In a rom-com, things have to get worse before they get better. Jess’s sudden confession of her love for Felix was awkward but not necessarily bad. It takes some genuine faith in the possibility of it all working out to come back from something like that, and when Felix shows up at Jess’s apartment with all of his stuff, it’s clear that he’s down to give it a shot. Of course, he’s acting at least partly in his self-interest: He needs a place to stay. That said, he could’ve gone somewhere else; the previous episode established Felix’s wide network of friends, including Polly, at whose house he ends up crashing, to Jess’s dismay.

When we open on “To Doubt a Boy,” Jess is on the phone, raging at her mom for not giving her a “strong male model.” “You ruined me when it comes to men … I literally have no instincts!” She complains. The absence of Jess’s late father provides the episode with a thematic spine: She’s not the only Salmon whose attitude toward men was impacted by his loss. Nora, her sister, is still so depressed from her divorce that she can barely get out of bed; Lois, their mother, is trying to rekindle her romantic spark by going on dates with men from her past. After another disturbing experience with a guy, Jess calls Nora and they cry as they remember their father. It helps alleviate — however temporarily or imperfectly — their despair of finding a man who can love them without condition, for who they are.

The question is whether Felix can do the same for Jess. We catch up with him after another unsatisfactory show, irritated at his fellow band members for not taking their endeavor seriously enough. Auggie, his roommate, tells him he misses the days when Felix didn’t take himself seriously, actually; the reason why he let him move in for no money was that they used to have fun together, whereas now he feels like his guest room is occupied by his “nan.” It hurts Felix to hear that his sobriety is a nuisance to Auggie, so he packs his bags and shows up at Jess’s doorstep.

She’d been expecting him. Wearing what can only be described as a French-maid outfit meets The Traitors, she practices sexy lines in front of the mirror. But when Felix comes in, he’s “in the opposite mood”; he wants to tell her about his bad day and ask if he can crash there for a little while. If Felix froze when Jess told him that she loved him, now it’s her turn to be stunned; only her way of acting stunned is a bit, uh, different. Whereas he had enough presence of mind to tell her, right away, that he couldn’t reciprocate her confession, she steals away to the bathroom, where she makes a video expressing her suspicion of Felix’s motives: “Stay for a couple of nights? Yeah, right! That’s how I end up with someone who’s using my credit card to buy porn!” Jess is under the impression that Felix is out walking Astrid, but he’s in the living room, overhearing everything. “Sometimes it feels like you’re fighting with someone who isn’t even here,” he tells her, wisely, when she comes out. Jess is angry at people who either aren’t there or she barely knows: her late father, Zev, her mom, Wendy, or Polly.

Not that Felix is any kind of saint, either. It’s not really fair to show up ready to move into your sort-of-girlfriend’s house after meeting her “I love you” with “I can’t say it back.” Either way, Felix and Jess get some much-needed distance from each other — even the whirlwind romance needs to die down a little in order not to destroy everything — as she goes on a work trip to scout locations for the Christmas ad. Sweet Gaz stays with Astrid under strict instructions on how to feed her.

With Jess out on the trip, “To Doubt a Boy” sets up various contrasting couples and storylines, following people who are trying as best they can to be true to themselves and their desires. There’s Jess and Felix and their off-course explorations with Jim, the director of the Christmas commercial, and Polly; there’s Kim and Josie, who finally go on a date; Boss gets a moment of real connection with Raven, another one of the company’s producers. There’s even Jonno cutting his work trip short to tend to Ann, Lois going on dates, and Nora surrendering to her need for her mother’s affection.

Too Much gives us an unapologetic, obnoxious, self-absorbed protagonist who is also full of heart, empathy, and humanity by constantly playing Jess’s dramas against the other characters’. Dunham alienates Jess from them through her kooky behaviors, like when she buys bunny ears at the service station, the jokes she tries to land in the van on the way to the countryside, or by showing us how ostracized she is at the Hoxton Grove Estate; but these other characters’ own stories, limits, and missteps connect them to her. Jess may be crazy, but she’s not the only one. An old truism that is so easy to forget comes to mind: Everyone is going through their own shit, and everyone is trying their best to manage. No one has the answers, not even the people who look like they might, like Jim with his success or Polly with her self-assuredness.

At her gorgeous, Parisian-inflected house, Polly criticizes Felix’s omelet-making technique but otherwise welcomes him in: Their cutesy fight ends in wrestling. She wants to know what went down between him and Jess, but Felix deflects; ultimately, he says, “I just like her.” Polly expresses sadness that, even though she stuck with Felix through the worst of his addiction because she could see that he “had it in him to be good,” all his goodness is now going to someone else. She tries to get close, asking him if he ever considered having a family with her and finally kissing him, but Felix can’t reciprocate. When she asks him if he loves Jess, he doesn’t answer. I’m eager to get to the bottom of this thing with Felix and saying “I love you.” He’s so expressive in every other respect!

In the meantime, Jess gains back the favor she lost with Jim when he saw her with the bunny ears. Andrew Scott is pitch-perfect as the sullen, arrogant, but wounded Jim. In a hilarious scene, he tells Raven and Jess that the location they scouted won’t do; it’s too “cloying,” filled with fake English charm. Jim wants their commercial to be like “Ken Loach making a Christmas film.” He wants, in other words, for the project to be something it’s decidedly not.

As the day goes on, Jim goes from a caricature of an arrogant male director to an oddly compelling picture of a pathetic man, moved by spite toward his ex-wife, Anita. Jess tries calling Felix and Lois before dinner, but she gets both of their voicemails — Felix because he seemingly never picks up his phone, and Lois because she’s about to go on a date with an old flame when she has to try to wrangle Nora out of bed. When Jonno cancels dinner because he has to go back to the city to deal with Ann and the dog, and the rest of the team pairs off — Kim with Josie and Boss with Raven — Jess and Jim, both weirdos, find company in each other. At the pub, they bond over their respective situations with their exes and the feeling of being abandoned. One thing leads to the next, and they end up in his room, where he wants her to first beg him to go down on her, then to say she loves his films, then to be his ex-wife. Things get too weird even for Jess when he starts confusing her with Anita. He’s mortified by the mistake, and she leaves him — kindly, I thought — to ride out the embarrassment alone.

If nothing else, her failed dalliance with Jim wakes Jess to the goodness of what she has going with Felix. It’s on the car ride home that she remembers her dad with Nora, after asking if having Jim “look at her vagina, but not touch it” constitutes cheating. Back in London, she goes straight to Polly’s, where she literally screams for Felix and asks him to move in. He’s ready to do it, on the condition that she will actually talk to him, rather than her phone, about stuff. There’s a little moment here that marks the difference between Felix and Zev. Jess jokes that she will be so committed to communicating with Felix that she won’t even need her phone. “Your life would fall apart if you didn’t have a phone,” he retorts. “Everyone’s life would, not you specifically.” Whereas Zev might use Jess’s attachment to her phone as an opportunity to tear her down, Felix gives her enough grace to see her idiosyncrasies as no better or worse than anyone else’s.

At home, Jess stays true to her word and tells Felix that she’s worried that she’ll take out her repressed anger on him. He encourages her to channel her anger through music, and together they sing a song that makes her feel invincible (“Praying” by Kesha, which is kind of nice and funny). As they sing, we check in on all of our other people: Ann and Jonno, taking care of her; Josie and Kim, kissing; Boss and Raven, bonding; Lois, taking her daughter Nora into her arms. And they really do feel like our people — what a treat to have this ensemble of performers, all bringing their A-game to a script that loves them despite everything.

 What is up with Felix’s inability to say “I love you”? He’s so expressive in every other respect!