Generational Trauma, Time Shenanigans and Jewish Ghosts: Why You Should Watch Russian Doll by Elise Peyrat
Russian Doll season 2 promotional material, Netflix
Sometime in February 2019, my dad and I started watching Russian Doll, Netflix’s new Groundhog Day-style show in which a New York socialite keeps dying and reliving the same day. My dad fell asleep halfway through the second episode and I figured, if he’s not watching with me, there’s not really any point. We’ve seen this story before, Doctor Who’s season 11 finale ‘Heaven Sent’, Happy Death Day, I mean, just another Groundhog Day, right?
Wrong. Russian Doll may start with a Groundhog Day premise, but it is so much more than that. I finally watched the first season a year or so after it aired and immediately texted my dad, ‘You need to watch it, like right now, give it another go, i promise you will not be disappointed.’
Russian Doll follows Nadia Vulvokov (Natasha Lyonne), a firecracker software engineer with a loud mouth, a dead mother and a troubled childhood, who keeps dying on her thirty-six birthday. As Nadia tries to investigate why this is happening to her, she meets Alan (Charlie Barnett), an uptight, compulsively clean man who also appears to be trapped in a death loop. Alan is reliving his break up with his long-time girlfriend, but finds he quite likes the routine – Wake up, get dressed, have your heart broken, die, repeat.
After meeting Nadia, this routine quickly falls apart and stranger pieces of the puzzle start unveiling as time disintegrates – literally. The pair reach the conclusion that they are connected in more ways than one and the loops stem from one thing: Nadia’s past with her schizophrenic mother, and her long-lost fortune of a hundred and fifty Krugerrand gold pieces.
Russian Doll takes us on a psychic, psychedelic, psychological (all the psys really) journey through New York, through childhood and through the traumas that shape us. Featuring a wide cast of eccentric characters, too many obscure pop references, and cracking dialogue from SNL writer Amy Poehler, Leslye Headland, and Natasha Lyonne, Russian Doll mixes feminist comedy with tragedy perfectly.
However, the core of the story, the undiminishable truth, is that this is an unapologetically Jewish story. Inspired by Lyonne’s heritage, Nadia’s mother’s side of the family is Hungarian-Jewish, displaced during World War II, and the lost Krugerrands are all that is left of their fortune. The ghost of her family’s past sits on Nadia’s shoulders, forever haunting her as she and Alan try to live on, beautifully so, and with all of life’s hardships. As the first season of Russian Doll ends, we are left with one thought: ‘We are all going forward. None of us are going back.’[1]
And of course, Russian Doll proves me wrong again. On April 20th, the second season of the show airs and we dive back into Nadia and Alan’s story. Set four years later, all seems to be going well until time decides to fuck with them again. As Nadia boards the 6 train, she steps out into 1982 in the body of her pregnant mother. In this season, it’s all about going back, with predestination paradoxes and the search for meaning, any meaning, as to why everything is so fucked up all the time.
A lot more of the eccentric, funny, and psychologic is in store for Russian Doll’s second season as Alan explores East Germany as his grandmother, and Nadia tries to figure out what the hell happened to those Krugerrands.
Russian Doll is streaming on Netflix.
[1] Richard Siken, Crush, ‘Snow and Dirty Rain’, (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2005).
Edited by Conrad Gardner