--- title: 'Adults' and 'Overcompensating' Reinvent the Hangout Comedy description: TIME reviews a pair of sitcoms from young creators raised on 'Girls,' 'Friends,' and 'Sex and the City' canonical: https://time.com/7287058/adults-fx-review-overcompensating/ author: Judy Berman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2025-05-22T16:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T04:51:11.783Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: 'Adults' and 'Overcompensating' Reinvent the Hangout Comedy og:description: TIME reviews a pair of sitcoms from young creators raised on 'Girls,' 'Friends,' and 'Sex and the City' og:url: https://time.com/7287058/adults-fx-review-overcompensating/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltabbe103e7d7b82f1/6998c6d025f3ee1c44644a86/overcompensating-adults-tv-reviews.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: overcompensating-adults-tv-reviews og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 'Adults' and 'Overcompensating' Reinvent the Hangout Comedy twitter:description: TIME reviews a pair of sitcoms from young creators raised on 'Girls,' 'Friends,' and 'Sex and the City' twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltabbe103e7d7b82f1/6998c6d025f3ee1c44644a86/overcompensating-adults-tv-reviews.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # In _Adults_ and _Overcompensating_, a New Generation Reinvents the Hangout Comedy  by [Judy Berman](https://time.com/author/judy-berman/)  ## Judy Berman TV Critic May 22, 2025 4:00 PM UTC  Skinner, left center; the five Adults in training Skinner, left center; the five Adults in trainingPrime; FX  by [Judy Berman](https://time.com/author/judy-berman/)  ## Judy Berman TV Critic May 22, 2025 4:00 PM UTC The creators of FX’s _Adults_ must have known that comparisons between their show and [_Girls_](https://time.com/4665930/girls-final-season-lena-dunham/) were inevitable, because they leaned way into them. Beyond the similar titles, both comedies follow 20-something friend groups in New York City. There’s even an explicit callback in _Adults_’ May 28 premiere—one begging to be cited in reviews like this—to the indelible scene in the _Girls_ pilot where [Lena Dunham](https://time.com/3425759/lena-dunham-a-generations-gutsy-ambitious-voice/)’s narcissistic aspiring-writer protagonist, Hannah Horvath, informs her parents that she might be “_a_ voice of _a_ generation.” The new series abbreviates this cliché as “V of our G,” and applies it to a media-savvy young man who becomes the envy of his peers by going public with workplace sexual harassment allegations and scoring a six-figure payout. Equal parts tribute and sendup, the moment cleverly heralds the arrival of a new generation anointing its own voices, skewering its own pieties, and distinguishing itself from the wave of millennials that swept pop culture in the early 2010s. _Adults_ is the creation of Rebecca Shaw and Ben Kronengold, a couple and comedy team who first tasted fame when their [Yale graduation speech](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI6a1t-M%5F48) went viral in 2018\. (They’ve since written for Jimmy Fallon and co-authored a collection of short stories titled _Naked in the Rideshare_.) Along with comedian Benito Skinner’s college-set Amazon romp _Overcompensating_, it’s the second hangout comedy set to debut in May from creators born in the mid-’90s. Neither as internet-addled nor as pandemic-damaged as you might expect, these distinctly current yet familiar shows update the genrewith all the absurdism and self-awareness of a generation that distracts itself from a world in crisis by [bingeing _Girls_](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/16/style/girls-show-hbo-lena-dunham.html), [_Friends_](https://www.etonline.com/streaming-friends-how-a-90s-sitcom-became-gen-zs-new-favorite-show-132624), [_Sex and the City_](https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/discourse-about-gen-z-sex-and-the-city-and-netflix-is-exhausting/), and the rest of the friends-as-chosen-family canon.  From left: Jack Innanen, Amita Rao, and Owen Thiele in Adults Rafy—FX While previous zeitgeisty series about young adults in New York were set in aspirational environs (the north Brooklyn hipster corridor for _Girls_, the post-bohemian Village for _Friends_), _Adults_ gestures toward Gen Z’s limited horizons by packing its five characters into one guy’s childhood home in an unfashionable part of Queens. Timid sweetheart Samir (Malik Elassal) is the man of the house, fumbling through challenges like paying by check for water-heater repairs. Issa (Amita Rao) is a loud, dramatic, sexually liberated heir to [_Broad City_](https://time.com/3668764/bright-lights-broad-city/)’s Ilana; her chill, pansexual boyfriend, Paul Baker (Jack Innanen), is, inexplicably, always addressed by his full name. Anton (Owen Thiele, who also appears in _Overcompensating_) makes friends everywhere he goes—including, in one episode, with a violent criminal who’s terrorizing the neighborhood. A striver afflicted with anxiety-induced anal bleeding, Lucy Freyer’s Billie is the only housemate who thinks much about her future. The Gen X [_Friends_](https://time.com/5842533/best-friends-episodes/)had the luxury of slacking on a coffee-shop couch for years before ascending to the kind of high-powered careers the [_SATC_](https://time.com/5295820/sex-and-the-city-book-anniversary/)women already had when we first met them in their 30s. As much as they flailed in pursuit of them, the millennial [_Girls_](https://time.com/4741965/girls-finale-review-latching/), who graduated amid the grand-scale rug pull that was the Great Recession, had dreams and ambitions. But for the _Adults_, just being able to confidently claim the titular identity seems a sufficient life goal.  Benito Skinner and Wally Baram in Overcompensating Sabrina Lantos—Prime/Amazon MGM Adulthood is, unsurprisingly, even more elusive for the two freshmen at the center of _Overcompensating_. Surrounded by homosocial groups of new acquaintances egging them on to prove their hetero horniness, Skinner’s innocent ex-jock character, Benny, and Carmen (Wally Baram), a girl whose high tolerance for alcohol and love of video games reflect the influence of a late older brother she’s still mourning, attempt a first-night hookup. When he can’t go through with it—because, as he’s struggling to admit to himself, Benny is gay—they become best friends. That relationship is, in turn, tested by an undergrad social scene where everyone is desperate to look like they’re having more fun, sex, and success than they actually are. Though Skinner situates this competition mostly within the physical world of parties, a ridiculous secret society, and an on-campus performance by _Overcompensating_ executive producer [Charli XCX](https://time.com/6990717/charli-xcx-brat-album/), it’s also clearly a reflection of the peer-pressure panopticon that is growing up on social media. **Critics too often** do a disservice to the art of younger generations, overstating the similarities between works that have little in common besides the age of their makers or failing to account for the aesthetic prejudices of their own cohort. So I want to be clear: _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. And if I was put off by Skinner’s over-the-top ingenuousness—Benny’s eyes are so wide they almost pop out of his head—that is likely in part because I wasn’t raised on the kind of shouty, exaggerated, rapidly edited character work favored by the wave of social video creators among whom he got his start. (It could also have something to do withsome [widely discussed](https://api.time.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=7287058&action=edit#:~:text=vulture.com/article,a%20new%20tab%29) [confusion](https://slate.com/culture/2025/05/overcompensating-tv-show-benito-skinner-amazon-prime-video-a24.html) over whether _Overcompensating_ is meant to take place in the present or during the years when the real, 31-year-old Skinner, who doesn't exactly pass as a freshman, actually attended college. Either way, there's nothing more Gen Z than 2010s nostalgia.)  Malik Elassal and Lucy Freyer in Adults Rafy—FX Still, there are elements the shows share that differentiate them from TV for and about Gen Z conceived by 40-somethings like [Mindy Kaling](https://time.com/7210356/mindy-kaling-running-point-meghan-markle-legally-blonde/) ([_Never Have I Ever_](https://time.com/5827768/maitreyi-ramakrishnan-never-have-i-ever/)_,_ [_The Sex Lives of College Girls_](https://time.com/6118591/sex-lives-college-girls-review/)) and [Sam Levinson](https://time.com/6259919/the-idol-hbo-sam-levinson-controversy/) ([_Euphoria_](https://time.com/6998032/euphoria-season-3-delays/)). The young creators seem less concerned with authenticity or empowerment or grand political statement-making than generations past; in their place is a “[LOL Nothing Matters](https://theweek.com/articles/936846/lol-nothing-matters-does)” sense of whimsical absurdity. “We are in a post-[De Blasio](https://time.com/tag/bill-de-blasio/), pre-_Avatar 3_ moment. We have to live!” _Adults_’ Issa declares, in a nonsensical rewrite of the kind of utterance you often hear from Vs of Gs. Benny tells his problems to the [Megan Fox](https://time.com/6224021/megan-fox-agism-sex-symbol/) poster hanging in his dorm room like a talisman of straightness—and the miniature Fox replies. The shows have a certain irreverence, too. Their casts are as effortlessly diverse, from race to sexual orientation, as the New York of _Friends_, _Girls_, et al. was unrealistically white. Yet their humor telegraphs exhaustion with a decade’s worth of millennial social-justice discourse that performatively polices language and identity in the face of ongoing global catastrophe. In the _Adults_ premiere, multiple characters make cynical attempts to capitalize on the workplace misconduct scandal, and Anton crows that the victim “_looks_ like he was molested.” Paul Baker recoils, in another episode, at a stereotypical gun-shop clerk who uses the R-word and asks if Paul is “fruity,” only to find out the man has a beloved sister with an intellectual disability and is, himself, gay. _Overcompensating_ has a gentler tone, but a scene where Benny calls a girl the C-word (no, he’s not reclaiming the slur) would’ve sent Twitter ca. 2015 into convulsions. What keeps these series from coming off as crass is the genuine camaraderie that connects their characters and shelters them, to some extent, from the precariousness of their lives. The _Friends_ idly bantered, arranged themselves into couples, and got married. The _Girls_ were so self-centered, it doomed their friendships. But even when the young people in _Adults_ and _Overcompensating_ do betray one another, out of callowness or insecurity, the love they share remains pure. 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