‘Too Much’ Review: Lena Dunham And Meg Stalter’s Irreverent Series Is Your New Favorite Relatable Rom-Com

Love may be patient and love may be kind, but it’s also messy as hell. Too Much, Lena Dunham‘s new Netflix comedy, understands that all too well and delivers one of the most oddly relatable love stories on television in recent years.

In this winning semi-autobiographical series from the Girls creator, Meg Stalter stars as Jessica, a woman who uproots her life in New York after a breakup with Zev (Michael Zegen) and a breakdown over his new relationship with a knitting influencer named Wendy Jones (Emily Ratajkowski). Determined to reroute herself, Jessica packs up the only life she’s ever known and moves across the pond to work on a London-based project through her company.

After touching down in the U.K., however, Jessica is faced with the reality that the grass may not always be greener and that the country is not as it is depicted in the movies she grew up watching alongside her mom (Rita Wilson), sister (Dunham), and grandmother (Rhea Perlman). Luckily, within hours of landing at Heathrow, she meets a sexy and mysterious musician, Felix (Will Sharpe), with whom she immediately hits it off. From there, the pair fall quickly, madly, and deeply in love in the face of outside influence and inner demons.

When examining a romantic comedy, especially one playing out over the course of a ten-hour series rather than a two-hour (or preferably 90 minutes, if I’m being honest) film, I like to ask myself if it made me laugh as much as it made me want the kind of love shown on screen. I think back on my own Mount Rushmore of rom-coms, including 27 Dresses, Notting Hill, 50 First Dates, the list goes on and on. But I think the one thing that always gets me about those movies is how unrealistic they are. Even as you’re watching, you find yourself in awe at how little the characters feel like people you know. I’ve even found myself clapping when a true-to-life character or event happens because of how silly the surrounding elements feel.

Too Much, an apt title for a rom-com according to every woman who has ever been either the initiator or the more invested one in a relationship, is one of the few to get this part right. The show will make you laugh, that much is for sure. If you are a fan of Dunham’s previous works, primarily Girls, the comedy styling is very much similar to her HBO breakout and feels true to who she is and what she has to say. Stalter, for having to play a Dunham-esque character, creates an identity that is wholly original yet deeply understandable to every woman out there. Questions of “do I fit in?” run simultaneously with thoughts of “do I want to fit in?” and it feels like a pain that is universal to every woman’s experience.

On the love side of the coin, it’s just as hard to watch someone put themselves out there in a vulnerable and authentic way and hope that they will be received with open arms. The show excels at crafting a romance between Jessica and Felix that requires give and take on both ends, not just Jessica’s uncompromising point of view and thoughts. While told through her lens, Dunham and her British musician husband/EP, Luis Felber, create a dynamic that examines how the other person’s own trauma and experiences play a role in every thought, choice, and action both in and out of the relationship.

This show could not have come at a more opportune time, as I’ve spent a lot of time in recent weeks thinking about garbage. No, not the real “take it to the curb once a week kind.” My father and I recently had a long conversation about how we all carry around our own garbage — more commonly called “baggage” in TV shows and movies, I think — and how the biggest job we will ever have in life is not letting it influence the good things that deserve to be pure. It’s why I found it so coincidental that Too Much, a show that expressly asks us to be real about our crap, should fall into my lap at the time it did.

Sadly, even the characters we’re meant to hate are built out in a way that makes us question whether or not they are worthy of our animosity. Very early on, the show tells us that Zev is not a good guy and points to many, many instances of how he dismissed and belittled Jessica until their relationship felt like pressing on an open wound. Even that, though, is examined later in a way that relates back to each of us being human and fallible. It’s hard to find fault in this series’ exploration of how we approach love, especially when we know that each of us carries something that we think makes us unworthy of another person.

On the whole, it’s hard for me to find fault in the series, other than the occasional joke or gag that doesn’t land right. Even then, however, it feels like we’re back in the glory days of Girls and dealing with human interactions that are laughable down the line. On the surface, Too Much is a brilliant rom-com that will have you begging for a second season moments after finishing the first. Dig a little deeper and you will find a beautiful and touching story about love and self-discovery in an age where everyone is comparing themselves to the seemingly-perfect people on social media.

It’s hard not to say that Netflix has another Nobody Wants This, albeit a quirkier and more unconventional one, on their hands. Thanks to Stalter and Dunham, Too Much is a winning comedy that will remind you to adjust your expectations for finding a match, but keep your heart open. Love may be messy, but it’s also patient and kind… or so they say.

Too Much Season 1 is now streaming on Netflix.