If you asked me what I think the best television show of all time is, the show with no bad episodes and endless perfect ones, my answer would have to be Lena Dunham’s Girls. The show follows these four chaotic women and the everyday challenges they face, and it is a true testament to the messiness of girlhood. Lena Dunham, despite the misogynistic vitriol she has received, has an extreme talent for writing complicated female characters that feel genuine. Part of this is because she takes so much from her own experiences and feelings; Girls’s Hannah is based on Dunham at the time she was created, while the other characters have various circumstances that reflect Dunham’s real life. Even if the women she creates can be annoying at times, they are incredibly authentic and read as a truly vulnerable creation for Dunham.

This is why Dunham’s much awaited return to TV, a Netflix romcom called Too Much, works so well. The show is explicitly based on Dunham’s breakup with longterm boyfriend (music producer Jack Antonoff) and her subsequent move to London where she married a musician. As such, her show follows Jessica (Meg Stalter), who has just gotten out of a seven-year relationship with her ex Zev (Michael Zegen) and moves to London for work, where she falls for the charming yet flawed indie musician Felix (Will Sharpe). 

Jessica is incredibly flawed from the jump, which may be why critics are struggling with this show. Despite the success of Girls, there has always been hatred for the “annoying” way Dunham writes her characters. Dunham has also received an outsized amount of hatred merely for existing, as even fans of Girls often add the disclaimer that they dislike her. And while you could focus on a number of endearing women in Girls who were not Dunham self-inserts, this time around, the sole protagonist in Too Much is the Dunham stand-in. For those who cannot seem to grasp that women can be complicated and messy, this is surely hell.

Fortunately for me, I love a flawed woman and I love Lena Dunham’s writing. Jessica is a hilarious main character that feels incredibly lived-in. She spends her days making video messages for her ex’s new fiancee Wendy (Emily Ratajowski), obsessing over her hairless chihuahua Astrid, thinking about sex, and stressing over work. Even if Jessica says the wrong things at times or gives you second-hand embarrassment (which Stalter plays so well!), she feels real and relatable. We could all be Jessica, as we have all embarrassed ourselves in front of a love interest or posted something accidentally on social media. But Dunham portrays these embarrassing moments with a sense of confidence; she acknowledges when Jessica is in the wrong but also when being “too much” is okay! Stalter captures this nerve perfectly and proves that she is a bona fide star. She has so many instantly iconic lines here while also sensitively mastering the emotional moments. The cringe from Jessica becomes charming because of how self-assured Stalter is with her character. 

Jessica’s loud, fun, excitingly irritating personality makes Felix a great love interest too. He is quieter and more introspective, but he loves Jessica for who she is. Their romance has their fair share of bumps, but that actually adds to the realism of their dynamic. Both Felix and Jessica have to unpack their personal traumas in order to understand how to be a good lover. For Jessica, this is letting go of the pain Zev caused her, the loss of her father, and the madness of her family. For Felix, this is coming to terms with his emotions, his truly awful family, and his childhood trauma. These topics could be handled cumbersomely by a lesser writer, but Dunham has always excelled in portraying sensitive issues with a human lens. Jessica’s traumatic abortion and Felix’s past with abuse are tackled with realism and give real depth to the characters. Jessica does not have the most appropriate response to Felix’s past at first, while Felix struggles to take interest in Jessica venting about her past. While it might be hard to watch, this is the way people with emotional blockages would react to learning those things about their partner. Felix struggles to communicate because of how quiet he is, and Jessica struggles to cope without humor. The two leads have such amazing chemistry that you really cannot help but root for these two incredibly troubled people.

Alas, the show loses some of its flair when it focuses on unnecessary side characters. Too many of Felix’s friends and too many of Jessica’s coworkers steal screen-time away from our main couple. Jessica’s Gen-Z co-workers’ Gen-Z humor feels forced, and I genuinely did not care nor understand who Polly (Adèle Exarchopoulos) was. But there are other characters—like Lena Dunham herself playing Jessica’s equally emotionally stunted sister—who feel warranted and add a lot of depth to the show. In fact, the highs of Girls are felt with the side characters during the scenes where Jessica and her boss (Naomi Watts in one of her funniest bit roles) do cocaine and have simultaneous breakdowns at a party together or where Andrew Scott appears as a sleazy film director who thinks he truly understands how to make films about women and sex workers only to beg Jessica to tell him his films are bad when they almost have sex. The absurdity of the scenarios lead to absurdly funny character moments.

Too Much works at its best when it is either trying to be incredibly funny or incredibly raw and relatable. The actual ending is a bit too rushed, but the closure between Jessica and Wendy is so incredibly cathartic that it really makes the entire season. While the future of the show is unclear given its decent streaming numbers but ultimately satisfying ending, I am glad it exists no matter the outcome. Meg Stalter has proved to the world that she has enough star quality to not only lead but carry a show. The world needed more Lena Dunham at her most earnest and vulnerable, and we absolutely received it.

8/10