Pretense & Circumstance

So… it’s way too late. I fell asleep with barely any time to write a new entry. So here’s a script from a video I wanted to do a while ago, but I have pretty much shelved at this point. It’s titled: “Alan, Russian Doll, and ‘they just like me fr’ Characters.” (SPOILERS FOR RUSSIAN DOLL SEASON 1!!!!!)

Hello, my name is Jayden and I like to talk about TV shows sometimes. Has anyone watched Russian Doll? Well, you should! It’s fantastic and well-worth any praise it has been thrown. But I haven’t seen much talk about it, specifically essays. So, I decided to take a crack at it!

(Put a spoiler warning in the edit)

The 3rd episode of the first season of the show introduces one of its principal characters in a way that literally made me go “oh my god”.

Spoilers by the way.

Nadia (Natasha Lyonne) is in a groundhog day kind of loop, dying and starting at the same point every time. After surviving to the furthest point she had made it in her day, Nadia gets into a busy elevator. Right next to her is someone we had only seen once before in the background. The man (Charlie Barnett) is nervously fidgeting a box for a ring when Nadia tells him to stop. He complies when suddenly the elevator stops. The people in the elevator start freaking out when the elevator begins to fall. Everyone lays on the ground except for Nadia, who knows she’s going to wake up again after she dies, and the man next to Nadia. Nadia, in her sardonic, murose way of handling things looks over to the man and says (insert quote from the show “Did you get the news? We’re about to die.”). To which he says (insert quote “It doesn’t matter. I die all the time”). The next episode opens with the man, Alan, looking into the mirror. He has begun a new loop.

You see, when I saw that. I, damn near, fell out of my chair. It was so genius to wait until halfway through to start introducing a principal. Especially after seeing the kinds of places we could go, rules-wise, with Nadia. But now you see an element of someone else going through it, and the rest of the season you see them figure out, together, how to end their suffering.

What gives Russian Doll dimension in a world full of stories with loops is the characters. Both Nadia and Alan have to address the elephants in their heads in order to finally break themselves out of their loops. For Nadia, it’s her regret over not “saving” her mentally-ill mother. For Alan, it’s to finally stop ignoring his clear anxiousness. Something is deeply wrong with both of them, in a fundamental, mental-health way. And they need to fix it with therapeutic remedies. “They’re just like me, for real.”

In order to kind of make the larger points I want to make, I’m going to clumsily start mentioning some shit that I have noticed on the inter.net so bear with me here…

What defines relatability? Rebecca Mead of the New Yorker says, “to describe a character or a situation in which an ordinary person might see himself reflected.” We see the world around us, and it always seems that everyone is so different. Seeing someone like me in fiction is fascinating, because now, I can see someone like me.

But you see, I see a lot of people nowadays identify with some of the weirdest characters. Get on your alpha sigma grindset and relate to Jordan Belfort, the man who committed federal crimes! Or The Narrator in Fight Club, the literal insane man who invented a split personality! Because “he just like me fr”. There’s already some great essays on this genre of meme/social media trends. But honestly, what I always seem to take away from these trends, is that they identify with the positive traits more than the negative ones. Not many people care that Scott Pilgrim is an asshole who’s dating a literal teenager in the story. They only care that he has poofy hair and is skinny and plays the bass or whatever. Because “he just like me fr”. Now, it’s not lost on me that people are joking. Obviously, people have taken the logical extension of this concept and applied it to characters like Patrick Bateman, a literal murderer. But it still intrigues me.

That’s where Alan comes in. Remember how I was saying that he needed to stop ignoring his clear anxiousness? When you see him in his first loop, he keeps things immaculate. A routine he knows in and out. Even at some points, waiting for things to happen to upkeep his routine. We find out he is reliving the day his fiancee breaks up with him. Later on, we find out that she had been cheating on him with her professor, due in large part to Alan’s faults. He doesn’t listen. He doesn’t let himself experience emotions. He is a tightly wound ball of yarn, practically bursting at the seams. “He just like me fr”. Alan is thrown off by Nadia. Something he resents after messing up his routine a couple times. But he learns to be better. He finally breaks down in a wonderfully acted scene in front of his ex-fiancee, forgiving her, and finally absolving himself of his insecurities.

I’ve found myself being very drawn to broken characters since I started therapy. While I, myself, have never been one to call my life traumatic or scarring in any way. You really see and understand yourself in a different way. (unfinished section)

Fuck… Perhaps, I have been too harsh to judge “he just like me fr” characters. Maybe people identify with Belfort’s failings as a man, more than his endless pursuit of his carnal desires. Maybe people identify with The Narrator in Fight Club’s mundane life and want for something more, more than his psychotic break and dismantling of the world. Maybe people identify with Scott Pilgrim’s commitment issues, more than his actions surrounding it. I don’t know, I’m not a therapist or psychologist. I’m just a guy with a YouTube channel. I’m just like you, fr.