Nadia (Natasha Lyonne) is reliving the night of her 36th birthday over and over, "Groundhog's Day" style. She can't seem to get very far without dying, often in very sudden and improbable ways, and always restarts in the bathroom of her friend Maxine (Greta Lee), during the birthday party being thrown in Nadia's honor. Figuring out what's going on any how to get out of the endless loop sends Nadia all over New York City, and forces her to confront some harsh truths about herself. There's Nadia's messy relationship with John (Yul Vasquez), who left his family with her, her unresolved issues with her mother Lenora (Chloë Sevigny) and adopted mother Ruth (Elizabeth Ashley), and multiple encounters with a lout named Mike (Jeremy Lowell Bobb), the tightly wound Alan (Charlie Barnett), and a mysterious homeless guy named Horse (Brenda Sexton III).
Welcome to "Russian Doll," a Netflix series from Natasha Lyonne, Amy Pohler, and Leslye Headland. Now, we've seen plenty of media about time loops, such that they're starting to become their own little genre. Part of the particular effectiveness of "Russian Doll" is its format. The series runs just eight episodes, each around thirty brisk minutes apiece. It's very easy to watch the whole thing in one sitting. Then there's the tone, which straddles the line between darkly humorous and wryly melodramatic. As the title suggests, there are lots and lots of layers to our heroine, and the show is very good about gradually showing us the different sides of her. Natasha Lyonne, who co-created the series and wrote on several of the episodes, has always had a very specific screen presence, and puts it to very good use here. She gives Nadia a very scruffy, very brash personability that feels a little bit old fashioned and utterly New York in a good way. It's easy to root for her, in spite of her many flaws and foibles.
The whole vibe of "Russian Doll" is very specific, full of odd characters and encounters. Nadia's birthday party is populated by many artsy hedonists, and she's comfortable chatting up everyone from a rabbi's receptionist to a homeless drug dealer. At one point there's a very sweet encounter that she has with an elderly man, who implores her to stop smoking. Most of the series takes place at night, and has a bit of an "After Hours" surrealism to it as Nadia skulks around looking for answers. I love the production choices, which has Nadia continually respawn in Maxine's bathroom with its trippy light fixtures, and starts off each new loop with a peppy Harry Nilsson song. A lot of the storytelling comes down to visual elements in the set design and costume choices. Nadia herself is so visually distinctive, with her huge mane of red curls, her cigarettes and her sunglasses.
The show also has a lot to offer as an existential mystery, letting the characters work out the various rules for how their universe works at a steady, satisfying pace. Despite the short length, it takes its time to set things up right, and some very big pieces of the puzzle aren't even introduced until about the fourth episode. There's plenty of variation in the loops, so even though the show is repetitive by design, it always feels like it's building to something or pushing the characters toward certain epiphanies. It helps that there's a lot of ambiguity to certain aspects of the show that are sure to fuel fan theories and interpretations. At the same time, the emotional throughlines are so clear that you hardly have to pay attention to the existential aspects at all to follow along.
Because of the show's success, there have been some rumblings about future seasons of the show, which I hope turn out to be false. I'm sure a second round of "Russian Doll" would be delightful and I would watch it, but I like where this set of episodes left us, with so much still unexplained and the characters in a hopeful but somewhat precarious place. It's rare to find a piece of media that is so successful at executing its premise, and giving the audience just enough to chew on without wearing out its welcome. I just want to let the mystery be.
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