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Russian Doll

Started by StewartLeehaslethimselfgo, February 02, 2019, 04:05:47 PM

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rasta-spouse

I thought the funniest bit was when Nadia goes into her work and debugs the code to make the little green man run. That's my take-away moment from the whole show.

Bit of curate's egg. I was really into it at certain points and then really out of it at certain points.... I thought it had blown its wad by episode 2, but the end of episode 3 really hooked me back in. And so on, back and forth till the end. The guy in the parka turned out to be kind of annoying though. However, the sharp Kimmie Schmidt style writing lifted the show.

Quote from: BlodwynPig on February 05, 2019, 11:29:56 PM
the subsequent last two episodes were Guardian reading liberal elite wank fodder.

what do you mean? just that the characters were quirky?

olliebean

Still can't be arsed to watch it again to check, but according to Den of Geek there are at least two other Nadias in that parade scene at the end along with the one that's the protagonist.

Ja'moke

Great interview with Natasha Lyonne here: https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-features/natasha-lyonne-russian-doll-interview-785346/

A lot of talk about how the show was more about her brushes with death during her years of addiction, rather than a sci-fi concept.

BlodwynPig

Quote from: rasta-spouse on February 10, 2019, 02:13:17 PM
I thought the funniest bit was when Nadia goes into her work and debugs the code to make the little green man run. That's my take-away moment from the whole show.

Bit of curate's egg. I was really into it at certain points and then really out of it at certain points.... I thought it had blown its wad by episode 2, but the end of episode 3 really hooked me back in. And so on, back and forth till the end. The guy in the parka turned out to be kind of annoying though. However, the sharp Kimmie Schmidt style writing lifted the show.

what do you mean? just that the characters were quirky?

No, happy endings for the liberal classes. Crappy sci-fi verbiage. I liked some of the characters, but the main male lead was a terrible actor. The sort of polished beige man of our times.

thraxx


Natasha Lyonne successfully passes her audition to be the next Dr Who.

(I enjoyed it enough, and that's as much as you can ask for)

Icehaven

It was OK, very well made and (I think) well thought out, but she was frequently quite annoying (maybe part of the point but it was still annoying), and the coincidental timing with Happy Death Day is incredibly unfortunate given it's been so long since Groundhog Day then two riffs on the concept, with almost identical premises (unhappy party girl with parent issues keeps dying on her birthday), come along at nearly the same time. 
And I just know, like Stranger Things before it, that by the time series 2 is on I'll have completely forgotten what happened in series one so I'll either skim-binge to recap or just not bother. Probably will bother though.

Ant Farm Keyboard


Replies From View

Quote from: StewartLeehaslethimselfgo on February 02, 2019, 04:05:47 PM
''A woman gets caught in a mysterious loop, repeatedly attending the same party and dying at the end of the night, only to awake the next day unharmed.''

Presumably she's getting smaller and smaller though?


jobotic

It's not. Everyone is annoying but it's good.

Yeah, I liked it too, but then I'm a bit of a sucker for time loop things. Wasn't ground breaking or particularly deep or that, just pretty good, some good music in it, too. I really hope it's a one off though - the story is done.

bgmnts

Quote from: jobotic on February 14, 2019, 01:34:26 PM
It's not. Everyone is annoying but it's good.

Yeah when everyone is annoying I get annoyed.

BlodwynPig

Quote from: bgmnts on February 14, 2019, 01:48:29 PM
Yeah when everyone is annoying I get annoyed.

Finally, we agree on something.

Soup Dogg

I thought this was really good, and found the characters fairly believable (or at least consistent, compelling, and well thought out enough to carry the stories. Why did people find everyone annoying? Is it that sort of stylized knowing dialogue?

Also no clue on what the liberal wank fantasy criticism even means.

Natasha Lyonne's great.

kalowski

I've watched episodes 1-4 and had enough. Fucking awful and I want to kill anyone who wrote such terrible dialogue.

Custard

Yeah, we were gonna chuck it in after the first two episodes, but then the third turns it on its head and it suddenly becomes fascinating. Ended up really enjoying it

BlodwynPig

Quote from: Soup Dogg on February 15, 2019, 08:30:20 PM
I thought this was really good, and found the characters fairly believable (or at least consistent, compelling, and well thought out enough to carry the stories. Why did people find everyone annoying? Is it that sort of stylized knowing dialogue?

Also no clue on what the liberal wank fantasy criticism even means.

Natasha Lyonne's great.

It means it wears its liberal philosophies too much on its sleeve. Stained, soaked, sticky.

Soup Dogg

Yeah that doesn't really expand on the point.

Replies From View

Quote from: Replies From View on February 14, 2019, 12:48:04 PM
Presumably she's getting smaller and smaller though?

It was really funny when I said this earlier.

BlodwynPig

Quote from: Soup Dogg on February 17, 2019, 06:15:22 PM
Yeah that doesn't really expand on the point.

[citation needed]

It's the dream of the liberal - pleasure without consequence, charity when convenient, outrage at the "right" targets. Whilst the first two episodes were sort of neutral, i.e., there was no underlying bias in the characters, just an interesting premise and some shallow motivation, the subsequent resolution of moral conundrums, for me, were wilfully misguided and twee. Shoving plot lines into tired cliche ridden boxes. The one character who partially overcame that was the "can I cut your hair" bum. I was suspicious at first because he looked pretty clean and was attractive, but the final episode played it straight - a street guy whose moral compass was broken. He sort of got a reprieve in the conclusion - painting him as another of the loveable outsiders in that whack-a-mole carnival. It wasn't a warm and fuzzy ending, but it was still sickly sweet.

BlodwynPig

Quote from: Replies From View on February 17, 2019, 08:07:24 PM
It was really funny when I said this earlier.

I just got it, so the laugh is still resonating.

poo

Lasted five episodes before declaring it anus.

flotemysost

I really enjoyed this. It wasn't deep or complicated, and I can see why people would find some/all of the characters irritating, but it was pleasingly slick and diverting and I like parallel-timeline stuff.

Thought the end parade scene was a bit of a convenient cop-out, but at the same time I'd be happy if it were to stay as a standalone series rather than probing further into that story. (Although I'm still not sure about the 'shard of glass' death - I get the connection to her mother but despite the overall sort-of sci-fi premise, all the other deaths seemed like fairly normal accidents that could happen to anyone.)

I too enjoyed the soundtrack. And although I can see why this might be partly why it came across as middle-class wankfodder to some, I did really like the look of it as well. Having a limited wardrobe for the main characters, limited settings etc. is an interesting idea - a bit more like theatre than TV - and I loved what they did with that.


BlodwynPig

The only decent person in that show was the corner shop owner. Nicely played.

Morrison Lard

This was bollocks and I'm fucking miffed I sat through it all.

Replies From View

Quote from: Morrison Lard on March 03, 2019, 10:58:14 AM
This was bollocks and I'm fucking miffed I sat through it all.

At least you didn't have to stand up within an infinitely-nested version of yourself.

A very uncomfortable way to watch films.

Shit Good Nose

Me and Mrs Nose blitzed it over the weekend.  We both enjoyed it for what it was, and we both LOLd a fair amount, but we won't be watching it again.

Main saving grace was that both the episode and series length were short, at least for an American show.  Not sure I could've done 20+ hour long episodes of it.

RE the annoyingness - most of the characters are 30-something media/artist/intellectual types.  Neither Lyonne nor Amy Poehler strike me as being that type of character in real life, so I think it was an intentional choice.

Ant Farm Keyboard

It's every bit as intentional as the characters from Search Party or Girls, who belong to the same groups. The satire is more obvious in Search Party, but there's the idea in all those shows that the characters are privileged, but still have a ton of self-inflicted issues.

Icehaven

Another article appeared on the Guardian website a few days ago
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/mar/16/stuck-on-repeat-what-is-netflixs-russian-doll-actually-about

Nothing new, actually just rehashing the already well-documented and discussed (not least by Lyonne herself) underlying theme of addiction. Netflix etc. has kind of messed up the pattern of having a flurry of media attention about a new show around the time it starts to get everyone on board, as now something can be available in it's entirety for ages so it's more useful to stagger the promotion to remind audiences it's still there if they haven't got round to it yet.

Puce Moment

Got as far as that talking scene at the party in episode one. Bilge.