'Too Much' Leans Into Too Many Rom-Com Tropes

With its heroine’s infamous proclamation that she might be the “voice of my generation line … or at least a voice of a generation” to the way it almost completely ignored topics like gentrification and student loans, Lena Dunham’s HBO comedy Girls premiered in 2012 as a send-up of all those oblivious and ignorant 20-somethings who descend upon New York or Los Angeles, bachelor’s degrees in hand. (I’m cringing at the memory of my old cover letters) They arrive, each year, not with the hope — but the assumption — that we will walk right into an editorial assistantship at a magazine, a supporting role in a lauded off-Broadway play, a gopher for a father-figure-like music mogul, a finance gig with a starting six-figure salary… Even casting four "nepo babies" as its leads back in the 2010s let Girls wink to its audience that it knows we know it knows what it’s doing.

With her new series, Too Much, which she co-created with her husband, Luis Felber, Dunham goes after a trope about women of a certain age by leaning hard into it. Too Much, which premiered with all episodes on July 10, 2025, on Netflix, stars Hacks breakout Megan Stalter as the recently single-not-by-choice Jessica, who moves to London for work and also maybe with the hope of falling in love.

Raised in a matriarchal household where viewings of Emma Thompson’s Sense & Sensibility were treated like their own hours of worship, Jess is the avatar for the girls from Girls a decade and change after they land at JFK or LAX; when they’re now at an age where it’s no longer cute or comical to not to have the whole careers, partners and life stuff all figured out. This is a great entry topic for a writer with Dunham’s background. What happens when society no longer gives the Girls of a certain age as much of a pass? Or what does it truly take to get over a gaslighting ex? Where things get murky with Too Much is when the show starts to add, well, too much.