Lena Dunham’s ‘Too A lot’ continues 2025’s TV pattern of abortion illustration by way of NewsFlicks

Lena Dunham is not any stranger to depicting abortion onscreen.

In Season 4 of Ladies, Mimi-Rose (Gillian Jacobs) casually tells her boyfriend, Adam (Adam Driving force), that she’s had an abortion. Whilst her revelation results in a bigger argument, her preliminary commentary presented a no-frills tackle a debatable subject. (In 2016, Dunham additionally got here underneath fireplace for feedback about wishing she’d had an abortion, for which she later apologized.)

Now, Dunham continues to convey abortion to TV along with her new Netflix collection, Too A lot. The abortion takes position within the display’s 5th episode, titled “Purple Valentine.” The title is a riff at the 2010 movie Blue Valentine, which charts a courting from its romantic starting to its painful finish. Fittingly, the episode follows go well with, with Too A lot‘s lead Jessica (Hacks‘ Megan Stalter) reminiscing on her eight-year courting along with her ex, Zev (Michael Zegen), all the way through a ketamine go back and forth.

Whilst the accumulation to the ketamine go back and forth itself is slightly clunky, “Purple Valentine”s prolonged flashback collection is an emotional wrecking ball. Jessica and Zev pass from a pizza meet-cute and a loving courting to hating and resenting one every other. Zev, specifically, grows disdainful of Jessica, tossing her crimson pillows once they transfer in in combination, bashing her love of truth TV, and lowering her anxieties about their courting to not anything greater than “sob tales.”

All of the episode re-contextualizes what we learn about Jessica and her relationships prior to she moved to London. She’s now not simply the “loopy ex-girlfriend” archetype offered in episode 1, which noticed her destroy again into her previous rental and scare Zev and his new lady friend, Wendy (Emily Ratajkowski). That was once admittedly now not the most efficient transfer, however there is extra intensity and historical past to her than that freakout. We be told that Zev made her surrender a canine they were given in combination, which provides better importance to her attachment to her present canine, Astrid — and to her present boyfriend Felix’s (Will Sharpe, The White Lotus) deal with her. We additionally be told that the pair as soon as dreamed of getting children in combination, and that on the finish of the connection, Jessica were given an abortion.

Too A lot‘s abortion storyline makes for a brutal breakup — however now not how you’ll be expecting.

All over a specifically tough patch in her and Zev’s courting, Jessica cheats on him and has unprotected intercourse with a manufacturing assistant she’s been operating with. She will get pregnant, with Too A lot closely implying that the manufacturing assistant is the daddy as an alternative of Zev.

A distraught Jessica prepares to inform Zev about her being pregnant, but if he comes house and berates her for sitting by myself at nighttime, she switches gears to the most important however devastating query: “Do you continue to love me? In any respect?”

“I have no idea,” he replies.

“OK, smartly, I am pregnant, so I assume I will pass get an abortion or one thing,” Jessica says.

“Yeah, that is most definitely the precise thought,” Zev says.

The informal language — Jessica’s “or one thing”; Zev’s almost-flippant “most definitely the precise thought” — disguises the serious feelings of the scene. There may be a large number of feeling sure up in Jessica’s commentary, which comes thru in Stalter’s uncooked dramatic efficiency. It is transparent Jessica desires this second to be a larger deal, one during which Zev’s love resurfaces sufficient to convenience her. In any case, it was once simply previous within the episode that he informed Jessica’s circle of relatives he concept she “would make a great mom.”

Her reaction? “I need to have children with you.”

However that need and love fades over the process the remainder of the episode, ensuing within the quick trade above with Zev. The abortion marks a brutal bookend to these previous talks about circle of relatives, performing as a definitive finish to the connection.

Too A lot joins different 2025 displays, like Ginny & Georgia and Adults, in depicting abortion.

Whilst Too A lot does not shy clear of the emotional luggage of the abortion, it additionally does not stigmatize Jessica’s resolution. Nor does it painting the real process as bad or painful past Jessica’s disappointment over her breakup. That there is no hand-wringing or quandary over the abortion itself remembers Mimi-Rose’s abortion in Ladies, which significantly didn’t display the real process.

Any frank portrayal of abortion onscreen feels related now, because the Trump management objectives reproductive rights, together with the proper to an abortion. And Too A lot isn’t by myself in its illustration of abortion within the present TV panorama. Previous this 12 months, Ginny & Georgia Season 3 took an extended, considerate solution to Ginny’s (Antonia Gentry) option to get an abortion, in a similar way now not overdramatizing the process. In different places, FX’s Adults tackled those problems from a unique perspective, introducing a teenager persona who is traveled to New York with a purpose to get an abortion, as she cannot get one in her state.

Whilst those approaches vary from the comedic to the dramatic, none of them include judgment over the being pregnant or a personality’s resolution to terminate it. As a substitute, they are an important portrayals of a clinical process that masses of hundreds of girls get in keeping with 12 months in the US. (In 2023, following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, that quantity rose to over one million.) Finally, those considerate depictions don’t seem to be simply plot issues. They are vital reminders to audience that abortion is a chance, and — regardless of what the federal government would possibly say — a human proper.

Too A lot is now streaming on Netflix.