Russian Doll season 2 review: Natasha Lyonne, Annie Murphy wisecrack through this excellent time-travel show

Language: English

In 2007, David Tennant delivered the following explanation of time travel during his titular role in the new-and-revived TV series Doctor Who: “People assume that time is a strict progression from cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.” The ‘timey-wimey’ bit is indicative of an alternative approach to time-travel stories — a more easygoing style, not overly bothered with the scientific details of the made-up universe. In skilled hands, this approach can make this genre a good vehicle for philosophical or ethical concerns. And no show in recent times is a better advertisement for the ‘timey-wimey’ approach than Netflix’s Russian Doll, created by Natasha Lyonne (who also stars as the lead, game designer Nadia Vulvakov), Amy Poehler and Leslye Headland.      

The first season took Groundhog Day’s time-loop scenario—Nadia died repeatedly after her 36th birthday party and woke up in her friend’s bathroom each time—and expanded it into a philosophical puzzle box that reminded you of concepts and dilemmas discussed by the likes of Nietzsche, Camus and Kundera. The second season deploys a vastly different kind of time trick — at 40 (a full four years after the events of the first season), Nadia discovers that taking a particular train at 177th Street transports her back to 40 years ago, in 1982. To complicate things further, she’s occupying her mother Lenora’s (Chloe Sevigny) body in the past, for some reason.  

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Without giving away too many spoilers, I will say that Russian Doll extracts great mileage out of its new and enhanced time-travel structure. Lyonne’s character Nadia was always a bit of an old soul, it has to be said, so it makes sense at the story level to transport her into the past. _Schitt’s Creek_’s Annie Murphy is excellent, but I can’t reveal who she plays lest I give away too much! Suffice it to say that both Murphy and Lyonne are ridiculously good throughout the second season. It doesn’t hurt that the loopy, psychedelic 70s and 80s soundtrack is excellent and covers the usual suspects from those eras.

In the first season, Nadia’s belligerent, memorable line was “The universe is trying to f*** with me, and I refuse to engage!” This time around, she wants to engage to a much greater degree, not least because she’s curious about the way her mother lived. Alan (Charlie Barnett), the person whose experiences ultimately mirrored Nadia’s throughout the first season, ultimately boards the time-travelling train here — like Nadia, he is also occupying somebody else’s body.  

The jokes are always on point and audacious, like when Nadia, bored out of her head at a hospital waiting room, says, “Are we actually treating people here today or just staging a Beckett play?” (referring to the classic play Waiting for Godot) It’s this signature brand of wry humour that Lyonne continues to portray so well even as her character trip-walks across New York (the city’s looking utterly gorgeous by night in a lot of shots, by the way).  

Because the time-travel stuff is inextricably linked with Nadia’s relationship with her mother, we obviously delve a lot deeper into Lenora’s life and character as well. Questions of eternal recurrence are never far from the main event — are we doomed to repeat the mistakes of our parents? Is it possible to forgive people for things that happened before you were born? Is it even advisable to seek such forgiveness?  

But over and above weighty questions like these, there’s the sheer fun of watching Lyonne, Murphy and co. wisecrack their way through some excellent, challenging, hyper-literate scripts. The theatricality of Russian Doll comes through in their performances, with Murphy in particular sure to scoop up a few nominations before awards season is over. Charlie Barnett has less to do this time around, but his character’s role increases in significance sharply towards the end of the season.    

At the end of these seven episodes, there’s a sense that Russian Doll is building up to a kind of grand crescendo—Lyonne has always maintained that she had pitched the show as a three-season concept to Netflix. To that end, diehard fans will be hunting down every Easter egg (and there are many scattered here, often in plain view) during the last couple of episodes, especially, eager to find what new manner of time-warp does Russian Doll have planned as its last act. On the evidence of this incredibly accomplished second season, it’ll be something super-fun.  

Russian Doll season 2 is streaming on Netflix.

Aditya Mani Jha is a Delhi-based independent writer and journalist, currently working on a book of essays on Indian comics and graphic novels.

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