Review: Russian Doll, "Matryoshka" | Season 2, Episode 7
There's something compelling about the abstract idea of this second season, but in practice the parts never come together
When I started this Substack, the reason I identified Russian Doll as a show to cover was because I knew that there would be “discourse.” The first season was striking and inventive in ways that placed high expectations on a followup that was never expressly “necessary,” and the hope was that there would be something substantive to say in writing about whatever Natasha Lyonne came up with in taking over as the showrunner on the second season.
And yet despite the fact it took me over a week to get through the season, it honestly never felt like I was dodging conversation about it: while certainly the critics I interact with wrote reviews and had thoughts, in general there just wasn’t much dialogue happening, whether here at Episodic Medium (where my reviews of the first and fourth episodes drew few comments) or on my Twitter feed. We could attribute this to the evolution of “Peak TV” leading fewer people to binge through the season as quickly or even start watching upon it…