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Russian Doll Season 2 Review

The second season of Russian Doll is a much inferior season to the terrific original. It still has its strengths, but the story just wasn’t as engaging this time around.

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“It’s my bad attitude that keeps me going“

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First off, I don’t like the fact that this show is so short. First eight and now only seven episodes? Netflix shows have become overly short in my opinion, which just screams lazy to me. Secondly, for a series that ended in such a beautiful way in the first season, it was always a foolish decision to do another one. The mixed results are a proof of that.

Nadia is 10 days away from celebrating her 40th birthday when the train sends her back in time to 1982. She soon discovers she is trapped inside the body of her mother, Lenora, who is pregnant with Nadia. Nadia decides to pursue the gold her mother lost that same year, to change the course of her family’s history. That is the basic story behind this season, which obviously means that gone is the time loop and here comes the time travel gimmicks.

This time travel is a bit different than others, though. I have to commend the creators for making a time travel story that is somewhat unique in that the protagonist travels into a different body. The fact that those are her mother and grandmother led to a lot of exploration of family history and a great emotional arc for Nadia.

However, that also led to a lot of pretentious storytelling and visuals. So many times while watching this season I got the feeling that the creators were trying way too hard to be cool, edgy and deep. The huge effort to accomplish that felt too obvious for me, leading to this very pretentious tone that permeates through every episode that really bothered me.

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With that being said, the season offered an acting showcase for Natasha Lyonne. She is much more vulnerable in this season while still not losing sight of her comedic chops. The result is this very complex, dynamic performance as one of the best protagonists in all of Netflix series. She is that amazing.

Chloe Sevigny as her mother Nora is also great and the exploration of their fraught relationship was the heart of this season. The granny also got a solid backstory and the season’s budget was obviously expanded to include Budapest, which I loved. It made the season intimate in its storytelling scope, but epic in the locations being used.

The for once European and not just racial diversity was wonderfully on display here. Budapest was so beautifully explored and used within the confines of this show and its characters. Some of the visuals are truly fantastic and the editing is very confident. But many episodes felt messy and the finale was disappointing as it wasn’t as emotionally rewarding as this type of story needed to have been.

I was also thoroughly disappointed with Alan’s arc on this iteration of Russian Doll. He gets to relive her grandmother’s past in Berlin, but it just did not feel engrossing as it was rushed and not really all that interesting. The two getting separated in this season was an obvious season 2 problem that so many shows have, but it really hurt this one. At least Maxine got more to do and she was hilarious at times in a season that was not funny enough as the original.

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