Russian Doll

[Fla Dem]

17. I was intrigued too, although sometimes unable to completely follow the story's message.(SPOILERS)

I like Natasha Lyonne in her role on OITNB and she didn't disappoint in Russian Doll. I did cheat and read a synopsis/analysis of the final 2 episodes, which gave me more clarity to what I was actually watching. All in all enjoyed the series.

FEB. 4, 2019
Talk About the Russian Doll Ending
By Kathryn VanArendonk

In the final episodes of Netflix’s Russian Doll, the world starts falling apart. Caught in time loops that reset every time they die, Nadia (Natasha Lyonne) and Alan (Charlie Barnett) realize that people are disappearing from existence, the world is growing less stable, and they have no choice but to finally confront their buried traumas and the fear that they’re fundamentally unlovable. Alan has to forgive his girlfriend, Beatrice (Dascha Polanco), and accept his own role in their unhappiness. Nadia must admit that she blames herself for her mother’s death, and figure out whether she even wants to live past her 36th birthday.

Then Nadia and Alan die one more time, and Russian Doll’s final twist is revealed: When we reach the season finale, the Nadia and Alan we’ve been following from the beginning are no longer in the same universe. They’ve been split into two separate timelines, each of them newly charged with a sense of purpose and a desire to live. But they can’t celebrate together. Instead, they’re paired with the past versions of each other: The self-actualized Alan has to shake the original Nadia out of her destructive, sublimated death wish, and the newly self-accepting Nadia has to convince the original, self-loathing Alan not to kill himself.

Watching the healed versions of Alan and Nadia try to coax the unknowing, earlier iterations of each other toward self-acceptance is heartbreaking. For the first few episodes of the series, the scariest thing about Nadia’s recurring deaths and rebirths is that she’s going through them alone. The midseason discovery that Alan is also looping, that the two of them are tied to one another somehow, and that they no longer have to face the dread of existential limbo in total isolation, is the key to the series. It’s the moment Russian Doll becomes supercharged, turning from a well-made show into something with momentum and depth. Whatever she may want to believe, Nadia cannot escape her own self-hatred without connecting with someone else. The same goes for Alan, although in his case, he’s put entirely too much of his sense of self onto someone else, and can’t extricate his failed romantic life from his sense of self-worth (or lack thereof). Alan and Nadia both need to rebalance how they see themselves in the world. They must examine how much they rely on themselves rather than other people, which also means making the conscious decision that, yes, they do want to keep living. They do it together, through the insight they each get from thinking about someone else.

In the seventh episode, titled “The Way Out,” the time loops are rapidly erasing the world around Nadia and Alan, turning their personal limbo into an apocalyptic crisis. At the peak of this emptying-out, Nadia walks out of the bathroom and finds her birthday party eerily vacant; only her friend Maxine is left, dancing dreamily by herself. Extinction looms, and so Alan and Nadia are forced to confront everything they’ve been avoiding: Alan forgives Beatrice; Nadia talks to Ruth about her guilt over her mother’s death and passes her beloved book, her childhood life preserver, to another young girl. As she’s dying for the final time — before the final time, that is — Nadia’s young self appears before her and whispers, “She’s still inside you.” It’s a line that encompasses Nadia’s belief that all of their loops somehow exist at the same time, and also Ruth’s question about whether, somewhere inside Nadia, there’s still a young girl who desperately wants to live. It also evokes the series’ title image of nesting dolls. It feels like an ending, like Alan and Nadia have fixed everything at last. This is why it’s so excruciating when, in the final episode, Nadia and Alan’s timelines split. When, at last, they walk into the deli to greet one another, we realize they’ve healed themselves but no longer have each other. It’s a huge loss.

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https://www.vulture.com/2019/02/russian-doll-netflix-ending-explained.html