Lena Dunham is making her big, bold return to TV in the most devastating fashion. If you haven’t already, you need to go watch Too Much, which follows American girlie Jess as she navigates dating in London after a breakup that rocked her world. Think Emily in Paris, but less polished, more spitting, and with British men. Dunham draws on her own time dating in London (and eventually meeting her husband) to write the show.
As someone who moved to London in my late twenties as a single woman with far too many feelings, it hit hard. Felix—the closed-off, indie musician with more exes than clean mugs? I know him. I dated him. I slept with him. He hurt me. If you’re wondering what dating in London is actually like, Too Much nails it in an episode.
A lot struck me while watching. Had Dunham actually been on Instagram in the last decade? Why did our luminous, plus-sized protagonist so often wrap herself in romantic, prairie-like nightgowns? And why was I sobbing uncontrollably at the flashbacks of Jess and Zev?
In episode five, we dive deeper into the breakup that haunts Jess and lingers like a third person in her new relationship with Felix. We witness the slow unravelling of Jess and Zev’s relationship. It’s like 500 Days of Summer, condensed into forty minutes and told from the side we rarely get to see. We watch Zev go from being enthralled by Jess—talking about kids, massaging her grandmother’s feet (sorry, what?)—to slowly detaching.
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Some breakups happen with a crash and a bang. You close your eyes, and when you open them, the world looks slightly different. Every colour feels nauseatingly bright. But in Too Much, we experience the devastating opposite: the slow-death breakup. Zev inches away, dismantling Jess piece by piece with tiny, cutting remarks. He begins a “friendship” with the gorgeous woman he’ll date right after her.
“You make me feel fucking crazy. Like I’m just like drowning in an ocean, waving my arms around for help, and you’re just standing there, smiling at me,” Jess says, sobbing in the dark as Zev refuses to face her.
