Russian Doll and the Acceptance of Generational Trauma
*spoilers for Russian Doll ahead*
Russian Doll Season 2 is a phenomenal piece of television. It grapples with strong themes such as family, the repeating nature of our experiences, and the way generational trauma can root itself into our lives without us realizing it. It does this with strong, surreal visuals, an unsettling atmosphere, and an amazing 80s soundtrack.
This season’s emphasis is on psychosis, mental illness and the surreal having both an internal and external reflection on reality. For Nadia’s mother, Lenora, there is this sense in the beginning that she was like Nadia, in that she could time travel or observe reality’s transience because she’s schizophrenic. We later learn that it’s just Nadia and Alan who are doing this (with perhaps a small nod to the homeless subway guy as a reference to the subway spirit in 1990’s Ghost). Her mother’s illness would be there regardless.
Alan and Nadia’s connection is a bit more loose this time. We know they experience similar things, but this season emphasizes that Nadia and her relationship with her mother is the focus. Alan’s inclusion is perhaps only to highlight that something that goes on for one goes on for the other so that there’s no doubt about the sanity of Nadia’s character. This is more important this season since perspective and mental fragility are big themes.
As both characters travel through the past on the subway train they each become their mothers. The purpose of this is to, in some ways, jump off of last season’s focus on generational trauma and how stuck a person can become when their pain is rooted so far back in history. For Nadia, the jump to the past symbolizes an opportunity to change something in the present and to improve her circumstances. Since she could only stop the same day repeating through facing her mother’s effect on her life last time, her assumption is that this time she needs her mother to make the correct choices to influence Nadia’s life in the present.
What follows is a whirlwind. Both characters repeatedly enter the past in order to learn of their mother’s circumstances and observe what might need changing. When they think they’ve found it, they realize it is too late. As Nadia takes child her into the present the past and present blur into one. Doors open into random moments in their or their mother’s lives and neither know if anything they are doing is making a difference.
What I love about this show is the way something so visceral, emotional, and visually unsettling can place us in an empathetic understanding of humanity. Nadia and Alan’s experiences allow us the space to examine our own histories, generational traumas, and circumstances. We all wish we could go back in time and save our parents the suffering they experienced. We wish we could stop what they did to us, to save our own younger and present selves. We would love nothing more than to make waves in time that alter lives for the better.
As we learn at the end of the show, nothing actually changes. Nadia brings back the same bag of money that will become a source of problems later on in her mother’s life, and as she plays with her mother’s younger self tells her this, that there’s nothing she can do about it. Things will repeat, and life will continue on. All we can do is live with the choices we make and hope that we’ll learn to do better someday.
