Coney Island Baby
Episode 2 of Russian Doll Season 2 starts in 1982 with Nadia (as Lenora) forced to explain the stolen gold coins. But she can’t, obviously, and after kissing Vera goodbye, Nadia tries to work out how to get the gold coins back. Unsure where else to turn, Nadia takes the phone book and heads off to see Derek, who’s with the other Guardians. This is the group, if you’ll remember, we saw at the station last episode offering help to Nora. Nadia promises big money if he can help find Chez ($280k to be precise), but he warns this will take several weeks. Intending to narrow down this search window, Nadia heads back to the present day and uses the internet to try and track Chez down. Ruthie has been discharged from hospital, but Nadia has no time for that right now. She’s dead-set on finding Chez, and she does eventually find the address. He’s not exactly living in luxury and goes on to mention the “Coney Island” effect – something that would have made everything better had it happened. Specifically, he mentions his father falling ill with Polio. If he hadn’t gone to Coney Island that summer, he wouldn’t have become infected. Nadia listens to his story and eventually heads back to 1982, tracking down Chez thanks to pictures in his 2022 apartment of his playing squash. Once she gets there, Nadia is taken aback when she learns Lenora actually head over last night and took the money back. She even bought herself a new car and some fur coats. So naturally, Nadia tries to make amends, determined to get her coins back but the pawnbrokers she initially sold them at won’t have any of it. That is, until Ruthie exchanges her old wedding ring to seal the deal. Nadia eventually leaves a voicemail for herself from the “space-time continuum” (a payphone, naturally) urging her mother to not mess things up and try to make amends. After finishing the call, she heads back on the subway home but there’s a problem. On the train opposite hers, Alan happens to be moving. Unfortunately, in the time that she gets up and takes her eye off the ball, she checks her seat again and realizes that someone has taken off with her bag. Uh oh.
The Episode Review
Messing with time is never a good idea and it would appear that Nadia is about to write a new reality for herself. After all, everything that’s happened happened for a reason in a very specific order to bring about these circumstances. At the same time, there must be a reason why the universe is sending Nadia back, which I’m sure we’ll learn over the course of this story. The episode does well to explore more of Nadia’s troubled family history, as well as exploring more of the issues that plagued her mother and those closest to her. Russian Doll has been a decent watch so far, suitably mixing things up while adding a good deal of drama and characterization to the fold in the process. The ending certainly hints that we’ve got lots more drama to come, and thankfully these bitesize chapters, clocking in at 30 minutes a pop, make it a very easy show to sit through and binge!
