‘Too Much’ Episode 7 Recap: “Terms Of Resentment”

I’d like to get right down to it in this review, so I’m doing something uncharacteristic and including a content warning: If frank discussion of sexual abuse troubles you in a way you’re not up for at the moment, you can skip this one. Like I said, I’m gonna get right down to it.

Everyone alright? Okay. Well then:

One of the best things I’ve ever done in my life was tell the woman I love that I was sexually abused as a child. Doing so meant, among other things, that I was finally willing to tell this to myself, to admit to myself what had been done to me. Weird verb choice there, I realize: How do I admit to myself what was done to me? How does that work? How have I, the victim, done anything to admit? But that’s the kind of infuriating anti-logic abusers embed in your brain.

More than that, though, telling my wife about my abuse was, in its strange way, a major building block in our relationship. I forced myself to trust this woman with a terrible part of my life, because I had faith that she would handle me with care. When did, which of course she did…well, the reward has been the healthiest romantic relationship of my life. And whatever else it is or does, Too Much is a romance in the end.

All this is part of the struggle facing Felix when confronted with the choice of whether or not to tell Jessica about his family and his childhood. They had many other issues, but his molestation by his nanny (Charlotte Gallagher), who abused him under the noses of his largely absent parents, is a major one.

Once you’ve learned about his family, though, it’s hard to blame him for wanting to keep quiet about the whole mess. His sister Alaia (Emily Piggford) is trapped in her fourth decade of adolescence, ready to move out as soon as various things that aren’t going to happen for her start happening for her. His mother Aiko (Kaori Momoi) is a depressive stoner who smokes weed at swerve-all-over-the-road quantities to self-medicate against thoughts and threats of suicide, though there’s no telling how serious they are. 

Worst of all is his father Simon. (He’s Stephen Fry, the latest pull it out of your back pocket and slam it on the table cameo deployed by director Lena Dunham, who co-writes this episode with her real-life husband and Felix inspiration, Luis Felber.) A seemingly affable man whose children call him “Pa,” he was nevertheless a dictatorial, withholding presence during Felix’s childhood, when he was enormously rich. But his investments dried up along with his musical ambitions (he was a good composer, though motivated in large part by spite), so the family moved from their palatial country house to a tiny place near the airport. Both parents continue to dream of their former glory — and hey, wouldn’t you know it, a new get-rich-quick scheme has found its way into Simon’s lap. He just needs a thousand quid from Felix to kickstart it, that’s all.

Disgusted by his family’s entitlement and indolence, Felix flees, stealing his thousand pounds back from his father on the way out the door. When he gets home, he initially refuses to admit anything’s wrong, but Jessica’s earnest concern wears him down. He tells her everything: about his family’s diminished fortunes, about his sister’s arrested childhood, about his mother’s dramatic suicidal threats, about how his now-kindly father demands from him a level of grace he was never afforded in return, about how their negligence gave a predator free rein.

Seizing on the poignant detail that Felix was never tucked in as a kid, Jessica does just that, throwing in her father’s Bob Dylan lullaby to boot. This act of love coaxes both a single, Frodo Baggins–like tear from Felix and a confession: “I love you.”

We obviously don’t know for certain, though perhaps we’ll learn eventually, but while his posh old friend the Pollys must have known about his lost family fortune — he had to drop out of school and sell his house over it — the painful nature of his childhood even before then feels like something he’s never shared with anyone before. From his over-intimate mother taking baths in front of him while telling him she and his father are in their own little worlds, to his dad treating love as contingent on performance, to his nanny’s abuse, to his parents’ failure to see or stop it, it all comes pouring out. 

Jessica’s tenderness tells him he has nothing to be ashamed about. It’s not that he hasn’t found anyone worthy of saying “I love you” to in his years of dating, it’s that he’s never deemed himself worthy of saying it. Jess’s acceptance gives him that ability. It’s amazing what acceptance can do for you, really.

This isn’t to say the episode is perfect. I am truly tired of shows depicting memory as a matter of a present-day person standing around as an invisible spectator inside their own memories, observing their literal inner children, as Felix does. But it’s still a show in which Rhea Perlman plays an old woman talking about being the understudy for a stage performer who shot golf balls out of her vagina down in Cuba during her honeymoon, and in which Felix’s mom is an old-school pothead joke. As hard as its portrayal of his painful childhood is designed to hit, this dramedy still has plenty of “-edy” left in it.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.