Considering some of the mature content of the show, there’s no doubt thatRussian DollCaters to an adult audience, especially those enduring the difficulties of adulthood. It follows Nadia, a woman in her 30s, that seems to be a magnet for the tricks of time, which force her to confront the trauma and issues she’s been brushing off all her life and remind the audience to do the same in the process.
There are inevitable hardships that all people go through in life and while we experience traumas all throughout our existence, it’s not usually until adulthood thatpeople can piece togetherhow such experiences affected them and how to address that trauma in the present.Russian Dollfocuses on a character that is experiencing these kinds of adult ruts and realizing how they stem from her childhood experiences.
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Season one ofNetflix’sRussian Dolluses a continual time loop resetting on the protagonist’s birthday to explore how a character can be flawed and make mistakes but not have to find an immediate fix. She can’t run from her problems so she must address them, but change takes time. This is something that any adult could relate to on some level.
The world this Netflix show is set inis structured to reflect how people handle their internal conflicts. Particularly for women, it sets the platform for audiences to learn through the protagonist’s experiences in an honest light. Nadia’s character mostly pushes against the societal standard for women which greatly shapes her journey and in some ways, eliminates an additional layer of pressure from her life. On the other hand, in some ways it makes it hard for her to interact with others and becomes yet another obstacle in her journey. This duality is part of what makes her character complex and believable and most importantly, relatable.It reveals to the audiencethat they don’t have to be perfect to work on themselves.
In season Two ofRussian Doll, Nadia travels back in time and finds herself in the early 80s. As she spends a little time there and finds herself interacting with a world that she doesn’t recognize, she soon realizes that she’s not only gone back in time but has assumed her mothers' role in this world. Forced to relive some of the sketchy decisions and defining moments of her mother and grandmothers’ youths, she finds that, she too,struggles with these situationsand begins to recognize how her mother came to be the woman she knew and slightly resented. Because of this, she assumes that she must change herself, like her mom should have, to achieve her goals.
Throughout both seasons, Nadia blames her mother for a lot of her own bad habits and emotional responses, along with the hardships in her life. So when she gets the opportunity in season two to change her fate by quite literally stealing herself from her mother, thinking it’s the best thing for her, the time travel universesoon reveals to herthat she may not be right. Ultimately, she learns that she belonged in the life she had, for a reason. This helps the audience recognize that their childhood trauma does not define them but how they respond to it does.
Season Two’s theme is about breaking generational curses. to understand the family curses, Nadia had to be in her mother’s shoes and have different interactions with her grandmother to know how to make things right. The “treasure” that Nadia seeks during her journey is symbolic for stability, healing, happiness, and self-love. This is especiallyrelevant to a modern audiencethat is finally beginning to connect mental and emotional well-being to people’s success and happiness. Today people are more commonly beginning to recognize the problematic behaviors and viewpoints they possess that have been passed down over generations. To address them, people must recognize them first, which the most recent season does a great job capturing.
Of course, not everyone can get stuck in a time loop or go on a journey through time to understand their trauma and generational curses, which is why it’s a bit more complicated a journey in the real world, but just as important. Today,there are a multitude of apps, therapists, counselors, or even just conversations with family as options for addressing trauma and generational curses. While the audience may not be able to fix all their issues in a series of 30-minute increments,Russian Dolldefinitely encourages viewers to take the first step and begin exploring the patterns of their pasts and the potential of their futures.
