Russian Doll Review: 8 Ups & 2 Downs

Downs...

2. The Slippery Narrative Logic

Like just about every story ever told about a time loop or time travel, Russian Doll has a pretty shaky sense of internal logic, with viewers basically being asked to just roll with its vague metaphysical machinations for the most part.

This actually serves the series pretty well for the majority of its eight episodes, though late in the day a random new mechanic is introduced totally out of nowhere, and it's never even remotely explained beyond "just because."

It's not a huge deal, but it also feels a bit like the writers couldn't figure out a way to organically ramp up the drama for the finale, and so a new, dangerous element was ass-pulled out of nowhere just for the sake of it.

The show as a whole is persuasive enough that this indulgence is forgiven fairly easily, but a little more cohesion in the final stretch would've made the show even better.