Until its final episode, the second season of Lena Dunham’s HBO series Girls was one of the best seasons of television I’d ever seen. After poorly addressing some outside critiques, it relaxed into being a remarkable balance of drama and comedy, realism and fantasy. Episodes like “It’s a Shame About Ray” and “One Man’s Trash” remain series highs and even less beloved chapters like “Video Games” are severely underrated. It would never be the universal portrait of delayed girlhood/floundering adulthood the internet desired, but it was an undeniable portrait of the people it knew so well.
And then that last episode.
The finale “Together” has two baffling choices that confused me in 2013 and confuse me still — two romantic reunions that give the episode its title. The first is Marnie and Charlie and the suggestion that them getting back together — especially with Marnie’s “little brown babies” speech — is meant to be anything but misguided. And the second, a sweeping romcom moment for Hannah and Adam, felt counter to everything the show had achieved thus far. Was Adam’s uncomfortable treatment of his new girlfriend in the previous episode an opportunity to explore the grey area between bad sex and assault? Or was it just an excuse to break them up so he could get back with Hannah? To misquote another excellent Girls episode, weirdos need grand romantic gestures too. But, at its best, the show was so much more complicated than two people finding all the answers in another fucked up soulmate. Alas the saccharine score as Adam runs through the city to rescue Hannah from an OCD spiral suggested otherwise — a suggestion reinforced when the credits roll and a romantic song written for the show by Dunham’s then partner Jack Antonoff begins to play.
I bring up this frustrating moment because after nearly a decade Lena Dunham has returned to our TVs and this time she’s doubled down on making a romcom. Too Much, loosely based on Dunham’s breakup with Antonoff, move to London, and romance with her now-husband Luis Felber begins with fantasy. Jessica (Megan Stalter) has arrived in London and she describes the various women she can become now that she’s in England based on BBC shows. With episode titles like “Nonsense and Sensibility” and “Notting Kill” the show is overt in its messaging that this will be a grand British love story or, at least, Jessica will think this is a grand British love story.
The reality is more complicated. Jessica isn’t monologuing in her Bridget Jones’ diary. She’s recording private vlogs directed at Wendy Jones (Emily Ratajkowski), the new fiancée of her ex-boyfriend Zev (Michael Zegen) whose shared home she broke into drunk one night prompting this move across the Atlantic. Jessica is not okay and falling into a romance with struggling musician Felix (Will Sharpe) will not make her okay.
The series is at its best when it’s celebrating this relationship while understanding its limits. The third — and shortest — episode follows Jessica and Felix as they stay up all night in Jessica’s apartment. Their burgeoning connection feels grounded in reality and the chemistry of Stalter and Sharpe. The work still required within each individual and for the pair isn’t ignored — it’s just secondary to the talking and sex of a relationship’s early days and nights.
Even when the show is in this more grounded place, its tone is still closer to Dunham’s film Sharp Stick than the realism of Girls. This heightened quality can feel disorienting, but it works for the genre. The problem is when the series leans even more into being Dunham’s take on Love, Actually. (Something Dunham nods to in an episode title and in Jessica’s job line producing a Christmas-themed commercial.) Like in that second season finale of Girls, the big romcom moments don’t feel earned. The tonal balancing act of the series comes crashing to the ground and it takes its characters’ complexities with it.
With episodes that hover around 40 minutes each, there’s plenty of time to explore the worlds of Jessica and Felix, and some of these side characters and subplots work better than others. Wendy Jones is best in fantasy and Zev best in small doses. Maybe Antonoff really was this insufferable, but the more time we get with Zev and the worse the character appears, the more it feels like Jessica’s problems are being blamed on one shitty man. Even if this was true in life, it makes for a far less interesting narrative choice. More effective is Jessica’s family with her mom played by Rita Wilson, her grandma played by Rhea Perlman, and her sister played by Dunham herself. Their scenes together are some of the show’s funniest and most endearing. (I’m sure people will have things to say about Dunham casting Andrew Rannells as her estranged pansexual husband but I loved it… until the end.)
Other standouts are Andrew Scott as the commercial’s director, Adèle Exarchopolous as Felix’s ex-lover/current friend, Janicza Bravo as Jessica’s newly lesbian coworker, and Felix’s family played by Stephen Fry, Kaori Momoi, and Emily Piggford. Richard E. Grant and Naomi Watts — who I usually love! — as Jessica’s boss and boss’ wife feel like two characters too many and are big in a way the show doesn’t need. Some of Felix’s other exes not played by Adèle Exarchopoulos also didn’t quite work for me.
Even Girls was full of kooky side characters, but its story was grounded by its leads. Stalter is a very different performer from Dunham and it results in a show that, true to its title, can feel like too much. Often, the writing — and Sharpe’s wonderful, understated performance — balances this out allowing Stalter to be herself in a way that really works. Other times the writing leans in and it does not.
I just wish Dunham and her writing team had trusted the quieter moments and not always felt the need to make the biggest choice. Everything doesn’t need to be resolved, everyone doesn’t have to get back together, each character doesn’t have to be neatly slotted into hero or villain. Even in romcom fantasyland that’s often not the most effective choice. At the very least, save something for season two.
Too Much is now streaming on Netflix.
Ah man, I was hoping this would be good! Particularly saddened the Megan Stalter and Richard E. Grant scenes don’t work I was really excited to see those actors Big Choices riff together!
For what it’s worth, I think it is good! Just not… as great as I wanted it to be. Still definitely recommend it though.
And you might disagree with me on Richard E. Grant! I’m not quite sure why he didn’t quite click for me here.
I really think you should give it a try. The couple work out pretty well together and there are some really good life advices in there, in their conversations, in how Meg’s character really is too much at some moments. I loved it.