Russian Doll (Season 1)
Review of Russian Doll’s first season.
I will admit, I had never heard of Russian Doll until I looked at my work’s to-do list of articles to write and saw an article about Season 2. I had no idea what the show was about, and apparently neither did my coworkers because no one claimed the article for two weeks.
I think the idea was eventually just nixed because no one ever claimed it. A true tragedy indeed, because that week the show ended up showing in my Netflix recommendations.
The power of knowing a name is really powerful when it comes to getting you to do something about. Naturally, that means I clicked it and ended up binge watching the entire season over the course of the week. It’s not that impressive that I did that, I’ll admit it, because the first season only consists of eight episodes. I have a good hunch why, but more on that later.
Let’s begin the review!
A Jewish chainsmoker finds herself trapped in a time loop on the night of her birthday.
The first episode really establishes this concept—when I say really, I actually mean the fact that it hammers into you that this is happening and you’re stuck with it for the entire season.
It happens again and again to Nadia’s confusion, leading her to try and hunt down the reason as to why she seems stuck in purgatory. It only sparks back up again when she dies somehow, whether it’s a heart attack, accidental drowning, or stepping in front of a car at the wrong moment.
The time loop happens on the night of her birthday—she’s turning thirty—and her artist friend Angela throws her a party in her massive apartment. For a woman who seems as ditzy as Angela and not much of an actual artist, she seems to have such a big apartment for New York City. I sniff out wealth or nepotism. It’s always one or the other in that city.
In her fits of trying to figure out what’s actually going on and trying not to die and start the time loop over again, Nadia wanders outside, where she meets the homeless man, then, eventually, she meets Alan.
Alan has just been dumped by his girlfriend and is quite depressed because that’s the moment this poor guy has to relive again and again. Come on girl, he was just about to propose! And you’re high school sweethearts!
Nadia and Alan suddenly find themselves not alone in the paradox that they find themselves in and so they try to get to the bottom of the mystery. At the same time, Alan discovers why exactly his girlfriend has been distant from him: she was cheating with her PhD thesis advisor.
It seems fairly obvious at the beginning as to why Alan was dumped though—her vague literary references go completely over his head and he seems to have no interest in figuring out what exactly they mean. They were not a good match.
The B plots in this show are the fact that Nadia keeps trying to sleep with her ex, then she keeps saying that she wants to meet his daughter in order to give her book. They find out the real reason Alan died (suicide) and retrace their steps, but then the world gets even weirder: people and things are starting to disappear. The next step from here is that Alan and Nadia seem to have been put in alternate timelines where the opposite doesn’t know the other person.
They do end up figuring out the cure for their predicament, which kind of made me facepalm at what it actually was. Couldn’t they have just become better friends in the same timeline? Whatever.
The charm of this show is seeing the clashing personalities of Alan and Nadia having to work together, as Nadia is the classic I don’t give a f*ck kind of New Yorker who sounds like she swallowed an entire pack of cigarettes. There’s bits of humor scattered throughout the show, keeping it somewhat fresh since it is so repetitive.
That’s why it could only be eight episodes. A viewer would only want to bash their head if it was any longer because they could only take so much of traveling back in time before it starts to get old.
It honestly started getting old for me around episode six, and while they try to make it not repetitive through what Alan and Nadia try to do and how they interact with other characters, one can only handle so much.
Overall Thoughts
It’s entertaining and a short watch. I think if you’re into comedy dramas and don’t want to think too hard about what’s happening on the screen, this is the show for you.
It’s one of the better shows I’ve seen in the past year and shifts through a series of emotional arcs, as we have Nadia talking about her mother, or find out that Alan actually killed himself because he was so sad over his girlfriend.
Some television shows, even as repetitive as the plot is, would make me want to sigh and click off the television, but Russian Doll is not one of them.
