Given how firmly it closed its circular plot, and the relatively peculiar particulars of its narrative — "relatively" since it ran on an engine oft-lifted from "Groundhog Day" — it's somewhat surprising to see a second season of "Russian Doll," the excellence of its 2019 first season notwithstanding. In that fairy tale of New York, described by Natasha Lyonne's main character, Nadia, as "the one about the broken man and the lady with a death wish that got stuck in a loop," Nadia and her spookily entangled metaphysical twin, Alan (Charlie Barnett), keep dying until life looks better. It's a Borscht Belt Samsara story, with an ending so beautifully landed one wonders what more could possibly be said.
But nothing succeeds a success like a stab at another success, and a second season is here, with Lyonne taking over as showrunner (previous showrunner Leslye Headland and Amy Poehler are her co-creators), and it does the job ably and elegantly. Stylistically and philosophically consistent with its predecessor, it's different enough to not feel like a calculating retread; as before, it's admirable in its ingenuity, a little radical and deeply felt in ways that are not radical at all.
Season two, which begins 10 days shy of Nadia's 40th birthday — as the first season repeatedly began on the night of her (repeating) 36th — moves on by digging in, focusing on a few undeveloped points from season one and fleshing out a backstory. (She has spent the intervening birthdays on DEFCON 1, in case things go weird again.) There is the mental illness of Nadia's mother, Nora, played by Chloe Sevigny; the Krugerrand Nadia wears on a chain around her neck, the last remnant of a family legacy and a symbol of loss; and the fact that her grandmother is a Holocaust survivor. (It is all about mothers and grandmothers and children.) These storylines reflect the way the stories we inherit are often incomplete, shaped by the limitations or the intentions of the teller, and the essential business of the new season for Nadia is filling in the gaps.
