Plot: Discovering a fate even worse than endless death, this season finds Nadia and Alan delving deeper into their pasts through an unexpected time portal in one of Manhattan’s most notorious locations. At first they experience this as an ever-expanding, era-spanning, intergenerational adventure but they soon discover that this extraordinary event might be more than they bargained for, and, together, must search for a way out.
Review: The first season of Russian Doll was one of my favorite shows of 2019 and remains one of the best seasons of any television series ever. I fully anticipated that Amy Poehler, Natasha Lyonne, and Leslye Headland’s trippy tale would have been an event series, but it soon earned a renewal. After three years of COVID-19-related delays, the return of Nadia’s existential adventures is finally here. As you can tell from the trailers, rather than dealing with the Groundhog Day challenge of dying and being reborn over and over, Nadia now must contend with time travel into her own past involving her mother and her family’s legacy. The resulting series is not quite as well-rounded as the first season but still impresses by taking the concept of Russian Doll and completely turning it upside down.
The first season of Russian Doll centered on Nadia Vulvokov’s 36th birthday where she enters a time loop and must deal with discovering a lot about herself along the way. Anchored by Natasha Lyonne’s acerbic performance, the series played with the concepts of time and narrative to create a powerfully dramatic story that was also magnificently hilarious. Partnered with Alan Zaveri (Charlie Barnett), who also is stuck in the loop, the eighth and final episode of Russian Doll’s first season ended the story perfectly. As we all know, sequels can often undermine a great story by going back one too many times and, at the start of this season, I was beginning to feel that way. Gone was the time loop to be replaced by a train that takes Nadia back to 1982 mere days before her milestone 40th birthday. How could this story work without seeming redundant or completely ridiculous?
To start, Russian Doll does not try to replicate the format of the first season. Yes, we see the return of many characters from Nadia’s life including Maxine (Greta Lee) and Lizzy (Rebecca Henderson) as well as her godmother Ruth Brenner (Elizabeth Ashley). But, instead of being stuck in the same sequences again and again, Nadia goes back into the past which is progressing forward each time she visits. This puts a ticking clock on Nadia’s present as well as her past. It also gives an opportunity for more screentime for Chloe Sevigny who portrays Nadia’s mother, Nora, as well as new characters played by Schitt’s Creek’s Annie Murphy and District 9’s Sharlto Copley. I won’t reveal who either of these new cast members portrays, but you don’t have to wait long to find out.
There are so many elements of this story that even the smallest reveal could ruin so I will simply say that this story works really well in taking a deeper look at who Nadia and Alan are as people and why the cosmos is putting them into this strange scenario in the first place. Nadia began to embrace her time loop as the first season went along and here she starts with an attitude of taking whatever fate has in store for her. Alan approaches things the same way, but along their journeys, they begin to realize that the consequences of what they are experiencing are far larger than either of them could expect. The acting from both Lyonne and Barnett remains the highlight of this show while season two takes an even larger swing with multiple time periods, all of which work visually and narratively.
Natasha Lyonne, who wrote and directed the first season finale of Russian Doll, takes on the showrunner role for this sophomore run. Lyonne writes and directs multiple episodes this season which still looks and feels consistent with season one, but her work here takes this series in a different direction that compliments what we saw in 2019 while simultaneously upending it completely. The first season brought everything full circle with deliberate choices to framing and performances requisite in a story involving time looping and the same scenes playing over and over with slight variations. Season two is much less tightly wound which allows all of the supporting actors to do a lot more than they did before, especially Elizabeth Ashley and Chloe Sevigny who both are intrinsically important to this story.
For anyone worried that the second season of Russian Doll would ruin the excellent first season, you can relax. Natasha Lyonne clearly understands the character of Nadia and takes this story very seriously. If the first season was a meticulously crafted timepiece that required every cog to work together, the second season is more like a vinyl record: it has bumps along the way but if you listen from beginning to end, you will experience a full and rewarding story. Russian Doll could easily turn into a multi-season series with new Twilight Zone-esque experiences awaiting the main characters, but I don’t know how they could deliver something that would work as well as either of these two seasons. That being said, I never thought this season would be possible, and not only is it good but it will certainly be considered one of the best shows of 2022.
Was our review helpful before you watch Russian Doll‘s second season premiere on April 20th on Netflix?