In her new Netflix series Too Much, Lena Dunham does the impossible. She manages to make internet boyfriend Andrew Scott — yes, the Hot Priest himself — utterly unattractive.
Scott plays Jim, a film director who's shooting a big Christmas commercial that Too Much's lead Jessica (Megan Stalter) is supervising. Right off the bat, Dunham and Scott cement Jim as the epitome of arrogance and rudeness. He swans up to a location scouting trip 45 minutes late, he calls shotgun to sit "separately from all the people," and he forcibly removes a pair of bunny ears from Jessica's head, which she'd gotten from a kids' charity. Already not off to a great start, Jim!
Things go from bad to worse over a dinner with Jessica, in which Jim fights with Letterboxd reviewers' criticisms of his "undercooked" female characters, then proceeds to rag on his ex-wife Anita.
"She always says that anger isn't a reason enough to make films, you know?" Jim says. "But she's never made anything, except our children, so what the fuck does she know?"
These early scenes cement Jim as egotistical as can be, a far cry from some of the more sensitive, understanding roles that won Scott the internet's affection, like Fleabag's Hot Priest. But Jim's also missing the edge and alluring villainy of other major Scott roles, like Tom Ripley in Ripley, or Moriarty in Sherlock.
Even in Scott and Dunham's prior collaboration, Catherine Called Birdy, the pair managed to craft a medieval lord character who's bawdy and a tad goofy, but still cares deeply for his daughter Catherine (Bella Ramsey). Here, though, Dunham and Scott cleverly play with audience expectations of Scott as an onscreen heartthrob, turning the much-crushed-on actor into an ego machine we love to hate.
That ego all comes to a head when Jim and Jessica hook up after dinner, where Jim's idea of dirty talk is all focused on him. First, he rambles on and on about how he can just deny Jessica pleasure. (She's unimpressed.) Then, he asks her to tell him to "direct me," to validate his portrayal of women, and to say how much she loves his movies.
"They're awesome, I stream all your movies," Jessica says.
"You stream them? Are they available on streaming?" Jim asks. "Do they make you stream?"
If you hadn't already gotten the ick from all of Jim's other red flags, his wordplay around streaming, of all things, must surely put you off, right? Right?
The entire scene calls to mind the myriad awkward sex scenes from Dunham's Girls, from Adam's (Adam Driver) unsettling dirty talk to Booth Jonathan (Jorma Taccone) locking Marnie (Allison Williams) in an art installation as foreplay. Her response? "You're so fucking talented." Hey, that's exactly what Jim wants to hear!
Luckily, Jessica is not Marnie, and her response to Jim's self-indulgence is one of bemusement, even as she tries her best to play into it. She draws the line at being mistaken for Jim's ex — better late than never! — but that lapsed hookup isn't the last we see of Jim.
In the show's penultimate episode, Jim returns for one last cringe-worthy scene, where he makes awkward and uninvited advances on a production assistant, then starts mimicking Jessica like a preschooler. It's a damning conclusion to the Jim saga, one that proves that any perceived slight of ego can render someone completely pathetic. Not even Hot Priests are immune!
Too Much is now streaming on Netflix.
