“Russian Doll” Revels in Life’s Bends and Vortices

For most of us, we play the game of life with the seriousness of a heart attack. We have no other choice. Each day we wake up and try to cheat death to the next sunrise. Few of us are given the opportunity to re-spawn and attempt to survive the same day over and over again like we’re the heroes of our very own role-playing game. In the Netflix original series Russian Doll, Nadia (Natasha Lyonne) designs those very games, until suddenly she seems to be living one.

It’s Nadia’s 36th birthday, and she’s enjoying it to the utmost with some drinks, some drugs, a little bit of sex, and an unending parade of cigarettes to her lips. Nadia seems to have a death wish, even if she doesn’t know it. Her rowdy, debauched lifestyle throws caution to the wind as she blows incessant clouds of carcinogenic smoke along with it. Her embrace of life is as reckless as it is carefree, as morbid as it is affirmative. She curses like a particularly irritable sailor — as likely to extend an “eff you” as a “how you do?” — but there’s something endearing in her abrasiveness. Like all self-imposed outcasts, you can tell she has a soft spot guarded behind the cultivated cynicism and isolation. On this birthday, though, a snag in the fabric of space-time forces Nadia to examine her usual tendencies and discover what it is she’s been hiding from, both in the world and within herself.