'Too Much': How Lena Dunham made the year's most devastating episode of TV

USA Today

11-07-2025

Spoiler alert! The following story contains major details about "Pink Valentine," the fifth episode of new Netflix series "Too Much" (now streaming).
There's that oft-repeated chestnut: It takes half the time you dated someone in order to fully get over them.
Lena Dunham thinks that's bogus. In her semiautobiographical new Netflix series 'Too Much' (now streaming), a frenetic thirtysomething named Jessica (Megan Stalter) moves from New York to London after a scarring breakup, where she falls in love with Felix (Will Sharpe), a mellow indie rocker and recovering addict. But even as they let their guards down with each other, Jessica is still haunted by the specter of her disapproving ex, Zev (Michael Zegen).
'When you're young, you're like, 'Oh, maybe if I am still thinking about an ex-partner, it means that I'm still in love with my ex-partner,'' says Dunham, 39, who married British musician Luis Felber in 2021. But 'what you're put through and what it leaves you feeling stays with you, no matter what. Especially as you get older and accumulate more exes, it's complicated.'
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Jessica struggles to move on from Zev throughout the frequently surreal first season, as he invades her sexual fantasies and she catches herself repeating their old rituals with Felix. But in the show's standout fifth episode, 'Pink Valentine,' we find out why, exactly, Jessica is so plagued by Zev's memory. In an episode-long flashback spurred by ingesting too much ketamine, Jessica reflects on their impossibly sweet meet-cute at a Brooklyn bar, followed by rapid-fire romantic milestones such as meeting her family and moving in together.
They eventually begin to grow apart, as Zev starts to nitpick every little thing that Jessica does: how she dresses, what TV she watches and even which cushions she likes. He begins spending time with Wendy (Emily Ratajkowski), a chic social media influencer, and starved for approval, Jessica sleeps with a mop-haired assistant (Beck Nolan) at work.
Dunham wanted viewers to develop their own opinions about Jessica, both good and bad, before pulling back the curtain on her backstory.
'It's like her Rosebud, finally seeing what really happened between Jessica and Zev,' says Dunham, who created and starred in HBO's lightning rod 'Girls' from 2012 to 2017. 'It was really important to see her in all of her dysfunction first. There might be people who are like, 'Girl, why are you acting like that?' And then once you see in Episode 5 how uncertainly she's moving through the world, you can have a different appreciation. When she has her ketamine incident, it helps her realize that she does love Felix and she has something she needs to leave behind.'
Part of what makes the episode so heartbreaking are the subtle wounds that Zev inflicts, making Jessica second-guess herself and apologize for who she is. In the most crushing scene, Jessica tells Zev that she's pregnant and considering an abortion, which he stoically shrugs off. Through tears, she tries to explain how he's bulldozed her self-worth.
'You don't even know how lonely you've made me feel,' she says. 'I used to feel so special about me.'
Stalter improvised that line, which 'just blew me away,' Dunham recalls. We all know what it's like to grow up and have the world slowly beat us down: 'You go from feeling full of possibility to feeling like you're constantly walking on eggshells and living in fear.'
Most people know Stalter from her viral videos and for playing chaotic fan favorite Kayla on HBO Max's 'Hacks.' But part of what makes her such a great comedian, Dunham says, is that she can tap into a deep well of emotions.
'You can tell Meg a story about a pig you saw wearing boots and she'll cry these big, dewdrop tears,' Dunham says. 'I've never seen such pretty tears – I always tell her, 'Meg, you were made to cry on television.''
Dunham, too, was amazed by Zegen ('The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel'), who didn't play Zev as a villain even as his character does and says unimpeachable things.
'Two people can be really good people, but in a relationship, they're their worst selves, and both leave each other feeling unseen,' Dunham says. 'We could do that episode from Zev's perspective and Jessica might've said 15 things that cut at his sense of who he was. They are two people who probably should've stayed together for six months and instead stayed together for six years. And in the process, they broke each other.'
The flashback ends with Jessica getting an abortion and adopting a scrappy shelter dog who's 'beautiful' and 'traumatized,' just like her. Reeling from the breakup, she moves back in with her grandma (Rhea Perlman), older sister (Dunham) and mom (Rita Wilson), who drives around in a creaky taco truck. In one drolly melancholy scene, she starts belting Carole King's 'It's Too Late' as Jessica sobs on her sister's shoulder in the passenger seat.
'I was little bit inspired by that video of Kim Cattrall scatting,' Dunham says. 'When Rita started singing, it was so beautiful and tender. Then I was like, 'Rita, can you bring a little scat to this?' It's the classic thing where your mother's trying to make you feel better, but then she gets too into the song and suddenly it's just her performance. And it was better than anything we could've dreamed.'