MULTI-LAYER ROLE PLAYING

How Russian Doll elevates the Groundhog Day trope into something profound Sadaf Ahsan

One of the most notorious analogies for depression in the mental health community is that of the Russian nesting doll (a.k.a. matryoshka), little wooden figurines stacked one on top of the other, which can be pulled apart to reveal a progressively smaller, identical doll on the inside. The outermost doll is who we are to the world, while those in the middle represent varying degrees of insecurity and anxiety that all peel back to the smallest, innermost doll, where trauma lives. It’s a variation on the classic onion analogy: peel back enough layers and you’ll discover the core of the person.

In Netflix’s latest bingeable series, Russian Doll, starring — as well as written and directed by — Orange is the New Black’s Natasha Lyonne (produced alongside Amy Poehler and Leslye Headland), this analogy is demonstrated so acutely through a Groundhog Day time-loop narrative structure that it makes every previous use of the trope seem childish. We’ve seen it many times before; in Groundhog Day, Run, Lola, Run, Source Code, Edge of Tomorrow, ARQ and Happy Death Day, to name just a few. The cues are always the same: each day, the narrative races through the same events, often reaching a quick, comic montage to skip past 100 or so retries; and the key to breaking the cycle is making some sort of virtuous choice that will — in most of these examples — save the world.

With Russian Doll, the difference — and where this series improves on all those time-loop narratives — is how it uses this tactic to focus on a more intimate truth. The narrative structure is used to help the protagonist — and the viewer — better understand who she is. Lyonne’s Nadia is doomed to perpetually repeat the night of her 36th birthday party, where she runs into an ex and a potential new flame, and where, each time, she repeatedly dies shortly after leaving the party early, whether by car crash, tripping down the stairs, falling down a sewer grate or freezing to death. (How the loop is repeated each time is, as always, rife for increasingly absurd hijinks.)

Once she realizes she’s trapped in a time loop and starts to work through what is the same and different about each day, she eventually encounters Alan, a stranger who also happens to be trapped in a time loop. Just when you start to wonder if you can last eight episodes of the same thing, that’s when the show diverges from the repetition of Nadia’s timeline, to catch us up on Alan’s version.

As the pair try to piece together why this is happening to them, they begin to mentally deteriorate, seeing hallucinations of figures from their past, while also discovering the way they see themselves is not quite the way others view them (she’s selfish; he’s insufferable). Hints of buried trauma start to appear, and with it comes a realization that the loop in which they have found themselves could be entirely of their own making.

While Alan’s emotions are kept a little closer to the surface, Nadia’s biggest doll, her mask to the outside world, is much more beguiling. Her personality is as big as her scarlet curls; full of confidence and sass. This makes her an even better candidate for Russian doll surgery; it’s hard to imagine someone with such a cool exterior being so tattered on the inside. But a traumatic childhood lingers there, one she represses and bottles in her smallest doll, covered by layer after layer of bravado. It’s pushed down so deep that she’s forced into a timespace disruption in order to trigger self-analysis.

In trying to figure out why these two are trapped in this time loop, viewers are actually attempting to understand why Alan wanted to end his life and what Nadia’s trauma is exactly. Each time they repeat their final days, the characters are given the opportunity to reflect on the choices they have made — not just from the single day, but all the decisions that brought them to this point. This elevates Russian Doll above the typical Groundhog Day trope that relies on derivative science-fiction applications and superhuman attempts at “beating the system.”

In an impressive twist, what’s truly superhuman for this pair is simply figuring out how to save themselves. The stakes are smaller, certainly, but doll by doll, they are much more real and far more intimate. Through eight episodes, Russian Doll feels more like one long therapy session than a worldsaving ultimatum — and that’s why it resonates and ultimately feels far more profound.