Russian Doll, Season 2
Apr. 25th, 2022 06:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakRussian Doll had been one of those shows where I actively didn't want a second season, because the first one seemed pretty self contained, was great, and I could not see how an addendum would further the story. However, I heard early good rumors, so I watched the second season, which has just been released. Conclusion: wellllll. On the one hand, to the creative's team credit, they did try something different instead of just repeating what they had done in s1. (And not just in the sense of using another gimmick - time travel instead of a time loop.) Otoh, they also came up with vivid surreal imagery, black humor and touching character moments, so important tonal elements from s1 that did need to be there were kept.
But. One of the things I loved most about s1 was the odd couple team-up of Nadia and Alan, the way their stories intersected, and how both of them needed to resolve various issues. By contrast, Alan is only a minor character in terms of screen presence this season, and where the show does try to involve him in s2's time travel gimmick, it feels artificial, because unlike Nadia's story, which brings up issues central to her - to wit, her relationships with her mother, with Ruthie, with her grandmother, her grandmother's relationship with her mother, and how trauma is inherited through generations -, what little story Alan gets is essentially a shaggy dog tale going nowhere. . That he feels comfortable in his grandmother's body and crushes on Lenny the East German student could have been a character reveal - is he bi? gay? trans? - but it's not any of those things, he doesn't learn more about his grandmother, either, and there's no previous sense that he needed to resolve feelings about his grandmother the way Nadia had mother issues. The one active thing Alan gets to do is try to be Nadia's conscience. So instead of last season's team-up and intersecting of two stories, you have one story and Alan as one of several supporting characters.
This said, of course it always was Nadia's and Natasha Lyonne's show. And if you don't have a problem with the change of structure, you'll probably enjoy it more than I did. As it is, I didn't dislike it, and I could admire it on a technical level, but the emotional connection wasn't there in the same way for me.
But. One of the things I loved most about s1 was the odd couple team-up of Nadia and Alan, the way their stories intersected, and how both of them needed to resolve various issues. By contrast, Alan is only a minor character in terms of screen presence this season, and where the show does try to involve him in s2's time travel gimmick, it feels artificial, because unlike Nadia's story, which brings up issues central to her - to wit, her relationships with her mother, with Ruthie, with her grandmother, her grandmother's relationship with her mother, and how trauma is inherited through generations -, what little story Alan gets is essentially a shaggy dog tale going nowhere. . That he feels comfortable in his grandmother's body and crushes on Lenny the East German student could have been a character reveal - is he bi? gay? trans? - but it's not any of those things, he doesn't learn more about his grandmother, either, and there's no previous sense that he needed to resolve feelings about his grandmother the way Nadia had mother issues. The one active thing Alan gets to do is try to be Nadia's conscience. So instead of last season's team-up and intersecting of two stories, you have one story and Alan as one of several supporting characters.
This said, of course it always was Nadia's and Natasha Lyonne's show. And if you don't have a problem with the change of structure, you'll probably enjoy it more than I did. As it is, I didn't dislike it, and I could admire it on a technical level, but the emotional connection wasn't there in the same way for me.
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Date: 2022-04-27 06:41 am (UTC)On the other hand, you're right, the Alan story ended up a bit of a shaggy dog, and if they weren't going to give him as prominent a role, maybe they should have considered not giving him a full story at all rather than give him what felt like half a story.
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Date: 2022-04-27 08:05 am (UTC)*nods* I mean, if Alan hadn't gotten a story at all, I'd have missed him, too, but it may have made the season feel more organic to me. And the only part where he needed to be there was to perform the function of Nadia's confidant and conscience by telling her she needed to bring her baby self back - and that's something she knew already, evne if she didn't want to acknowledge it, given time was splintering around her. As it was, I kept waiting for the narrative pay off for the Berlin story, or at least a reveal why Alan needed to know more about his grandmother.