Russian Doll is the kind of show that breaks you down and builds you back up again, tackling subjects like mental illness, generational trauma, and existential crises with biting yet life-affirming humor. It’s a storytelling marvel, circling the same narrative ground over and over again without ever wearing out its welcome. Co-creator and star Natasha Lyonne takes the character of Nadia Vulvokov and turns her into an even bigger icon in the second season, occasionally breaking through the tough and brassy Nadia’s barriers to reveal an uncomfortable authenticity underneath. The newest season of Russian Doll is a thorny, intricate joy — inviting viewers to unravel its layers of history, pop culture, and dense characterization to solve the unsolvable mystery at its center.
The first season saw Nadia and Alan (Charlie Barnett) reliving the last day of their lives over and over again, as they died in outlandish, hilarious, and/or heartbreaking ways. Season two plays with similar temporal hijinks, which I will allow the reader to discover on their own. The focus of the new season is surprising, but in hindsight it feels inevitable in the way that good television writing always does. Season one’s themes remain constant, with some emerging as even more important than before: the illusion of free will, the desire for control and autonomy, the heavy burden of generational trauma, the Gordian knot that is “mommy issues”…season two tackles all of these heady topics with the show’s trademark wit and caustic humanity. Though some new writers and directors take the reins this season, with Documentary Now!’s Alex Buono directing four of the season’s seven episodes, there’s still strong continuity from season one: the darkly comic tone remains, and characters, sets, lines of dialogue, and camera tricks from the first season reappear in season two for a welcome reunion with viewers.
The callbacks to season one are far more than just “Hey, remember this?” moments, though. They expand the richness and depth of a world that gives me a divine dissatisfaction with my own life that I’ve never quite experienced before. Nadia’s existential crisis gives me a refracted crisis of my own (appropriate for a series so enamored with reflection motifs): similar to Nadia, I grapple with my own generational trauma and mommy issues, but I do so much less coolly than Nadia does, so my existential crisis ends up with its own existential crisis. It’s a delightfully trippy response to a delightfully trippy show, but even more than that, it’s a reflection of just how rich this world is. People often say that they want to live inside a movie or a TV show, but I’ve never wanted to burrow inside a work of art like I do with Russian Doll — again, appropriate given its Matryoshka namesake. The deeper I dig, the more divine dissatisfaction I find, and it paradoxically gives me a sense of glorious yearning that makes my chest feel like it will burst.
Fans of Lyonne know that the first season positioned Nadia Vulvokov as the role Lyonne was born to play — of course, having co-created the series, it only makes sense that the role would be highly personal and acutely attuned to Lyonne’s particular talents and personality. But season two takes the series into even more personal territory for Lyonne, delving more deeply into Nadia and Lyonne’s shared heritage as descendants of Hungarian Jewish Holocaust survivors. Lyonne also takes on an even bigger creative role, sporting writing credits on four episodes and directing three of them. Her directorial eye shows a delicious cinematic flair, crafting images that elicit a heart-swelling “Damn, I love movies” response in the audience. A stylish crane shot of Nadia stomping through New York City or a passionate slow-motion kiss that sweeps her off her feet are the kinds of images that belong on the silver screen. Lyonne also gets appropriately psychedelic for the show, giving a library research excursion a frenetic surrealism and adding a mind-bending dimension to a scene in a hospital.
Season two features a killer soundtrack and even more killer pop culture references, courtesy of Lyonne’s erudite and eclectic tastes: Nadia drops Star 80, Columbo, and Kraftwerk references as casually as she drops exotic drugs — when offered one particularly enticing pill, she mutters with her trademark devil-may-care attitude, “My God, I thought these were just legend. All right, fuck it.” The needle drops are far from gratuitous, though; they are just as organic as any other element in this dense, gorgeous series. Episode four (“Station to Station”) features the best deployment of “99 Luftballons” I’ve ever seen, and I know I’ll never again be able to hear “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” without thinking about the irrepressible Nadia Vulvokov.
Lyonne brings a new level of ferocity and vulnerability to Nadia this season. As an actor, she’s always felt like the spiritual offspring of Lenny Bruce and Lucille Ball, but she reaches her apotheosis in this role. Due to season two’s heavier focus on Nadia’s specific generational trauma, there’s more emotional sincerity from Nadia this season. Her obvious discomfort with these occasional moments of unguarded honesty gives Lyonne a chance to show off her acting skills even more, though she still makes every arched eyebrow or unusual line reading (I will never get tired of hearing her say “cock-a-roach”) seem as effortless as breathing. The writing is similarly breathtaking. Russian Doll makes nuggets of wisdom feel like emotional gut-punches and just another day in the life, all at once: Ruth tells Nadia at one point, “Trauma is a topographical map written on the child, and it takes a lifetime to read.” There could be no better summation of the series’ ethos, or its profane beauty.
Just like Nadia, season two allows Alan, Ruth (Elizabeth Ashley), and Maxine (Greta Lee) to grow and develop in delightful and surprising ways. Alan’s fate is once again tied up with Nadia’s, but their paths diverge and reunite in ways that underscore the importance of playing the long game in television writing. The viewer who allows themselves to get swept up in Russian Doll’s intricate narrative will be richly rewarded, not least because it allows us to spend more time with Maxine outside of her apartment. Putting her in a new setting brings out the best — and the weirdest — in her, and Lee’s comic delivery is stellar throughout the season. It is Nadia’s surrogate mother Ruth, however, who serves as the emotional satellite around whom Nadia orbits. When discussing closure, Ruth tells Nadia, “See, in the end, nothing can absolve us but ourselves.” This self-reliance is ironically dependent on the self-love that Nadia has to learn by accepting Ruth’s love for her; no one can go it alone, but in the end we are all we have.
It’s the paradox at the heart of the show: you can’t make it through life by only depending on yourself, but in the end, all you can do is depend on yourself. When you reach the final Matryoshka doll, having uncovered all the hidden secrets that came before, you open it up and find…nothing. Just yourself, holding two halves of a wooden doll. Just Nadia, gazing at her own reflection in a bathroom mirror. But in that lies the ultimate secret: it’s just been you, sweet birthday baby, all along. All the steps that fate took on its way to creating the beautiful, horrible mess that is you — all the family, all the friends, all the failures — there’s no way to change any of that. Once you’ve opened the final secret and found only yourself, you have to make peace with it; put the dolls back together again and let go. No matter how hard you try to go back, you can’t fix the past. All you can do is keep moving forward.
Russian Doll, for all its focus on the past and on fixing time’s mistakes, is a show about the future. That divine dissatisfaction it makes me feel? That’s another way to say hope. It’s a show obsessed with contradictions. The series is sprawling yet compact. It’s about moving forward yet staying in one place for eternity. It’s a life-affirming show about a character who can’t stop dying. Another contradiction: Russian Doll could easily move forward from this season (and I would trust Lyonne and company to do so brilliantly), or it could end here and be a two-season marvel. Either way, season two of Russian Doll proves that hope is the biggest and messiest contradiction of all: it’s impossible to hold onto, but it’s all we have. So you better not let go of it.
