If one of the recurring qualities of a period-novel heroine is her outcast, “impertinent” magnetism — think of Jo March, Lizzy Bennet, Emma Woodhouse, or any number of other corseted women — in the contemporary rom-com, an impertinent woman often seeks change. Consider Bridget Jones, who is a kind of foil for Too Much’s Jessica and a contemporary adaptation of Lizzy Bennet: She goes on a journey of self-renewal, resolving to quit smoking, lose weight, and get her life together in hopes of proving Mark Darcy wrong, a path that leads her to finding her true self, etc. etc. A true, heart-wrenching romance transcends this kind of superficial change, based as it is on the lover’s authentic self rather than the performance of the self they think they should be.

“Pity Girl” is all about this journey of self-determination: As soon as she arrives at her new job in London, Jessica is faced with the decision of whether to dig her heels in and be herself or modulate so as to better fit in. Felix is himself also caught at a crossroads: His tendency to fall hard and fast, we learn, has stopped him from forming long-lasting connections. His instinct is to flee when things get “too real,” and the fantasies of the “folk singer, or the corset designer, or the Ukrainian-refugee influencer” turn out to be nothing but. If he truly believes that things are different with Jessica, then he will have to do the hard, uncomfortable thing and really know her and really let himself be known.

All of that rationalizing comes after Jess and Felix spend a sweet night together. Having eased her burn with cold water, the paramedics take Jess to the hospital, where the nurse isn’t allowed to give her any “real” pain medication. Felix arrives with Astrid to break her out of the hospital, driving her home in his car. It’s only been two episodes, but so far, these moments of uninterrupted banter between Felix and Jess have been my favorites — you can feel their characters emerging. Megan Stalter takes some opportunities to let her sensibility transcend Lena Dunham’s voice in her delivery — “You want a scone, guv’nor?” — and in her genuine laugh when, after she asks Felix whether he’s charmed by her, he tells her “that’s a really needy question.” As a whole, so far, Stalter’s performance struggles against the impulse to act for a “bit,” and these longer scenes — rarer in Netflix productions than they have been in television before — are a welcome stage for her to work out the specificities of her own voice.

Felix and Jess finally have sex after she lets him see her in her “pioneer dress” and tells him that if she had a superpower, it would be “eroding boundaries.” Felix is funny, respectful, and worried enough about Jess’s injuries that even she has to ask him to talk less. The next morning, they agree to see each other again, and she leaves him in her bed. When she arrives at her London office, she finds none of Felix’s open-armed embrace of her quirkiness.

Her new boss (the phenomenal Richard E. Grant) leads a meeting trying to figure out the “populist and pure” vibe of the Christmas commercial, which will star Rita Ora in a Stella McCartney–designed Santa bikini (there is still no one as sharp as Dunham when it comes to stringing this sort of absurdist referential sentence together). He leaves before Jess gets a chance to deliver the introductory remarks she had prepared, and Kim, the company’s American art director (played by the filmmaker Janicza Bravo), doesn’t remember Jess from the Avril Lavigne Converse campaign they did together a few years ago. Kim’s assistant is a pink-haired Gen-Z type named Boss, and there’s also Josie, aloof and indifferent to the office’s dynamics.

Maybe because of her willingness to be open and therefore judged, eventually Kim and Boss take to Jess. She tells them that she’s seeing a “cool indie musician” she met at a bar, a guy much cooler than her ex, who always told her she had horrible taste in music. In a brief flashback, we see Zev condescending to Jess as she belts out Miley Cyrus. He tells her that the music is too low-brow and dismisses her when she argues that Miley has been doing “commentary on the manufactured pop star” at least “since her Disney days.” It’s the kind of undermining that leads a person to doubt themself, which is what Jess does when Kim and Boss tell her not to put all of her eggs in Felix’s basket, not when they’ve only known each other for two days. “Stay vigilant,” Boss advises, then asks her to come out with them for International Outfit of the Day Day.

Jess agrees to go, even though the advice makes her feel like shit. “When I trust my own instincts, chaos always follows … Everyone knows better than me,” she muses in narration to Wendy, whom she supposes to be extremely self-assured. Between the flashback and this, it’s a little on the nose for a character whom we had already understood to be insecure, but the dynamic finds some life in Felix’s competing self-doubt. Jess is trying to avoid chaos by not acting on her instincts for once, whereas Felix is trying to welcome risk by actually acting on his.

So far, I’ve been charmed by Felix, but I can already tell he might suffer from a lethal case of Nice Guy Syndrome, which is a disease that ails men who think they are better than everyone else simply for being decent. We catch up with him in his own apartment, where he sits in bed and listens to music. In the kitchen, his older roommate, who is housing a group of aspiring environmental community organizers–stoners of some sort on the chance he might gain the sexual favor of one 20-year-old Belinda, laments that Felix is always saying that he met someone and this time it will be different. Later, at a soccer game, he says that if this time it’s really different, then he knows what he has to do.

So while Felix decides to follow his heart and go to Linnea’s house to break up with her — the beautiful, moody woman we saw “leave the pub in a huff” in the pilot — Jess lets her co-workers adjust her outfit. They set her up across the dinner table from Pawel, a “footballer” who is “sexually obsessed with intellectual women.” Jess leads with sarcasm when Pawel starts talking about his “passion project,” a denim line, and Boss checks her demeanor — the guy may be jocky, but he’s not stupid. An awkwardness falls over the table, so Jess goes into the bathroom to make more videos in response to Wendy’s pornoish Instagram Stories.

When Kim overhears her, we learn that Jess keeps these videos on a private account, a diary of sorts that both brings her closer to and creates distance from Wendy. Rarely in fiction do we get introduced to a diary if it won’t eventually be exposed, so I’m watching out for Chekhov’s private Instagram from now on. Like any object of obsession, Wendy is less a person and more an abstraction against which Jess can define herself. Still, it’s hard to hate Wendy-the-person, Jess tells Kim, not only because she “pulled herself out of foster care by the bootstraps” but because she is so decidedly herself, a beautiful woman with “a really unique, awesome style.” Kim allows that Jess is doing “an excellent job keeping it on lock in public,” given the kind of thing she is up to in private. “Sorry, I’m such a fucking mess,” Jess says with a sigh. “You’re not a mess,” Kim retorts. “You’re a work in progress. It’s simple. You just listen to yourself, yeah?”

It’s the kind of advice that is both painfully obvious and life-changing, up there with “Don’t worry about it.” Kim’s support emboldens Jess to stand up for herself when Pawel calls her messy at the dinner table. Earnestly, and in true 2000s fashion, she goes off about the double standard that deems women “messy” while men like Pawel, who has a wife and family at home, are deemed players. “Actually, I’m a work in progress because I know who I am and I know what I want and I’m listening to myself, right, Kim?” She declares, trying to convince herself.

Meanwhile, Felix is at Linnea’s apartment, bound up and blindfolded and being spat on. She pulled him in before he could tell her what he was there for, but eventually he finds an opening to say he doesn’t want to see her anymore. Linnea tells him he’s a nice guy, but next time he’s dating someone and realizes that they’re not for him, he should just cut the cord instead of hanging around. That’s exactly the kind of Nice Guy symptom that gets on my nerves. A guy thinks a girl will become suicidal if he, God’s own gift to humanity, leaves, so he keeps stringing her along, thinking he’s doing her some big favor.

But Felix apologizes, and Linnea falls asleep sucking her thumb on his shoulder. Jess texts him to come meet her at the estate, and when he gets there, he gives her a “mix” he made for her, to be played on a Walkman and all. That’s what he was doing in bed at the beginning of the episode. Jessica tells him, like she did her co-workers, that her music taste sucks, but he instructs her to just put her head back and listen. The camera holds on Jess and Felix as a Cate Le Bon song comes on. She listens to the song by herself while he lies wordlessly next to her.

 Jessica forms a fast connection with Felix, but her new co-workers aren’t as quick to embrace her quirkiness.