Sweet birthday baby! Natasha Lyonne embarks on a more frustrating role with her role as Nadia in Russian Doll, at least, frustrating for her character.
Natasha Lyonne, Leslye Headland and Amy Poehler write this hilarious adventure, and with that combination, you know this beloved Netflix show produced by Universal was bound to be a great hit.
The show starts off following the character of Nadia in her every-day life, starting out on her 36th birthday party. Upon leaving the bathroom and taking a drag of an Israeli joint (which is laced with Ketamine) offered to her by her best friend, Maxine, whom had them specially made for Nadia’s birthday with their drug dealer, Wardog. But soon after, Nadia realises things are not exactly what they seem after she gets hit by a taxi whilst running after her cat, Oatmeal who has been missing for three days, and dies.
Sweet birthday baby! Nadia re-awakens in the bathroom of the Yeshiva building, at her birthday party, and every time getting increasingly crazy, screaming at Maxine (played by Greta Lee) and her other best friend, Lizzy (played by Rebecca Henderson). The show plays on the element of trying to find yourself, after you feel like everything has fallen apart, and it is super relatable for almost anyone with that message (other than the dying constantly part).
Nadia’s life job is a freelance software engineer, who has previously worked for a big games company. When she can make it to the second day in her repeating cycle, she has a meeting with the team she is currently working with, on the groups’ code for the movement of an animated figure. But with Nadia’s personality and everything going on in her life, somehow this maaay not really matter to her that much, compared to you know, finding out the reason why she is living her birthday party over and over again.
We see a huge change with Episode 4, with the introduction of Alan (played by Charlie Bennett), who kind of creepily, starts his day out with the “Affirmations for Success” self-help routine, and unpacking his suitcase to find the ring he had planned on using to propose to his girlfriend, Beatrice (played by the ever beautiful, Dascha Polanco). On his way to Beatrice’s, he crosses paths with Nadia who is in search of the homeless person, Horse, who she has a deep and meaningful interaction with, in Episode 3.
Alan believes in routine and self-help, and by living the same day/s over again, he feels some form of relief with knowing the exact same things will happen over and over (and again, is something a lot of us can relate to). Alan’s and Nadia’s paths cross frequently and together, they try and find out why they’re both dying and reliving the same day over again.
A few key phrases within the show itself are “Oh man, it’s never going to be Thursday again”, “Thursday. What a concept” (Which a Twitter account was actually made dedicated to posting the screencap of it every Thursday, http://www.twitter.com/thursaconcept ) and “Whenever Friday happens, I’ll be there.”
The show has such a huge following after only the first season that the No Context Twitter account has over 13K followers and the Thursday, What a Concept account has over 39K followers, despite the official Russian Doll account only having 21.3K.
You can watch Russian Doll now over on Netflix, while we wait patiently for Season 2, which was supposed to start filming in May 2020, but due to current circumstances, I guess we’ll see when it releases!