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Natasha Lyonne’s existential black comedy used a Groundhog Day time loop to explore addiction and trauma in a smart, poignant and hilarious way

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‘No matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.” So says Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. But it’s a line that could just as easily have been uttered by the lead of one of 2019’s best TV shows, Russian Doll, in which a wisecracking New Yorker named Nadia Vulvokov finds herself caught in a traumatic Groundhog Day-style loop, repeatedly dying and then revisiting the same day again and again. Instead, she goes with a slightly more vexed alternative: “The universe is trying to fuck with me! And I refuse to engage!”
Nadia (Natasha Lyonne) is the central character of the eight-episode dramedy, which landed out of nowhere in February and proved to be one of the funniest, saddest and trippiest shows of the year. Every day Nadia is back: at a birthday party thrown for her by her obnoxious hipster friend Maxine, who coos the words “sweet birthday baby” as she offers her a joint laced with cocaine. And back in a place where everyone is completely oblivious to the fact that she can’t stop dying. Continue reading...