Emmy Episodes: Russian Doll

It’s always my policy to watch every Emmy-nominated episode each year, which leads me to sample a handful of shows that I don’t tune in to on a regular basis. For the fourth year in a row, I’m making a special effort to spotlight each of those installments to offer my perspective on shows that I don’t review each week.

Russian Doll: Season 1, Episode 2 “The Great Escape” (B-)

This is the last show I don’t regularly watch that I’m catching up on and marathoning for Emmy purposes. I actually rewatched the pilot about a month ago with my mom because she was moderately interested, and my opinion was about the same as it was when I first watched it when it premiered back in February. This is an intriguing concept and star Natasha Lyonne is undoubtedly magnetic, but I’m not sure why it is that it merits an entire series. That’s still not clear after this episode, the second of the six episodes submitted for Best Comedy Series consideration, which, in typical fashion with any film or TV show that features a day happening over and over, fast-forwarded through some of the misery endured by Nadia as she died repeatedly, unable to even descend the stairs without falling to her death. I’m waiting for her to start talking to people to find out something that could prove to them that she’s had this conversation before, beyond just getting a retroactive password from her drug dealer so that she could ask him questions during her next iteration. Inquiring about her mother’s diagnosis led her to nearly commit herself, something that she evidently wasn’t going to do and, in this particular circumstance, was able to reverse by causing a crash and sending her back to the beginning. I don’t know what comes next, but I’m continuing on to the next episode to see how Nadia keeps investigating now that she’s past the drug angle.