Binging with Becca
Russian Doll opens in a bathroom. The bathroom is bathed in a blue light and Nadia is washing her hands. This sweet birthday baby adjusts her
hair, pulls the trigger on the bathroom door, and emerges back into her 36th birthday celebration to an upbeat tune. She greets her guests on the way
to the kitchen, where one of her friends is cooking her a birthday chicken and smoking a joint. She is worried about her cat Oatmeal… he’s been
missing for a while. She scans the party for a man to take home. Not one for games, she soon makes her pick and is out the door with a professor.
They make a stop at the deli for provisions, cigarettes and condoms. We catch back up to her in the living room at her place as she calls an Uber for
her birthday fling. Once he is gone, she sits down at her computer to work on the software program for the latest video game her company is creating.
An undisclosed amount of time passes, she reaches for her cigarettes, and the box is empty. On her walk back to the deli to grab a new pack, she is
hit by a car and killed.
Then we are back in the bathroom. Its bathed in blue light and Nadia is washing her hands. The sweet birthday baby adjusts her hair, pulls the trigger
on the bathroom door, and emerges back into her 36th birthday celebration to a familiar upbeat tune.
In the beginning it’s easy to make a comparison to the movie Groundhog Day (you know the one, Bill Murray). But Russian Doll is not the endless,
predictable loop of Groundhog Day. The similarities end at the beginning, in the bathroom and the song. The timeline is erratic, and every time we
emerge from the bathroom with Nadia, we get a new story, and a continuation of the larger plot. Her deaths come at unpredictable intervals, in strange
and new ways. A gas explosion, freezing to death in the street, falling down the stairs. She dies every single time, and every single time she does, she
ends up back in the bathroom. Every single time she opens the bathroom door the same song is playing. No matter how careful she is, how conscious
she is of her surroundings, death seems to be determined to have her… but not quite able to hold her.
A few cycles into this new predicament Nadia finds herself in, she spins out and begins looking for answers - and solutions. Hunting down a drug
dealer who rolled a suspicious joint, talking to a rabbi about an old yeshiva, spending an evening in a homeless shelter to guard a man’s shoes… each
lead followed brings more questions than answers. Then, in an elevator that is falling to bring death to a handful of panicked people, Nadia locks eyes
with a calm man.
“Didn’t you get the news? We’re about to die,” she says.
“It doesn’t matter. I die all the time,” he replies.
Russian Doll is beautiful. Natasha Lyonne manages to make her character and the story shine within the few days and city blocks the show takes
place in. The rest of the cast does an equally brilliant job bringing a truly dynamic feel to what is, in essence, the story of one evening. I suggest pairing
this show with a stiff drink, a stormy night, and maybe a few candles, if you aren’t as prone to accidental death as the daring character of Nadia.
I’m dying to talk to someone about the ending of this one, so get to binging. I’ll buy you a drink when you get to the end and we can discuss time,
death, and what to watch next.
12 TYBEE BEACHCOMBER | APR 2019
Russian Doll
By Becca Smeltzer