What have I gotten myself into?
This series has gotten even more convoluted than season one.
Russian Doll is an exciting sci-fi-ish show following Nadia Vulvokov (Natasha Lyonne) and Alan Zaveri (Charlie Barnett), where they are forced to keep reliving the same day until they are able to fix what is broken in their respective lives. Season two follows our two main characters as they experience a new kind of reliving, but instead of them reliving the same day of their lives, they are reliving their family’s past. As they both struggle to correct what they believe to be wrong, they find themselves making the same mistakes as their ancestors.
In all honesty, I don’t believe I could, without hesitation, tell you what season two is truly about other than it’s about going back in time and taking things that shouldn’t have been taken in the first place. Both Nadia and Alan seem to think they know the past better than anyone else, but still seem to screw everything up.
I would dare anyone who has just seen this series to try and remember the exact plot of the story. If you remembered that Alan kissed a guy and Nadia stole a baby, in both cases, you would be correct in remembering these events, but these things happen a few episodes in. Before that, the start of the show has a kind of time reversal where both characters get on a subway station and go back in time and live their parents’ lives.
Russian Doll’s opening shot shows a woman breaking into a tunnel to retrieve a bag. The exact cause and reason are unclear for many episodes. The reason why she is doing this and what caused her to do this is ultimately what the audience ends up uncovering. It is this narrative construct where Nadia is forced to confront her trauma and, by consolation, her family’s trauma. It helps to think of this narrative as trauma inside of another trauma, and if anyone in the show would have said this early on, it might have made for a more jointed storyline. What was revealed was a story that has a good premise, but audiences are left to rewatch the entire series for clarity.
This series has a 96% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. People undoubtedly are in love with Russian Doll. The show has it all. Its creators include Natasha Lyonne and Leslye Headland, not to mention Amy Poehler. It also stars Chloe Sevigny and Annie Murphy which just by name recognition alone moves this up one letter grade. The series sounds good, but we find ourselves at this crossroads.
If you take the time to rewatch the show three times, roughly equating to 10 hours of rewatching the same show to understand a storyline, or if you happen to be a diligent notetaker, the storyline actually becomes pretty easy to understand. A plus for rewatching the series over and over again would be the two strong leads and even the supporting cast all of which present a well-rounded world. Of course, a key player in season two is Annie Murphy who plays Young Ruth Brenner brilliantly.
Even with a hard-to-follow narrative structure, I find myself loving Annie Murphy more than ever.
The second season of the series had an unfortunate side effect of incorporating too many minds working in one series. Think of this as having too many composers each adding their own favorite instruments into the already full orchestra. It looks nice, but not much else can be said.
There are instances of magic that really work. We have a mystery that, while it is hard to piece together in the first watch, does get progressively better. Moments of humor are found sprinkled in this drama series where Ruth claims to be 29 and possibly pregnant on a medical record, or when Alan submerges himself underwater, only to find he is too tall for the small bath. It is these moments that might be attributed to Amy Poehler and her humorous writing abilities. They add that spark of relief when the series really needs it.
To round out the praises of the show, there are some problems that emerge from pacing and sequencing. The issue mostly arises from putting too many plotlines into a short seven-episode series with very few crossovers. A possible reason why the first season did so well was that the two lives intersected for a common cause, this season just feels like it would have been two stories with separate seasons two and three for easier viewing. Does Alan find himself liking other men? Or is this just a part of playing the role of his grandmother? Did Nadia’s interference actually alter the past in a positive way? These questions are still trying to be answered in a series that resists a cohesive plot structure.
This doesn’t mean that it is a bad story or that the underline argument of family trauma isn’t something worth exploring. It just means that, maybe, seven episodes might not be enough for two storylines to fully develop into a reasonably understandable series. The start of the season opens with a woman breaking into the wall of a tunnel with no one saying anything. It also ends with Nadia staring at herself in the mirror without saying anything. A nice mirroring is created in the first five minutes and the last. But after a while, the scenes could benefit from people saying something rather than leaving it as ambiguous and unclear as season one.
There is probably someone out there that has a clear understanding of this series and can tell me where I started to misunderstand the plot. It could be that the show’s genius went right over my head and into another viewer.
Given the confusion garnered from this rewatch, maybe I’ll review another show that’s more easily understood by someone who works 40 hours a week and then grades papers.
Season two of Russian Doll is currently streaming on Netflix.
Donnie Lopez is an avid reader of fantasy and horror. He spends most of his free time watching movies, writing his graphic novel, and doing archery. You can find him stuffing his face with horrible food while complaining that it’s both awful and not enough. Find him on Twitter talking about his daily descent into madness.