‘Too Much’ Episode 8 Recap: White Wedding

Let’s get the criticism out of the way first: The whole “ominous figure from the past appears to me in the present, speaks with me, and interacts with me as if real” device is some real shopworn stuff. It’s right up there with “character walks around as a silent observer inside their painful childhood memories,” a gimmick the show used in the previous episode. I’m just one person, and my experiences are just my own, but I can’t say that I nor anyone I’ve ever spoken to has conducted conversations with abusers from the past as they were actually there, much less hopped up on a sink to have sex with them. 

Directed by Janciza “Jessica’s coworker Kim” Bravo from a script by Lena Dunham and Monica Heisey, this episode of Too Much actually offers a far more compelling and chilling look at Zev in the segments that serve as its bookends. We join Zev talking to an unseen therapist in what’s revealed to be just his second session. We learn he’s been talking mostly about Jessica, his anger toward her over how she hurt him. Zev explains that he had a stereotypical smothering Jewish mother, who demanded total, unwavering adoration in exchange for her love. Zev says that he has an unerring ability to find needy women and give them that kind of love, only for them to hate him in the end. 

Even in writing that summary, I’ve gone back and forth on Zev’s meaning in these segments. Is he defending himself, blaming women like Jessica for spitting in the face of his total commitment? Or is he admitting his self-described  “knight in shining armor” routine falls apart when confronted by women who need things other than himself — like a dog, for example, or a fulfilling career, or a reality-TV-heavy viewing diet — just as his mother’s love would be withdrawn unless he constantly demonstrated his fealty?

Honestly, I’m not sure. Maybe I’ll take four or five magic mushrooms with Auggie and contemplate the mystery of it all at the most excruciating wedding since Beetlejuice and Lydia Dietz’s. 

The bulk of this episode doesn’t involve Zev at all, except insofar as Jessica keeps hallucinating his presence. It’s mostly about Felix dragging her to the outrageously posh wedding of his outrageously posh school chums, Oriel (the striking Industry vet David Jonsson) to the gorgeous aristocrat Georgia-Peach (Black Sails’ Clara Paget). The bride and groom can hardly be contained from sucking face in a manner that would seem uncomfortable, if his cousin Jetta (Alex Thomas-Smith) hadn’t come out and done a command performance of her new single “I’m Horny” in the middle of the reception. That pretty much sets the “uncomfortable” bar right there.

Or does it? Jessica’s experience reaches the level of farce. Seemingly every woman Felix encounters — his dominatrix ex Linnea, his distressingly zoned-out MILF ex-girlfriend Peregrine (House of the Dragon’s Sonoya Mizuno, playing a role a million miles away from sex worker turned spymaster Lady Mysaria), and his not one but two rival French ex-girlfriends, Polly and Wheezy (Josephine de La Baume) — wants to fuck him, and have a physical fight over it. 

One of their tablemates is a recently released upper-class sex criminal. A small child locks her in the bathroom, forcing her to make an escape via the window ledge that triggered my fear of heights so badly I wanted to believe it was a hallucination too. The bride has all her bridesmaids in white. It’s mass hysteria.

While Auggie ponders life’s mysteries via mushrooms and Felix falls off the wagon (by the way, he’s now give three or four completely contradictory timeframes for how long he’s been sober), Jessica grows more and more aghast at these vile rich people. Worse for her is Felix’s ease with fitting back in among them, from adopting their “good show, old bean” argot to indirectly defending inviting a sex creep to your wedding. “They’re cheerful but they’re not kind, and they’re horny but they’re not warm,” she says of these assholes in a combination of fury and fear as she and Felix abruptly depart. It’s one of the best descriptions of a certain kind of rich and powerful person I’ve ever heard.

The case Felix makes for himself is surprisingly strong, I think. He points out that it’s not unusual at all for people to act differently among different groups of people. After all, the sweet and loving Jessica he cuddles with at night is 180 degrees away from the foul-mouthed fury she directs at her family over FaceTime, just to cite one example. He’s always found it difficult to impossible to be around these people, and their hard-partying ways were his maladaptive way of occupying his nights in a way that didn’t remind him of his childhood neglect and abuse. But they’re the people he knows and grew up with, and couldn’t she just suck it up and go along for one night, for his sake, since it’s hard enough for him to get through it as it is?

But to Jessica, this is the same old same old. One way or another Felix is always asking her to cut him some slack, or more accurately cutting it for himself. He can’t say “I love you,” he can’t call her his “girlfriend,” he can’t tell her about his family, he can’t tell her about his friends — he may come around eventually on one or all of these things as we’ve seen, but everything’s done at his pace. Hasn’t she extended him enough credit by now?

So the two angrily part ways in the night, a beautiful floodlit blackness as captured by Bravo’s camera. Assuming we’re headed for a happy ending, this isn’t the end of the road, but it’s something that’s just as important in its way: the first Big Fight, the first Close Call, after that first exchange of I Love Yous. You’ve put your heart on the line, you’ve staked a decent part of your life on it, and now you’re furious at each other. Do you work through it, or do you decide it’s a dealbreaker?

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.