I’m late to the Lena Dunham party, not having seen Girls or any of her independent films, but I was curious about Too Much since it stars Megan Stalter (Jimmy’s daffy assistant Kayla on Hacks). I was also interested to see how its portrait of Jewish characters compared to last year’s hit rom-com, Nobody Wants This, which leaned heavily into its Jewish themes. Dunham, who identifies as Jewish, is perhaps leaning into it a bit in her own life, having had a Jewish wedding ceremony and last year acting in and producing Treasure, about a Holocaust survivor and his daughter.
Although there are a fair number of Jewish actors in the cast, there’s not, however, a lot that’s overtly Jewish about Too Much, and how Dunham (writer, director and co-creator with her husband, Luis Felber) has crafted the Jewish characters is pretty frustrating. Jess Salmon (Stalter) and all the women in her family are living at the Long Island home of her grandmother Dottie (Rhea Perlman) and the older generations smack of Jewish female stereotypes, including laying the blame on the mothers for all their problems.
Dottie is the sassy, critical outspoken widowed grandmother, and her daughter Lois (Rita Wilson), also a widow, is the critical, fitness-fixated mother to Jess and her sister Nora (Dunham). Lois, about to go on a date, tells Nora her love “is not unconditional” when Nora won’t get out of bed after her husband Jameson (Andrew Rannels) leaves her to experiment with polyamory (but the same night Lois comforts a sobbing Nora who’s still in bed).
Of the Salmon household, Jess describes it as an “intergenerational Grey Gardens Hell”, and they’ve all found themselves there because, as per Dottie, they all married “goys.” Jess’s seemingly nice, long-term ex-boyfriend Zev (Michael Zegen, the one-time Mr. Maisel) is actually Jewish, but brutally broke up with Jess recently, casting her aside for a model/influencer, Wendy Jones (Emily Ratajkowski). One of the funny and heartbreaking devices of the show is all the time Jess spends watching videos Wendy posts to social media, and has running one-way conversations with her.
The Salmon women are close in their own way, and I would have liked to see more of her family over the course of the show, especially the perfectly coiffed, sharp-tongued Dottie, if they had been better developed.
A would-be filmmaker, Jess has, as Jameson notes, lost her spark and is walking around their production office in a state of dazed devastation. He arranges for her to transfer to their London office to work on a Christmas commercial, aware of her deep feelings for pastoral England and swoon-worthy Regency-era period costume dramas. On her first night in London, she goes alone to a bar and meets Felix (Will Sharpe), a musician, and immediately connects with him. Soon they’re staying up all night talking about past loves, her late, beloved father (Kit Harrington) and Felix’s sobriety. After knowing each other for only 10 days, Jess brings him to a dinner party thrown by her London boss (Richard E. Grant) and his wife (Naomi Watts), the two veteran actors a great delight as cocaine brings about wild dancing and Jess’s unfiltered vulnerability. Sharpe and Stalter have abundant chemistry and the blossoming romance between Felix and Jess – who is struggling to trust again, and feel that she has any instincts she can rely on (something she blames unfairly on unsupportive and indifferent Lois) – is sweet and charming to watch as it unfolds.
My other criticism of Too Much is that Dunham overstuffs it with an excess of characters in the British office. Besides her boss, there’s a Black female colleague and two LGBTQ co-workers, which I think is her way of addressing the pillorying she received over the lack of representation on Girls. There are too many stories for the audience to be able to fully invest in, and some that would have done more in furtherance of the show get short shrift, like Dottie and Lois.
While Too Much falls back on the negative Jewish female tropes that was also a problem on Nobody (and of course has been a default take in Jewish shows and films going back at least to Woody Allen), the two leads sell the show. Sharpe, who I didn’t even immediately recognize as the tour guide from A Real Pain (audiences may also know him from The White Lotus), portrays Felix as a guy who’s still sorting himself out, a failing band and a string of women he ghosted out of relationships in his wake, plus he’s essentially homeless. But he’s decent, kind to Jess and appreciates her as she is: a Mark Darcy to her Bridget Jones, a reference Jess would wholeheartedly approve of.
Unlike her character on Hacks, who can be too much, Stalter makes Jess’s pain, confusion, honesty, and hopefulness endearing and relatable. She’s self-destructive, but Stalter makes it worthwhile to root for her. Stalter, who has a background in improv, proves herself to be a deft actor in this more serious role, affecting as an anguished woman coming out of a terrible breakup and trying to find her way back to who she was before Zev, and trying to live out her own version of Sense and Sensibility.
All episodes are available for streaming on Netflix.
