When Girls came out, I was a little too young to watch a crass, sex-forward show, and that’s all I knew about it at that point, to be fair. But as time passed by, rather than hearing about how fantastic the show was (which we did hear a lot of at the beginning), we got more and more controversy centered around the creator herself. Now, I wasn’t that much of a pop-culture queen back then, so I’ve honestly got no idea what went down and how bad, but what I do know is that it put me off of Girls, which means this is my first Dunham adventure ever. In my defining moment as a borderline Gen-Zer, I want to emphasize how I’m not a big fan of the crass nature of Dunham’s work and would rather spend my watch time enjoying something more chaste, for lack of a better word. But that is simply a warning for you so you understand where I’m coming from. However, with that said, I’ll jump straight into everything I liked and didn’t like about Too Much to help you decide if it’s worth watching.
In the opening act of the show, we’re introduced to Jessica, our daydreaming protagonist, who lives in whimsical nightgowns and dreams about a Jane Austen romance as she’s just about to start a new life in London. But soon after a montage of her expectations in the English countryside, we’re hit with reality, which is that Jessica’s ex is now getting married, while she’s still moping around alone and bothered. And so Too Much tells the story of a line producer who moves to a new country after a terrible breakup that leaves her heartbroken but, more importantly, self-hating as well. Rather than a show with a traditional plot, Too Much is a character study about a person who goes from loving themselves to hating themselves over the course of one life-defining relationship. In that sense, there are many places in which it hits the spot, making you feel absolutely terrible for Jess and also hating all of mankind because of this one person hurting her. But is that enough to make it a show worth watching?
Titled Too Much, that’s certainly what the show offers in terms of how many hours we have to sit through before we’re hit with catharsis. For a comedy, the show is too long and certainly not bingeable. 10 episodes ranging anywhere from half an hour to an hour that continue to set the tone till the final moments. Look, I don’t mean to say comedies don’t deserve longer runtimes, but that only makes sense if there’s anything new and interesting for them to tell. What’s interesting about Too Much is that it doesn’t waste time giving us history or anything to really judge the characters by; it slowly shows us those bits as we work our way through the episodes (painstakingly sometimes). It’s mostly a dialogue-driven story, which pushes you to understand the people and their ultimate decisions. But those decisions come a bit too late in my opinion.
Yes, Too Much does turn the rom-com on its head, and honestly, if it were a movie, I’d have devoured it. However, when certain tropes repeat themselves more than a couple of times, it definitely starts to get boring. Yes, Jess is a very likable character; she’s ambitious, beautiful, excited, and positive, but she is also a “mess.” She also calls out our double standards because you’d never see a man being called a “mess,” even if his life was falling apart. Jess is definitely the best part about the show. She is the star, and Megan Stalter is a natural. Shame I haven’t seen her before, but now I can’t imagine her without the blue eye shadow and cutesy Peter Pan collared outfits. Jess might be a “not so chill” girl, but she still stands tall and holds her head high.
The thing I appreciate the most about Too Much is that the show entirely subverts the love triangle trope, and rather than giving us a “who will she choose?” plot, it’s more like a “are they perfect for each other or will it fall apart?” kind of thing. Of course, this is because it’s heavily inspired by Dunham’s real life. From her acquiring a musician boyfriend to losing a dog because of “aggression,” many instances in the show refer to past controversies, but only if you know about them.
The cameos range from Naomi Watts to Andrew Scott, but Adele Exarchopoulos and Emily Ratajkowski are part of the main cast; if you blink, you may not be able to keep up. But while this all seems Too Much, at the end of the day, the plot itself is, well…too little. When it comes to the jokes, I’ve never been a fan of crassness and cring humor, but while some of these are lost in meandering conversations, the others are simply not good enough, especially after all the praise I’ve heard about Girls. I think at the end of the day, the show is tonally undefinable and feels like it’s trying too hard to be impressive, which makes it all the less so. I do appreciate a likable main character because we’ve had so few of them lately, but the other characters aren’t well sketched out, which makes them quite forgettable if not caricaturish. There is one thing that definitely irked me about the show, which is how it uses the Instagram-viral trope in the final act, which I really wish hadn’t happened, though I could feel it coming right from the start. You know how rom-coms always have a big moment for the main character where she’s finally proven to the world that she’s cool and she can handle anything? The one in this felt empty and incomplete, almost.
At the end of the day, I can’t say I was very impressed by Too Much, and it was, in fact, too much of a disappointment for me to recommend it. While on the surface it feels like a feel-good, it ends up weighing you down and might leave you wondering if you’re too much of a mess and can’t ever change your life. Maybe I’m exaggerating a little bit. I’d give Too Much 2.5 out of 5 stars because I did enjoy some bits, especially Stalter as Jess.
