an impressive tolerance for edible consumption, and even hanging out with the popular girls, Benny is someone who makes her feel seen too. In fact, despite her misadventures and meanderings, Carmen only confides in Benny about her brother’s death. While playing a game she used to play with her brother, Carmen confesses that Benny reminds her of Michael.
However, what makes the show more authentic than other college dramas is that it does not tie characters to each other with a tight string. Benny and Carmen fight, they drift apart, and for a fair while, Carmen is casually exploring her side of the story as she remarks that Benny and she are focusing on making new friends. There is no black-and-white moral judgment when it comes to drifting apart or getting closer. On the day of the college concert, the two create a mess in consecutive bathroom stalls, but when Benny asks Carmen to join him, Carmen says that her girls are waiting for her.
Carmen and Benny do not rush their friendship until they find the right reasons. After their initial misunderstanding, Carmen gets to know about Benny’s dilemma about his orientation and immediately steps up as a wing-girl to support Benny. She gives Benny a space where he does not have to hide his identity; he can be himself. Whenever they both face heartbreak or small defeats, they seem to go right back to each other, as best friends often do.
There’s an episode where Carmen visits Benny’s family and becomes a second daughter to Benny’s mother. In the comfort of his hometown, Benny’s performative personality wears off, and the two get a chance to look at their friendship in a more authentic way, away from the pressures of the campus. However, Benny and Carmen’s journeys are always shown in parallel—Benny navigates his complex past with his friend, Sammy, while Carmen is with Grace, Benny’s sister, uncovering secrets from her past and then empowering her to beat the ‘disgrace.’ Probably, what is beautiful about this friendship is that it does not demand anything of the other person, but believes in a quiet giving. Despite Carmen and Benny’s fights about Benny’s white lies about not quitting the Flesh and Gold Society and his eventual confrontations with her, their friendship shows an exceptional emotional range that is a marker of a deep, platonic bond. The series does not opt for the conventional portrayal of a gay best friend who is already proud and secure in his orientation, but its path is exploratory—it is two young adults navigating their ways through sexuality, identity, and life as they choose to become each other’s best friends.
Where Does Benny’s Journey Lead?
Whenever asked about his orientation, Benny keeps getting flashes of an almost kiss. This visual haunts him while he interacts with Miles, whenever he is made to do ‘tasks’ for the Flesh and Gold Society, or simply when he is alone, talking to Megan Fox’s poster. There is a crucial denial in Benny’s self about his sexual orientation—he wants to like girls, and being outed as a homosexual person scares him. He thinks Charlie XCX would call him out for being gay, and he also chants “No Homo” regularly with his frat buddies.
Over the semester, Benny starts to accept himself more through his experiences and also his friendships. His performative shell wears off, putting him more in touch with his emotions. Finally, when he is home for Thanksgiving, the distance created by staying away from Idaho, his hometown, lets him accept his past misgivings. We realize the full story behind the unfinished memory that haunts him—where he and Sammy were about to kiss, Benny broke off the kiss, called Sammy a homosexual slur, and left him in his car. Back home, Benny has to face Sammy, and they reconcile in the local bar. Meeting Sammy and finishing where it all started marks an important moment of acceptance for Benny. After this, he seems more comfortable in his skin—until the show ends on a cliffhanger where Carmen shouts out in a fight about Benny’s orientation, and a bunch of people are shocked as they overhear it. We can only expect more drama around this in the next season, especially given how Peter and the Flesh and Gold boys feel about homosexuality.
The Grace-Peter-Carmen Triangle
As the series explores Benny’s struggles with his love life, it also explores Carmen finding her way through her own chaos. Benny’s sister, Grace, is dating the blue-eyed boy, Peter—who has already landed a job, is the best possible candidate for Flesh and Gold’s Keeper role, and is a charming senior. However, Peter acts like a man-child who wants to control his girlfriend, even though he proclaims them to be a power couple. Impressively layered, Grace shows resistance and forges her own path, whether it comes to managing the Charlie XCX concert, landing a job as a campus ambassador, or simply saying no to Peter’s whims. Grace’s evolution from being Peter’s arm candy is an empowering transition that she goes through.
Although Peter cannot handle the complexities of being with a woman, he can surely offer low-commitment emotional attachment to Carmen. As opposed to a poised, self-secure Grace, Carmen is more of a chill girl. She hangs out, plays video games with the gamertag of Tatiana Del Rey, and is willing to tune in emotionally with Peter. Peter reaches for Carmen as a shoulder to support him through his rocky patch with Grace but chooses convenience and reconciles with Grace at the next chance.
There’s a point in the series when Grace gets to know that Tatiana is actually Carmen, even though Carmen already planned to tell her this before. Grace responds to the situation in a way that shows the sisterhood of women that the college was trying to achieve through its superficial dinners and blowout parties. Rather than vilifying Carmen, Grace dumps Peter because he is the one who cheated on Grace. Although the outcome is gray—as Grace confronts Carmen right after—given their dynamic, it is safe to assume that they would survive its blow.
Overcompensating, by the last episode, becomes more than a college drama. It graduates into an emotional depth with the space for both humor and heart as friendships fracture and heal, relationships evolve, and personal truths unfold tenderly. Overcompensating stands out in its refusal to offer easy resolutions and shines through in capturing the complexities of growing up.