Russian Doll

2019, Leslye Headland, Natasha Lyonne, Amy Poehler -- Netflix

I don't generally binge. Well, TV.  Cookies for sure. I bet you thought I was going to say beer. Fuck you, for that.

You see, nothing generally captures me enough to watch more than a couple of, maybe three, episodes in a single sitting.  And I usually spread it out. But this one? We completed the series in a night & the next day. And I wanted more. No, not another season, but just more -- more to this world, more to this story, more of these characters.

Russian Doll is a time loop story. So, its no qwinky-dink that Netflix release this on Groundhog Day.  Is that the first movie to present the idea? I know Picard was stuck in an ever exploding USS Enterprise before the movie, but I cannot think of any other movie that so succinctly captured the idea, before Bill Murray's. And as the latest example, this one was one of the best.

Natasha Lyonne (Slums of Beverly Hills) is Nadia Vulvokov, self-described daughter of Andrew Dice Clay and the girl from Brave. Not really, but damn it's apt. She's smart, abrasive, loud, and turning 36. And more than a little self-destructive. She wades through her birthday party, both greeting all the familiar faces and simultaneously dismissing them all. She doesn't need anyone, rejects her ex when he shows up, but then fucks the next guy who shows some interest -- a self-absorbed literature professor who we are meant to hate. He fucks all his grad students, and has no shame. And then, not long after, she is hit by a taxi and killed.

For a brief moment, I wondered if I was in one of those shows where I wouldn't like anyone. Sure its nice to see a lifestyle where people are not tied down by age-ism, where 20sumthins and people older than me are all fast friends & acquaintances, but really, you are not expected to like anyone the show introduces you to. Vacant, self-obsessed, narcissistic, etc. The typical NYC art scene? But then loops began looping me in.

For one, Nadia is a brilliant software engineer, gaming programmer in the current boyz-club coder culture. Its not a heavy plot point, but they do toss it in our face, when she attends a code review meeting, only to be accused of bad code, while all the others (men) are lauded for their fine work. She instantly points out errors in one guy's code, fixes it on the spot, and just moves on. She doesn't give a fuck about their attitudes, as she knows how brilliant she is. I warmed to her there and then. Oh, and in every single subsequent loop she never returns to work. Why bother, right ?

Nadia is both brilliant and incredibly messed up. Once she is in the loop, she needs to find out why. Is it the building, and possible Jewish mysticism? It has to be some external force, right? Because it couldn't be directly related to her. And as she explores the possible reasons how & why, you keep on marveling at her (bad) attitude, her astounding sense of impropriety and her bad choices. And that is sort of the point. She eventually finds out how tied it really is to her and her reasons for her bad choices. And who she is.

About midway, we are introduced to someone else who is in the loop with her. That is when the real exploration of what is going on begins to happen, and that is when we start seeing transformations. Not only of her, but of the world around her. Things and people disappear. And, did you catch that? Mold is growing on the fruit in the background. But nobody notices. I began to think that Nadia was trapped in software, a bug in her own code. But this is not Edge of Tomorrow or Source Code where we get a strong scifi explanation for what is going on, but we get definite nuances of something. And we are enthralled.

At the end, mid-afternoon Sunday, when we were done, I just said, "That was utterly wonderful."  I had thoroughly enjoyed that. I ended up really liking Nadia. I liked her friends. I liked her life. And I just liked the way the universe gave her a strong and tangible way for her life to become better. Please, sir, can I have some?