DAVID BIANCULLI

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'Russian Doll' with Natasha Lyonne Debuts on Netflix
February 1, 2019  | By David Hinckley  | 3 comments
 

Natasha Lyonne is fun to watch. She looks fetching in Lucille Ball’s hair.

That doesn’t salvage Russian Doll, the eight-episode Lyonne showcase that becomes available Friday on Netflix.

Russian Doll has good genes. It springs from the fertile comic minds of Lyonne (Nicky on Orange is the New Black), Amy Poehler and Leslye Headland.

So maybe the comedy is too subtle for those of us who still laugh at Marx Brothers movies. Or it could just be a wavelength thing. Everybody doesn’t respond to the same sensibilities.

In any case, after seeing a couple of episodes, I was still asking myself exactly what I was watching.

Lyonne plays the central character in Russian Doll, a woman named Nadia who is turning 36. When we meet her, she has just arrived at a well-attended birthday party being thrown for her by her friend Maxine (Greta Lee).

Lyonne circulates through the crowd, which lets us eavesdrop on a string of neurotic New York party conversations. An older lesbian worries about taking up with a younger lesbian. A professorial sort pontificates about the ignorance of the electorate. Maxine is annoyed that after all the time she spent fixing the chicken, no one will eat it. Maxine also hands Nadia a joint she says is laced with cocaine.

Nadia has nothing against lesbians, chicken or cocaine. She just doesn’t want to be there, and from the evidence at hand, we sympathize.

These are the sort of attendees who know there is only one bathroom in the place and have no qualms about commandeering it for extended trysts.

Rude, dude.

Nadia, meanwhile, is having an age crisis. She’s getting up there, she muses to random people in random situations, and while she seems to be gainfully employed designing video game software, her personal life largely consists of her cat, Oatmeal.

Oatmeal disappeared three days ago, which suggests Oatmeal may be less invested in the relationship than Nadia. Still, Oatmeal plays a critical role here, because when Nadia goes outside and thinks she sees Oatmeal across the street, Nadia rushes over and gets smushed by a taxicab.

That may sound like a spoiler. It’s not. It’s the starting line for Russian Doll, which turns out to be its own special reincarnation of Groundhog Day.

In this case, Nadia must relive her 36th birthday party endlessly, with mostly the same people and slightly different twists. The constants include Oatmeal and death, which is where some viewers may find the comedy of Russian Doll, and some of us will confess we don’t know if it has started yet.

To be fair, the dialogue is sprinkled with amusing bits. When Nadia notes that Maxine’s place used to be a Yeshiva school and wonders aloud whether the morality of the party crowd isn’t violating something sacred, a fellow guest drily remarks, “This is New York. Real estate is sacred.”

We’re sorry Nadia, whatever her past excesses, must constantly relive this party. That doesn’t mean we want to be her date.

 
 
 
 
 
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