Russian Doll - General Discussion

[DrSpaceman73]

I agree with others, too much of Nadia alone and not enough Alan or her and Alan together. 

It seems like they wrote a whole story for Nadia and then remember 'oh yeah we need something for Alan to do.....

Let's stick him in Germany for a few episodes and have nothing come of it'

Not only that this seems to be the opposite theme of most time travel with the point being you can't change your past, accept it and move on. 

I thought we'd learn who stole the gold on the train, we never did, did we?  Maybe I missed it.  

Also why did she need the priest to mail the letter with directions to her families hidden stuff? Why couldn't she just mail it herself?  

[peachmangosteen]

42 minutes ago, DrSpaceman73 said:

I thought we'd learn who stole the gold on the train, we never did, did we?  Maybe I missed it.  

I don't think anyone did or even that there was a train. She sold the stuff she found in the warehouse for the krubels (sp?) and then Nora stole them and then, uh, lost them? I don't remember that detail lol.

[DrSpaceman73]

10 minutes ago, peachmangosteen said:

I don't think anyone did or even that there was a train. She sold the stuff she found in the warehouse for the krubels (sp?) and then Nora stole them and then, uh, lost them? I don't remember that detail lol.

Yes nora stole them, then she had them on the train and the bag disappeared. 

It's all murky though what was real and what was in her mind. Maybe no one stole them and she just lost them on the train. But they had to end up somewhere, wouldn't just disappear.  

 

[Ohiopirate02]

5 hours ago, DrSpaceman73 said:

Also why did she need the priest to mail the letter with directions to her families hidden stuff? Why couldn't she just mail it herself?  

Nadia told the priest to mail the letter after the war when Vera would be in America to receive it.  He would have held on to that letter for years before sending it or someone else sent it after he died.  Vera did not go to Budapest until the late 60s to retrieve the stash.  We don't know when she received the letter.  

Nadia lost the Krugerrands on the train because they had to stay lost.  Nadia could not take anything with her to the past nor bring anything back with her.  Her cellphone disappears and reappears, the No Nukes pamphlet also disappears when she re-enters the 2022 platform.  

[DrSpaceman73]

1 hour ago, Ohiopirate02 said:

Nadia told the priest to mail the letter after the war when Vera would be in America to receive it.  He would have held on to that letter for years before sending it or someone else sent it after he died.  Vera did not go to Budapest until the late 60s to retrieve the stash.  We don't know when she received the letter.  

Nadia lost the Krugerrands on the train because they had to stay lost.  Nadia could not take anything with her to the past nor bring anything back with her.  Her cellphone disappears and reappears, the No Nukes pamphlet also disappears when she re-enters the 2022 platform.  

That makes sense. Thanks

Though seems like kind of a cut rate time travel device she's stuck in. Take the train, no baggage coming back. 

Though I guess you could have once again stashed the gold somewhere in the 80s before getting on the train, then found it again in present day after returning. 

 

[chaifan]

1 hour ago, Ohiopirate02 said:

Nadia could not take anything with her to the past nor bring anything back with her. 

Except the baby.  But, that was Nadia, so she was bringing herself, so maybe that's the loophole.  But then, the baby hat, blanket, etc., also came through from one era to the next and I don't have a good explanation for that...

[DrSpaceman73]

It like time travel run by spirit airlines. 

Or the equivalent train company. 

[Ohiopirate02]

2 minutes ago, DrSpaceman73 said:

That makes sense. Thanks

Though seems like kind of a cut rate time travel device she's stuck in. Take the train, no baggage coming back. 

Though I guess you could have once again stashed the gold somewhere in the 80s before getting on the train, then found it again in present day after returning. 

 

I believe Nadia was trying to take the gold back to Vera when it disappeared.  She needed to have taken a taxi and not the subway.  At that point in her travels, I don't think Nadia realized yet the significance of the train number.  She was still capable of traveling through the subway without jumping time as long as she was not on train #6622(??).

 

7 minutes ago, chaifan said:

Except the baby.  But, that was Nadia, so she was bringing herself, so maybe that's the loophole.  But then, the baby hat, blanket, etc., also came through from one era to the next and I don't have a good explanation for that...

The clothing loophole makes sense.  I was surprised and laughed at her getting to keep her lighter.  I guess because it's attached to her clothes, it gets to stay.  She also gets back whatever she stuffs into her pockets like the business card to Crazy Eddies.

[peachmangosteen]

1 hour ago, Ohiopirate02 said:

She also gets back whatever she stuffs into her pockets like the business card to Crazy Eddies.

Why didn't she have the pamphlet then?

[DoctorAtomic]

6 hours ago, Ohiopirate02 said:

Nadia lost the Krugerrands on the train because they had to stay lost.  Nadia could not take anything with her to the past nor bring anything back with her.  Her cellphone disappears and reappears, the No Nukes pamphlet also disappears when she re-enters the 2022 platform.  

I don't have any disagreement, but I don't know why she either didn't put the gold in a safety deposit box when she got them in exchange for the valuables, or when she was in the warehouse in 1944 just realize *not* to bring anything back of value. Nadia told her daughter/mom about the whole story, so she could have easily left a letter telling the future too, in the same way she told the priest about the future. 

The whole issue was the actual theft of the coins, not necessarily the coins themselves. As it's been point out, and again, no disagreement, I would speculate as to whether more interactions with Alan may have give rise to these options. 

I can't really call ooc on anything Nadia did, but it seems some additional influence, like if she copped to past!Ruth what was going on, or Alan, might have helped. 

[Glade]

I'm halfway through and pretty disappointed thus far.  Alan is barely in the show, though I do prefer his storyline thus far....  I really was shouting at the screen in the first episode when Nadia made the horrible decision to let this loser creep Chez touch her/go home with him, thus setting everything in motion.  Time travel has been done to death, especially 'you can't really change anything/your time travel is what caused the present to happen anyway.'  So I'm not thrilled by the direction of the story either. 

[Darian]

I have one positive comment about this season (other than that I thought all the actors were great): I have pretty bad memory damage. I have trouble even when binging shows remembering things, especially when there are multiple timelines and such. If there's too much time between seasons, I either have to rewatch the last one or read a summary or be lost and bail. I couldn't remember a ton about the first season and didn't want to rewatch, so I gave it a chance. And that was an excellent recap of what happened in season one. It all came back and I wasn't confused. And that's really rare.  

[Quilt Fairy]

Well, I liked it.  In fact, I watched it a second time this weekend.  It doesn't have the whirlwind insanity of the first season, but nothing could.  Instead, it has a new kind of insanity.  You can't make sense of time travel.  Nadia finds a train that takes her to 1982 and back and just rolls with it.  She takes the opportunity to deal with the unresolved issues she has being raised by a paranoid-schizophrenic mother.

I agree that Alan's story got short shrift, and it's not helped by the fact that he doesn't find out if Lenny made it to the West and his grandmother shrugs it off by saying that's not the point. 

I'll take a unique character like Nadia any way I can get her.  I just feel bad that it's probably another 2 year wait until we get the final season of the show (which hopefully Netflix will greenlight). 

[DoctorAtomic]

It would have been a little better if Alan was more active in planning Lenny's escape, and he did escape, but then not knowing what happened would have had a little more heft. 

[peachmangosteen]

12 hours ago, Quilt Fairy said:

I'll take a unique character like Nadia any way I can get her.  I just feel bad that it's probably another 2 year wait until we get the final season of the show (which hopefully Netflix will greenlight). 

Oh, did they have a 3 season plan from the beginning? 

[Lunula]

I'm super disappointed in S2. Before we watched it, we re-watched S1 and it was so great, I was concerned about S2.

For me, it was really that S2 didn't create any tension. So, she gets on a train and goes to the past - from which she can leave at any time? No idea why the train works like this, no real reason she goes back in time to "fix" the family fortune stuff, no interaction with the other characters, no working together to figure out what is going on or why. Just Alan somewhere in Germany doing his own thing (without any real reason as to why he's doing it) and Nadia doing her own thing. 

I found it boring. I understand the producers/writers didn't want a retread of S1, but this simply wasn't compelling to me and I struggled with logical reasons why it was happening and with overall continuity.

Edited April 25, 2022 by Lunula
Punctuation

[peachmangosteen]

If there was a 3 season plan, I wonder if initially they didn’t plan on Alan even being in it after season 1 because his story in season 2 was very obviously kinda tacked on. 

[Ohiopirate02]

20 hours ago, Quilt Fairy said:

Well, I liked it.  In fact, I watched it a second time this weekend.  It doesn't have the whirlwind insanity of the first season, but nothing could.  Instead, it has a new kind of insanity.  You can't make sense of time travel.  Nadia finds a train that takes her to 1982 and back and just rolls with it.  She takes the opportunity to deal with the unresolved issues she has being raised by a paranoid-schizophrenic mother.

I agree that Alan's story got short shrift, and it's not helped by the fact that he doesn't find out if Lenny made it to the West and his grandmother shrugs it off by saying that's not the point. 

I'll take a unique character like Nadia any way I can get her.  I just feel bad that it's probably another 2 year wait until we get the final season of the show (which hopefully Netflix will greenlight). 

I also liked this season.  I liked the show using time travel to delve into generational trauma.  And Nadia being the reason why her family gets their treasure back in the 60s was, at least to me, a stroke of genius.  Nadia's need to take Baby Nadia into 2022 was something I could sympathize with, and her giving the baby back to Nora was a gut punch in the best way possible.  Nadia chooses to let go of her past and I also cannot wait for season 3 to see where else the show goes.  

[Quilt Fairy]

11 hours ago, peachmangosteen said:

Oh, did they have a 3 season plan from the beginning? 

Yes, that's what they pitched to Netflix.  

[Glade]

This was a slog. I guess Nadia had given up by that point, but maybe if Vera put the kugerrands into a safety deposit box or something?  

Alan's story needed more development, we should have seen him/his grandmother in classes, and yes, they should have been allowed to find out what happened to Lenny, in the past or present.  Even Nadia was allowed to google.... Meanwhile, I guess Alan didn't make any revelations about his sexual or gender identity given how much he enjoyed being his grandmother/having Lenny as a lover?  Of course it doesn't have to lead to revelations about either, but...there's really no point to his story, he just went along for the ride.  Nadia learned some really obvious/cliche life lessons, the end. 

I do however strongly recommend the book 'The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells by Andrew Sean Greer.  The main character, Greta is also a New Yorker with long curly red hair who has an aunt named Ruth and also a gay brother Felix, and she travels through space/time via electroshock to experience 3 different versions of her life/family in different time periods.  It's really beautifully written and satisfying, unlike this season. 

Edited April 26, 2022 by Glade

[DoctorAtomic]

8 hours ago, Glade said:

I guess Nadia had given up by that point, but maybe if Vera put the kugerrands into a safety deposit box or something?

That's what I was thinking. I can appreciate that she was kind of floored when she realized that she basically effected the gold and put everything in motion. There were still other possibilities to try.

 

[NotChristine]

Season 2 was decent but I didn't enjoy it as much as Season 1. As others have said, there needed to be more Alan. Annie Murphy was great as young Ruthie.

It took Alan meeting his grandma in the tunnel for it to dawn on me that grandma was one of the bystanders during Nadia's birth.

Even if there is a 3 season plan, I wouldn't bank on it given Netflix's track record. Natasha Lyonne is starring in Rian Johnson's upcoming Peacock series. Guess I have that to look forward to if S3 doesn't happen.

[Zonk]

On 4/25/2022 at 2:43 AM, Quilt Fairy said:

I'll take a unique character like Nadia any way I can get her.  I just feel bad that it's probably another 2 year wait until we get the final season of the show (which hopefully Netflix will greenlight). 

Should just be a year. This season took so long because of the pandemic. Unless of course Netflix cancelles it...

Edited April 27, 2022 by Zonk

[Milburn Stone]

After loving S1, we were out after the first episode of S2.

I really think the show suffered from the pandemic. I don't know if S2 was already written or if it was written during; but somehow the delay caused the show to lose its way. Or else it was always just a one-season idea that never should have been renewed. 

Another key problem, perhaps also caused by the pandemic: Based on the first episode of the new season, it just wasn't funny. It tried to be funny; but it wasn't. Part of the magic of S1 was that it worked as social satire of a certain NY demographic. You laughed. Nothing made us laugh in the first ep of S2. Not one thing. Several things tried--it wasn't that the show was now going for "serious" in a way that S1 didn't--it's just that every attempt at humor failed. 

Kudos to Natasha for an incredible S1. 

[nachomama]

It made me think her mother was schizophrenic BECAUSE Nadia jumped into her body while she was pregnant and she was losing her dang mind.

[SomeTameGazelle]

The last episode of the season, with more interaction between Nadia and Alan, was more what I was looking for. It would have helped I think to have Nadia and Alan meeting up and comparing their experiences throughout the series and strategizing for how to solve their problems, figuring out how the train system worked, trying to get involved in each other's situations.

In the promo for this season I loved the line about "time prisoner", but in execution I felt it was flat since it came up almost immediately in Nadia's first venture into the past and I don't recall she had spent much if any time struggling to get out.

I had decided not to rewatch the first season before I watched this and I think that was probably for the best because otherwise I would have spent all of season 2 wondering what had happened to John and his daughter. As it was when we got to the last episode and Alan ran into Mike at Nadia's birthday party I struggled to remember whether Mike had been Nadia's boyfriend with the daughter and had to look it up to remember John. It was fine that John and Nadia were not together any more, but if Nadia mentioned it at all I missed it.

Glad to see Maxine and Lizzy.

[Chicago Redshirt]

On 4/23/2022 at 8:40 PM, DoctorAtomic said:

I don't have any disagreement, but I don't know why she either didn't put the gold in a safety deposit box when she got them in exchange for the valuables, or when she was in the warehouse in 1944 just realize *not* to bring anything back of value. Nadia told her daughter/mom about the whole story, so she could have easily left a letter telling the future too, in the same way she told the priest about the future. 

The whole issue was the actual theft of the coins, not necessarily the coins themselves. As it's been point out, and again, no disagreement, I would speculate as to whether more interactions with Alan may have give rise to these options. 

I can't really call ooc on anything Nadia did, but it seems some additional influence, like if she copped to past!Ruth what was going on, or Alan, might have helped. 

Possible reasons Nadia didn't/couldn't put the Krugerrands into a safety deposit box:

1. Grandma's friend was calling the shots and was unlikely to allow it, as they both were under the mindset that they should not trust banks in case another wave of Nazism came to pass. 

2. She realized the futility of doing so because her real grandma would just take them out of the safety deposit box once she got a chance.

3. She might not have thought that she would have enough time as grandma to put the coins in a safety deposit box.

Nadia didn't bring anything treasures from 1944. She took what was apparently was her family's property and hid it in the sewer. She didn't mail the letter she wrote straightaway because Vera would not be there to receive it until sometime after the war. I suppose she could have just not told anyone and gotten the riches in 2022. But her point was she thought that she was enabling her family to have the riches that they would have had if the Krugerrands were not taken, when she unexpectedly created the conditions for her family to have the wealth from the Krugerrands in the first place.

We have to just ignore the notion that Nazis would let this random woman go through their stolen treasure warehouse and come out with a bunch of stuff. 

[tennisgurl]

I loved the first season, it was so interesting, philosophical, and tightly written, so I was disappointed that this season felt more confusing than interesting. I liked the basic premise, that Nadia and Alan have to deal with a lot of generational trauma and family issues going back through generations, but I really wish that Nadia and Allan had stayed together, or that their stories had more to do with each other. The whole point of the first season was that they needed connections with other people, especially each other, to escape the time loop, so why are they off doing their own things this time? I especially thought that Allan was really underused, like they wrote Nadia's story then realized halfway through that they forgot to give Allan a story and threw this together for him. I understood why Nadia was going back in time to try and get the gold to fix things for her family, and she left with a greater understanding of her mother and family realizing that obsessing over her Coney Island and what could have been was pointless, but what did Allan learn? Why was he even so obsessed with his grandma's time in East Berlin and the guy she was seeing? I get that he really liked the guy, but I don't know how that really teaches him anything or relates to his personal issues. His story seemed like a side story in a way more than it did in the first season.

Couldn't Allan have tried to look up the guy from East Berlin later if he wanted to know if he made it? If he got to the west, couldn't he find some record of his existence, even if it was just newspaper clippings of an obituary or wedding announcement?

I loved seeing young Ruth, the actress was very well cast, and I am glad that this gave Nadia a new appreciation for her, even if it also meant that she didn't get to be with her as she died.

The ending bits were really trippy, but not in the surreally fascinating way the first season was, it just felt weird. The bits where she ended up back at the party from the first season (complete with song) and started going to different trains in different time periods were cool, but they didn't have that sense of purpose that the first seasons weird ending episodes had, they felt confusing for the sake of confusion, especially the very end. I thought this season had a lot of great ideas, I like the idea of time travel as a way to explore familiar trauma and regret with trains as the way they move through time, and I think Nadia's basic story was pretty solid, but it never quite hit that sweet spot season one did.

Edited May 10, 2022 by tennisgurl

[Ceindreadh]

On 4/27/2022 at 1:10 PM, nachomama said:

It made me think her mother was schizophrenic BECAUSE Nadia jumped into her body while she was pregnant and she was losing her dang mind.

Nora was having mental issues even before Nadia hijacked her body.  When Nadia was in the hospital after giving birth, Vera was telling Ruthie that they'd had a plan in place - re taking the baby away from her - as soon as Nora had said she was pregnant. 

[Ilovepie]

I am sad to say I really didn't enjoy this season as much. Even though last season had her constantly returning to the bathroom and the party, for some reason this felt more redundant to me with the train. I too missed the interaction of Nadia and Alan. I found his mustache very distracting  - it made him look about 20 years older. I don't know why Alan had the story he had - it just made no sense and that saying something for this show.

I don't think it's a coincidence that my favorite part was when Alan ended back up in the bathroom with the iconic song playing. I also loved Nadia and Maxine in Germany. It was so sad that she wasn't with Ruth when she died because it seems very much like something flaky her mom would do. Loved Annie Murphy. Really, I love all the characters, so it's a very mixed bag for me. I will be back though if there is a season 3.

[aghst]

Wonder if with the huge positive reaction that Poker Face is getting whether Lyonne would be as interested in doing another season.