People on the internet famously have no chill. It’s not unheard of for people to hurl abuse at one another over the most innocuous things.
It should come as no surprise, then, that when the trailer dropped for the new Netflix rom-com series Too Much, from creator Lena Dunham, and starring Meg Stalter (Hacks) and Will Sharpe (The White Lotus), people were losing their minds over seeing Sharpe spit into Stalter’s mouth.
While you’d think the internet was excited—more hot sex on television!—the reaction to the scene in the trailer was one of horror and outrage.
If the comments are anything to go by, the trailer for Too Much essentially commits war crimes. The top two comments on the trailer on YouTube are equally dramatic. One says, “That spitting scene is not gonna leave me for a while now 💀”, while the other reads, “THE SPITTING IN MOUTH SCENE VIOLATED ME” (in all caps, for that extra dash of drama).
That’s quite the reaction for a single second in a two-minute trailer, but those commenters weren’t alone. Countless comments on social media were about the spit, and everyone was united in losing their minds over it.
Does nobody remember Girls? Lena Dunham’s smash hit on HBO has aged like the finest of wines, but couldn’t escape controversy during its six-season run. And a lot of that flak came from the staggering amount of explicit sex.
There was even a Season 2 episode, “One Man’s Trash” in which the entire outing was two characters basically going at it non-stop. The fact that a Lena Dunham show includes the sexual act of spitting into someone’s mouth should hardly raise eyebrows at this point, but here we are.
Stalter herself was stunned by the reaction to the spit scene. “It’s crazy. You have to expect a little spit. It was done in one take. What’s wrong with everyone?” she said in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald. It’s a good question, and Stalter is right to ask it. And while the majority were horrified, some were excited about it. One popular tweet read “The spitting in her mouth bit was really just tossed in there like…dammit, now I need to get more context.
The outrage feels out of step once viewers see the scene in context in Too Much—and context, of course, is everything.
The scene takes place at the beginning of Episode 4, “Notting Kill.” In the previous episode, Jess (Stalter) and Felix (Sharpe) had a sexual marathon, going at it all over Jess’s apartment as the pair deepened their relationship on a physical and emotional level.
“Anything” by Adrienne Lenker plays while Stalter looks at Felix, who is still sleeping, and biting her lip in arousal. There’s a sudden cut of the camera, and Jess is now underneath Felix, the early morning sun breaking through behind their kissing faces. It’s a gorgeous image of two people in the throes of passion. Felix pulls away from the kiss and hovers over Jess, preparing to spit while looking deep into her eyes.
As a romantic comedy, you’d expect this to be a record-scratch moment where Jess is horrified by Felix’s action, abruptly ending the scene with fury. But Too Much is too smart for that. Jess eagerly opens her mouth, readily accepting his spit into her mouth.
There’s no grossed out reaction or attempt at shock value. It’s nothing more than two people expressing their love in the way they see fit. The moment is only a few seconds longer than it appears in the trailer, and it’s immediately followed by a cut to Jess and Felix having sex.
There’s a lot of sex in Too Much (again, the previous episode alone has a ton of sex). Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s steamy, sometimes it’s awkward. But it’s always an expression of people connecting (or trying to find a connection).
And, as we’ve seen, sometimes it ignites passionate discourse.
