A week after Lena Dunham’s second major TV project since Girls landed on Netflix and critics have, for the most part, been surprisingly ungenerous. Aside from claims that Too Much is an ‘underbaked disappointment’ and ‘not as good as Girls’, plenty of reviews have referenced the protagonists’, Jessica (Megan Stalter) and Felix (Will Sharpe), distinct lack of chemistry.
Given that the romantic comedy – which is loosely based on co-creators Dunham and Luis Felber's own romance – tracks Felix and Jessica’s relationship from their first meeting to their wedding day, and that they have sex in almost every episode, this criticism rings alarm bells. What exactly do they mean? What were they hoping for? In what ways did Stalter and Sharpe, or indeed the directors, fall short on this front?
The Hollywood Reporter, for one, accused the Netflix series of having ‘intimacy issues’, admitting that there is plenty of ‘enthusiastic sex’ and ‘confessional conversation’ but too few ‘lingering gazes’ or ‘intense close-ups’. This seems fair. Their critic called Jessica and Felix’s romance ‘sweet enough to like but too cool to fall head over heels for’ and writes that ‘for a whirlwind romance, Too Much feels awfully dispassionate’. This I might question.
Meanwhile, The Atlantic wrote that ‘romance on-screen has never been colder’. The review reads, ‘Two years ago, on a New Yorker podcast lamenting the modern state of the rom-com, Alexandra Schwartz noted that the most crucial quality for any romance is this: “You have to believe that these two people want to be together, and you have to buy in.” On this front, Too Much barely even tries.’ Adding that Felix and Jessica have ‘almost negative chemistry’, they claim the pair stay together ‘out of what feels like inertia’. Let’s put a pin in that one too.
Elsewhere in a Reddit thread discussing the Netflix show, one user wrote that the scene where Jessica gets an Uber to join Felix’s protest on the M25 and confess her love for him ‘fell totally flat’ and made them realise ‘they really had no chemistry’. Another review for The Arts Fuse called Jessica ‘an infuriating heroine who is very difficult to root for’ – surely penned by someone unfamiliar with Girls – and adds, ‘I wondered what Felix saw in her, especially since their romantic chemistry is sorely lacking (a point underscored by their many cringeworthy sex scenes).’
'I wondered what Felix saw in her, especially since their romantic chemistry is sorely lacking.'
The Arts Fuse
While it’s unlikely any of these critics had ill intentions, the suggestions that Felix and Jessica have ‘negative chemistry’, that their romance is ‘dispassionate’ or that their sex scenes are ‘cringeworthy’ feel suspicious – and familiar.
In ten episodes we see the protagonists stay up all night talking about everything from their childhoods to Paddington Bear, we see them get jealous of one another, we seem them argue, we see them look after each other, move in together and slowly surrender themselves to their expansive and overwhelming feelings. In any sense, it’s hard to imagine how this could be deemed dispassionate.
Both Felix and Jessica are hapless, chaotic people with a distinct lack of order and purpose in their everyday lives. The fact they are drawn to each other against all odds can only be explained by the inexplicable – as is often the case in real life. Their connection is largely inconvenient and illogical, which is exactly why it’s so romantic.
We saw similar critique crop up after the hotly anticipated release of One Day on Netflix last year. A review in The New Statesman called the series ‘a romcom without any chemistry’ and decried the adaptation as ‘unconvincing’. Meanwhile The Times called out ‘the slightly lacking chemistry between the two main actors’, Ambika Mod (who played Emma Morley) and Leo Woodall (who played Dexter Mayhew).
We saw it again when Nicola Coughlan’s character Penelope Featherington was announced as the romantic lead of season three of Bridgerton. Starring opposite Luke Newton’s Colin Bridgerton, it didn’t take long before some disparaging think pieces concluded that Coughlan does not have what it takes to be a leading lady. ‘Reader, she is not hot, and there is no escaping it,’ reads a particularly mean-spirited review in The Spectator. ‘Coughlan is an actress of great value, and might be adored, but she is simply not plausible as the friend who would catch the handsome rich aristocrat Colin Bridgerton’s eye in that way.’
The difference between the latter critique and the former is that it is not so thinly veiled. What all three shows have in common is an unconventional romantic pairing as their leads, whether in terms of race, body shape or beauty standards at large. It is hard to distinguish the shared ‘lack of chemistry’ criticism leveraged at all three shows from this fact – even if, thankfully, it remains in the minority.
Instead, it shows what actors, producers and casting directors are up against. As a forward-thinking society, we claim we want to see more diversity on screen, and for it not to become the sole focus or storyline. However, three big budget Netflix shows that have attempted to do just that have been labelled unconvincing and unromantic – perhaps the worst thing a romcom can be called.
Someone who has thought about this dichotomy a great deal after experiencing it first hand is Mod herself. ‘You have a double whammy in this adaptation where a lot of people who know the story and read the book or watched the film probably didn’t picture an Emma who looked like me,’ she told Glamour.
Speaking about the wildly different receptions she and her co-star Woodall received from fans, she added: ‘The romance genre can be a double-edged sword at points. For a long time, it has not been a genre that’s been respected because it’s mainly for women, and now it’s having a sort of resurgence. But it always seems to be the male characters and the male protagonists and the male actors who are elevated from having done a rom-com, and it’s the female characters who don’t get the same recognition, who don’t get the same elevation, who don’t get the same moment.’
The comment about Stalter being ‘an infuriating heroine’ springs to mind. As does the widespread adoration of Sharpe since the show aired. To tackle this pattern, which has in turn become a problem, it seems like society’s gripes with unconventional, complex and diverse female leads is a good place to start.
Until we can not only accept but embrace these characters, TV creators will be hard pushed to convince audiences that their romances are worth rooting for. Let’s hope the viewing figures – an area where all three shows triumph – continue to successfully drown out the negativity. As Jessica, Emma and Penelope serve to prove, there’s great power in numbers.