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

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

forget it man, it’s Shakeytown

Timecrimes >>>>>

unfortunately all the other Vigalondo I've seen fucking sucks (especially Colossal, possibly the worst movie of that year)

Just finished it a little earlier. We were both very taken by it, and in slightly different ways as well, which is good for perspective. I especially enjoyed how episode 7 was horror, but in a way that some blood aside was mostly through tension and setting. (That makes two Netflix things this year that played up horror in different ways without being horror, Fyre being the other.) Kate was sharper on the uptake than I -- she clocked it was Alan in the deli from episode 1 after his character was more properly introduced later, and noticed people disappearing from the party earlier on. (She also immediately recognized JD Samson from Le Tigre as the delivery person!)

Good use of both music selections and cues (h/t to Jordan's friend). The reuse of Nilsson was smart; ending it with "Alone Again Or" a striking final touch.

Greta Lee underrated MVP for having to deliver the same opening line about twenty different ways.

I got all the cameos immediately and thought, in an inside voice, "is Natasha Lyonne trying to middle-finger Blue States Lose and all the people who made fun of electroclash or something" but I missed that it was Alan was stubbing his toes on ramen in the first episode

Headland and Lyonne, meantime, agreed in comments after this thread that this interpretation of it all is kinda key.

Loved Russian Doll, superb story/style, funny performances, go watch it. Since it’s a puzzle piece drama with magical realistic touches, it invites crazy grand unified theories – and I have one! Spoilers and a loooooong thread ahead. Feel free to mute. 1/

— Jason Zinoman (@zinoman) February 4, 2019

i love this theory

that's good thinkin' there

That theory reminds me of some of our discussion on this thread: Teju Cole: Open City (ILX Book Club #3, starts 27 June)

“Kate was sharper on the uptake than I -- she clocked it was Alan in the deli from episode 1 after his character was more properly introduced later, and noticed people disappearing from the party earlier on”

Yeah I knew it was him as soon as he met up with the deli owner buddy to talk about the breakup.

This is better than Groundhog Day because it explored past trauma and it was only after the two of them were able to confront and deal with their own traumas (NL and her realizing she blamed herself for her mom’s death and Alan realizing his part in his bad relationship and forgiving B) that they were truly about to save themselves and break the loop.

I definitely found A weird and a bit alienating.

Oooooh that theory!

Absolutely agreed it's better than Groundhog Day.

Couple of new things here -- Headland called attention to this Twitter thread just now, observing that the same three actors who are the drunk bodega bros also play the EMT crew.

https://www.reddit.com/r/RussianDoll/comments/amq6ys/same_characters_in_different_rolls/?st=JRTINXV4&sh=71311e6f

General reflections piece at The Atlantic, some good points (and indirectly references Zinoman's theory).

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/02/many-layers-russian-doll-netflix/581971/

nothing is better than groundhog day

Also: the final two episodes are called "The Way Out" and "Ariadne." The latter surely refers to the Greek mythological character of the same name, who assists Theseus in killing the Minotaur and quite literally finding 'the way out' of the labyrinth. So: selflessness, assistance, escape from a trap. One thing to note, though, especially if this is supposed to be a three season story (even though I think it could simply stand alone): there's no one story on what happens TO Ariadne after that moment. This link has more on those variants:

https://www.greekmythology.com/.../Ariadne/ariadne.html

yeah Ariadne uh does not get a happy ending

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.