Well, this one certainly clears up quite a few questions. For starters: Why is this episode of Too Much nearly twice as long as all the other ones? And that’s quite simply because it’s two episodes in one. In the present, Jessica attends a gig that Felix’s band is playing at a petting zoo, meets his intimidatingly glamorous circle of friends, does too much ketamine, and tells Felix she loves him without getting an “I love you too” in reply. She doesn’t even get a cool Han Solo “I know” comeback out of it, just a bunch of awkward word salad. 

And in the past, we see the entire history of her relationship with Zev, from meet-cute to break-up. It does not go the way you think, and that’s what answers the second, much more important question: Why is Jessica Salmon, y’know, Like This? In part the answer is her family, a collection of women with deep-rooted self-image and relationship issues whose love language is insult comedy. But primarily, it’s Zev. 

You remember Zev, right? The adorable (if ultimately unfaithful and too into Weezer) guy whom the dreaded Wendy Jones stole away from her? The perfect man, with whom Jessica had planned a perfect life, the collapse of which is the whole reason for her attempt to start over in London? Turns out he’s an emotionally abusive psychopath. I’m serious: Mob bosses said less mean things to each other on The Penguin before they lit each other on fire than Zev says to Jessica when she mistakenly thanks him for a coffee he actually brewed for himself. I mean, this dude makes Carmela Soprano seem warm and affectionate. He makes her get rid of her dog, for crying out loud. Her dog!

The reasons why he’s, y’know, Like This are all drearily predictable. Feeling stymied in his writing career — he loudly complains about not getting hired to write for Pitchfork — he externalizes his failures and treats Jessica as their embodiment. He’s mean to her about her fashion sense, which doesn’t show off her body the way he wants it shown off; since she doesn’t have a traditional model-actress figure the critique feels like one not just of her clothes, but of her body itself. By the time Wendy Jones enters the picture, reawakening all the boyish charm he once aimed Jessica’s way, his cruelty is constant. He’ll be vicious with her over anything and nothing, from the moment he sees her to the moment he leaves. 

When Jessica ends up needing an abortion after a “look how spontaneous I’m being” fling with a production assistant at her latest gig, she finally decides to break things off with Zev. She outlines her reasons in a speech that actor Megan Stalter seems to bring forth from her bile ducts somewhere, with a clarity about who he is and what he’s done that’s hugely gratifying to hear after watching this poor woman get the shit kicked out of her for 20 or 30 minutes. “You just want to beat me into submission,” she says, accurately. “Maybe not with your fists, but with your words, and your lack of love.” She’s got him dead to rights. But she still affords him the grace of an opportunity to tell her he still loves her. The door is still open, if just a crack.

Zev slams it shut as hard as he possibly can. After first flipping the script so that it’s Jessica, not himself, who kept the other person trapped in a relationship she didn’t want, he says sure, it’s possible he’s made her feel as lonely as she claims to feel. But there’s an alternate explanation that he prefers: “At the root of it all, you really are just a fucking cunt.” The crooked-mouthed, open-jawed look of combined horror, sadness, fury, disgust, and terrible clarity that comes over Jessica’s face when she hears this shocking statement is Stalter’s finest moment on the show so far.

The thing is, there’s a hint of truth in what Zev is saying, which makes his cruelties hard for Jessica not to have internalized in some way. When he tells her that, in a sense, it’s selfish to keep living the way her family taught her to live without getting into therapy to work through those issues, he’s kind of right. To the extent we are able, we are obligated to take care of mental health in order to be a better person to those we love. But then, what’s Zev’s excuse? What’s his reason for treating this beautiful woman he claims to love like an emotional piñata for months and months, if not his own unresolved issues as described above? In his mind there are no such things, really, whether or not he’s in therapy himself. It’s all Jessica. 

So here you have a guy who Jessica says gave her the kind of love she never in a million years thought she’d get to experience, only to yank it away and replace it with emotional abuse with little to no connection to anything she’s actually doing or saying. Of course that kind of capriciousness with her heart would leave her deeply suspicious that when people act like they like her, they are in some way lying about it. Of course it would leave her searching for perpetual reassurance, in much the same way Zev falsely accused her of doing during their toxic relationship. Of course she’s worried that Felix is going to wind back up with his gorgeous ex-lover of ten years who has his name tattooed on her lower back and who is played by Adèle Exarchopoulos (who is very funny as an oblivious dickhead). Zev wound up with Emily Ratajkowski, didn’t he??

Once again, all of writer-director Lena Dunham’s talents are on display here: crackling dramedy dialogue with jokes that feel organic to the characters instead of setup/punchline setup/punchline; loving city photography, this time of her old stomping grounds in New York; an ability to depict both joyous and painful moments in romantic relationship without getting cutesy or maudlin. And the woman simply loves a demimonde, whether that’s Jewish suburbanites bickering on Long Island or drugged-up rich girls slumming it in London. 

I’ll level with you here. Once I saw that an hour-long episode of this show was coming up, I thought “oh brother, here we go, A Very Special Episode.” Not really, as it turns out — the closest it comes to the old school “Very Special Episode” designation, Jessica’s abortion, is handled matter-of-factly as the perfectly normal medical procedure it is. 

And while this is technically the kind of traumatic backstory that defines so many characters on prestige TV today, it’s really just the kind of shitty situation anyone can find themselves in. It’s not like Jessica’s sister committed suicide by walking naked out onto the ice during an Alaskan perpetual nightfall, you know? It’s not that kind of traumatic backstory: She just met a guy she thought was great who turned out to be a real piece of garbage. (I actually feel bad for actor Michael Zegen, who’s so grimly convincing as this guy that he’s going to remind a lot of people of their worst exes for the foreseeable future.) Now she’s finally worked up the courage to tell another man she loves him, but he’s incapable of receiving it. Is that better or worse than sucking it up like a sponge until she’s got nothing left to squeeze out of her?

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.