Netflix’s ‘Russian Doll’: A Darker, Druggier ‘Groundhog Day’
There is a certain moment in Russian Doll you’ll encounter again and again—at times in a fit of hilarity, at others in fatal dread. It goes like this: Nadia Vulvokov (Natasha Lyonne) stands at a running bathroom sink, gazing at her reflection in the mirror. Her shoulders are squared in a black blazer, her red hair falls in a perfect mop. It’s the night of her 36th birthday, and outside the bathroom you can hear an apartment full of party chatter while Harry Nilsson’s “Gotta Get Up” blasts on the stereo.
The reason you will watch this scene so many times—and here comes this excellent, gripping, laugh-out-loud funny series’ ineluctable spoiler—is that Nadia is stuck in a time loop. She can’t stop dying. And each time she does, she finds herself back in front of that mirror with Nilsson chanting “gotta get up, gotta get out, gotta get home before the morning comes” in an unending, eerily-upbeat taunt.
Now streaming in all its eight parts on Netflix, Russian Doll is the brainchild of Leslye Headland, Lyonne, and Amy Poehler, and it’s as fizzy and funny as you’d expect a show co-created by these three women would be. It’s also profoundly sophisticated and repeatedly surprising, making exemplary use of its four-hour runtime to unpeel and unpack (like a Russian doll!) both Nadia and her native Manhattan milieu. What it reveals is a shrewdly modern vision of the city, its eccentric nooks, and its complicated creatures of the night.