Created by Natasha Lyonne, Leslye Headland, and Amy Poehler
Starring Natasha Lyonne, Greta Lee, Yul Vazquez, Charlie Barnett, Elizabeth Ashley
There’s an overwhelming temptation to compare this series to Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day. In both, the central character is caught on a hamster wheel in which life resets to a certain point, one identified by music. In Groundhog Day, it was Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You, Babe.” In Russian Doll, Nadia snaps to a reset awareness in a radical feminist chic bathroom, staring at her reflection to the equally cheery and vacuous “Gotta Get Up” by Harry Nilsson. As she explains her predicament to those around her, Nadia is reminded of the main character in Groundhog Day, and she immediately dismisses him as “morally simplistic and narcissistic.”
Which is true. Murray’s character Phil is appalled, then emotionally devastated, then vindictive and manipulative. Nadia’s character is considerably more complex, self-absorbed but not narcissistic, and with a stronger intellectual bent. She sees her hamster wheel, with all its ramifications, as a problem to be solved, a puzzle to be unlocked. An early indicator that she possesses more emotional depth and accessibility is to be found in the mere fact that she has a cat, Oatmeal. Phil would never take care of a cat. Oatmeal is a perfectly ordinary cat, save for his ability to survive on the streets of Manhattan.
Nadia is not Phil, and her hamster wheel is different as well, involving more than a simple reset every time she dies.
She spends her first dozen go-arounds formulating and discarding theories. It wasn’t unknown drugs in a joint she smoked. Does her flat, a former yeshiva, have some sort of ancient Indian burial ground thing going on? Does God want her to move to New Hampshire and start playing Sonny and Cher songs and punching out insurance salesmen?
At the end of the third episode, whilst plunging to her death in a runaway elevator, he discovers that the fellow standing next to her is trapped in the same hamster wheel. They start comparing notes, and the mists begin to part.
The title itself is evocative of Russian matryoshkas, those nested dolls that people love to pull apart only to discover that like many Entitled Families, what is inside is a diminished replica. Nadia herself is a Russian doll (full name, Nadia Vulvokov) who describes her appearance as “if Andrew Dice Clay and the redhead from Brave had a baby.”
Like Groundhog Day or A Christmas Carol, personal growth is a key element in escaping the hamster wheel. But Phil was too firmly set as a manipulative slimeball to be wholly convincing as a selfless, loving person, and Scrooge, with the exception of the George C. Scott movie, always came across in the end as a craven hypocrite, driven by fear rather than any actual desire to improve. Russian Doll, on the other hand, is utterly believable. Nadia doesn’t grow an entire new personality to escape the wheel, but simply turns to those elements that were already there–as does her companion on the wheel. She doesn’t have to be a new person. She just needs to be a bit better at being the person she is. The closing scene is a nod to the similarly-themed animated classic, Paprika.
The writing in this is sublime. If the plot is complex and involved, the characters fully-realized and variated, and the symbolism subtle and in nearly every scene, the entire series is engaging and approachable, enjoyable even for light casual viewing. The characters are real, and easy to relate to, even the ones who Nadia’s therapist friend says is a word we never use, or the mean ones, such as Mike. (Mike is this story’s Phil, doomed to a linear existence, dismissed by Nadia as “someone who isn’t a choice, but is a void where a choice ought to be.”)
Watch it for the first time for enjoyment (and it is extremely enjoyable, intriguing and fun), and then do what I’m going to do and watch it again for all the intricacies and plot devices I missed the first time around. [Zeppie’s slow at subtlety.] [Knock it off, autocorrect.]
Cute irony abounds. Nadia is a software designer, and is showing her co-hamster-wheel runner how to solve one of her games that has stymied him, and the level Boss has blazing red hair, just like Nadia, and the player has olive skin and is buff, just like him. Just one of thousands of fun little throwaways and Easter Eggs that this four hour series contains.
Fruit does not do well in this series, and is one of the quickest indicators that Nadia’s journey isn’t just from one carbon copy sheet to the next. It calls out to a vignette from her childhood, when her mother, apparently schizophrenic, decompensates in a way that involves dozen of watermelons.
There are many beautiful little touches like this throughout the series. Television at its very best!
Now on Netflix.