“Happy Birthday Baby!” Talk about Russian Doll on Netflix

Posts be disappearing like mirrors in here!

I d i e a l l t h e t i m . e

*falls down the stairs*

but i'm a cheerleader fans: jamie babbit directs episodes 4-6

Noticed that, since it is showing on Mubi now.

I've heard John Maus and also Timber Timbre on the soundtrack

i was p delighted to hear john maus "cop killer" and gang gang dance "mind killa" in the same episode of a show i love

It had the Promise by When in Rome and so therefore it is perfect.

I watched the whole thing today and I LOVED IT. Natasha was perfect and it was so well done and, yes, the music was great.

“the unholy offspring of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jack Nicholson”

Ha!!!! This works though I just kept thinking chubby Jack. The resemblance was disconcerting!

I liked the fact that they shot so many scenes in or in front of 7B which was also used in Jessica Jones and lots of other stuff and always makes me miss NY.

I want to watch it again!

yeah i am thinking abt rewatching too

Can we talk about spoilers yet because I’m consfused about how we got from episode 7 to 8.

Or maybe I will just watch again.

Yeah sure spoil away I say.

Already forgot the details after weekend binge watch but I seem to remember them coming up with the basic idea of a plan in 7 and then executing it in 8.

I hate it when you're watching a show and there's a weird character like Alan in it and you feel like the show runners are intending for his presence to feel alienating but you are watching him feeling like "omg they put me in a show I feel so seen"

I didn't think he was weird, just very guarded! All of the things he was doing to keep his world in order were interfering with his ability to just live and his projection of structure was giving him faulty answers for why his girlfriend was cheating, etc.

a little too relatable, for sure

I'm only a couple episodes in but my friend did the score. Haven't really heard much of it yet, just the licensed songs, but I assume there's more music later.

you feel like the show runners are intending for his presence to feel alienating

i'm not alan but he doesn't come off this way to me at all

I found him v sympathetic

ENBB OTM re 7B, and NYC in general was well portrayed and felt true with a couple of excusable exceptions.

Apart from that I wasn't ever quite able to lose myself in the show because of the dialogue, which always had the clanky ring of lines that are perfect on the page. In one episode there was a brief exchange about how hard it is to write dialogue.

I did love that so many small passing details in the show weren't there to further the plot, and weren't really red herrings either. Just comfy story furniture.

Oh Jordan I heard a cello thing in ep 6 but that was the only cue I've noticed so far lol

Haha, he always gets these gigs that seem really light on score (the Aziz show being an extreme example). Said he got to do a decent amount for this but idk.

I was gonna rib him for the dubstep beat at the party in the first episode but he denied responsibility. :)

still waiting for some clue as to what elevates this above (or differentiates it from) a charming iteration of Groundhog Day. I mean I enjoyed it and all but

it's got a cat instead of a ground rodent

lol

the major variation seems to be that it's *two* people trapped and their dilemma is resolve not by falling in love, but just looking out for each other

which was also the resolution in Maniac (which I probably liked more than this tbh - or at least found it more consistently surprising)

tbh a lot of it comes down to how much you care about the setting, colors, and Natasha Lyonne. If you're ambivalent, then hey. It's just a well worn concept. However, if all those things are *very* you, this series is way elevated.

I fall into the latter group.

I like all those things and liked this fine ftr

what if i loved this just not as much as happy death day

The difference to me is that it’s not just a straight up repeating the same day for infinity, each loop is the same but slightly shifted in time & time is still ~passing~ (rotting fruit etc)

plus the lynchpin to get out of the loop is much more psychological, ie first doing the emotional work of finding that thing inside themselves that led them to be in the frame of mind they were in when they died in the first place
they have to first go inwards before they can help themselves and the other person

I do feel like this got deeper into, like, the emotional work and psychological reckoning with one's past that it takes to become a better person than Groundhog Day does - part of that probably down to having a longer time-frame to explore the characters, as well not having to hew to a more conventional romcom structure the way GHD does. Lyonne also (maybe) more sympathetic and nuanced than Murray's performance.

what if i loved this just not as much as happy death day

groundhog day > los cronocrimenes > happy death day > live die repeat > russian doll > frequently asked questions about time travel > x-files episode "monday" > run lola run > source code

all of these are great

it's true!

see you in the thread i inevitably make for happy death day 2 u sic

that's an excellent list

now flashing back to spring of my freshman year of college when we rewatched run lola run all the time

los cronocrimenes

lol no. I mean this was okay but

Live Die Repeat (Edge of Tomorrow over here) is great, just cuz the concept is so well constructed and also it's great to watch Tom Cruise die repeatedly.

thx for the tip on Happy Death Day tho!

Cronocrimines is marvelous for the way it doesn't try to dazzle with the loops, taking its slow-ass time on each of them, and especially allowing the audience to get way ahead of the very dipshitted protagonist; all of these acting together to build a sense of dread and inevitability. especially refreshing given how often time-loop films go for lols or a rush during the loops instead.

I'd probably put the Dr Who episode "Heaven Sent" in the top few too, but not sure how well it plays as a standalone: there are two small elements of continuity, which are probably set up enough within the episode but idrce

kinda think you might be able to shoehorn loopers in there somewhere

Bezos Prime link for that one, xpost

Looper is doing something different, as is Back To The Future 2, but I considered them for this list of excellence

Rian Johnson is such an awful filmmaker ugh

remember Source Code?

me neither

oh lol

I now see it was last on sic's list

There was that movie with the Californian UFO death cult where everyone's in a loop except for the protagonists, and also Triangle. Apart from poliziotteschi, this is the best micro-genre imo.

The Invitation?

The Endless!

Russian Doll also shared a Schrodinger's Cat vibe with another California loop-film, Coherence.

Hell, maybe Oatmeal *was* Schrodinger's cat...

Surprise! Lizzy Bougatsos as gutterpunk's accomplice!

Rian Johnson is not an awful filmmaker

The time-space collapse was my favorite part of the series and I really enjoyed watching it but my overarching question at the end was “Why?” It was a fantastic ride but the point did not resonate with me, so I ended up feeling removed from this season whereas I firmly fell in love with the first season. There broad theme seems to be self-acceptance and reconciliation with all of the contradictory forces that lead to your existence, but also tied up in it was a meditation on grief that still managed to get short shrift even though it overwhelmed the end of the season and there was no compelling reason for or payoff to Alan’s story as it was presented.

Not as good as S1 but I really enjoyed S2. First three eps were a bit blah but it gets better imo.

Wow, she really is doing Columbo, isn’t she

Started watching this last night. I said to bf "wasn't the first season set in the 80s? I'm confused". I realized that I'd so internalized Zinoman's theory upthread that I remembered it as being set in the 80s. I'm about to read that Twitter thread again and I'm excited

this was terrible: they forgot to write a story!

DJP completely OTM. As impressed as I was with how this season was handled, and as enjoyable as it was, it felt like there was something missing at the center.

can’t deal with Nadia’s growly shit-talkin’ schtick this time around.

I feel like the fact that she didn't say, "Hey, I'm walkin' here!" was an oversight (or an outtake).

I was really disappointed in this season, but I thought the last episode was beautiful and somewhat redeemed the arc.

I think I loved this as much of the first season, although it fell apart towards the end (also much like the first season?). Some refinance to me as an assimilated Jew with an Eastern European riches to rags to middle-type family story.

Anyway – would definitely watch more, but need more Alan next time.

Oops refinance = resonance

giving up a few episodes in. Just not feeling it.

i both really liked this season and agree with many of the criticisms in the thread lol. i think i just really like watching natasha lyonne do her thing, and the dialogue was really funny. i wish there was more senior ruth, love that actress and her smoker's voice.

feel like this was a v. impressive second season for a show that absolutely shouldn't have had one

i mean i liked it -- give me subway trains running throughout time and i'll watch -- but alan's part was absolutely tacked on (as was his mustache, i hope). only having to hear harry nilsson once or twice is a plus, but literally sending your protagonist to hungary as the axis falls should have somehow been more than a plot point

and if you're gonna go to the trouble of staging a modern-day hungarian rave, at least let greta get laid

Somehow got stuck unable to find an English set of subtitles for episode 5 for my tv. They were there when I looked for them on my computer.
& there is a lot of that episode with Hungarian being spoken. Wound up having to watch on the computer.

I missed how she managed to work out how to become a different generation of her ancestry. Or was that done by moving down the train like she was at the end of the episode.
Or was that covered by her saying well better get to Hungary

i both really liked this season and agree with many of the criticisms in the thread lol.

Same. I watched it when I was slightly feverish with Covid and the series' hallucinatory flavour, especially in the second half, nicely complemented my illness.

But it's a real mess. It's as if they were planning two more series - a third one perhaps focussing on Alan in Berlin- but had to bring all the ideas together suddenly at short notice. There's a lot to enjoy though if you're prepared to overlook its flaws.

I found the flaws only became apparent towards the end when the narrative started sprawling out of control, so it was still kinda five episodes of fun, and two episodes of “wait what”, and even those last two episodes had some good stuff. Alan wuz definitely robbed this season though.

gonna say it - i dug his mustache

100% sexy weird moustache

Disappointing. There were no 'rules' about what she could do, how she could change anything, where she could go, what she could take with her, so it all seemed a bit 'now she is taken here and does this thing and wisecracks to everyone'. Bit like Doctor Who, but at least that sets out 'the rules' for the current goal in each episode. The stakes seemed to get lower and lower in s2 as more and more felt unreal. Looked great though; I would've liked her to hang out in the 80s a bit more.

In s1 the people gradually disappearing and the fruit rotting etc felt genuinely sinister - here it didn't really do that. The bit about Nora's mental illness encroaching into Nadia was quite scary, but then she just became someone else.