"The Flight Attendant" demonstrates why "it's a lot" is a favorite idiom of mine. It's a short phrase, yet one that expresses manifold emotions. Depending on who is saying it and what they're describing, it can be a pejorative, but not necessarily. Generally someone or something being "a lot" merely implies a complicated but navigable situation.
"My life is a lot right now," Kaley Cuoco's titular protagonist Cassie Bowden tells anyone who's either intentionally or accidentally making her life tougher. Cassie flings around that expression as an excuse sometimes. In the second season of "The Flight Attendant," however, she utilizes some version of it to explain behavior she cannot, whether for reasons of national security or her own safety.
