Russian Doll: Skip the Last Episode

The Netflix series Russian Doll stars Natasha (Nadia Vulvokov), a  New Yorker.  Rather, she is New York, the city personified: big, brash, flashy, sarcastic, irreverent, gravel-voiced, with frizzy hair and lots of rings. 

She's Nicky from Orange is the New Black, Elaine Boosler, the scary, scanky woman that George Costanza thought was faking it on Seinfeld,   She has some sort of job with computers and a large pansexual, multicultural group of friends who talk about art, film, and sex while eating avant-garde hors d'oeuvres and taking designer drugs.

She stares at herself in the bathroom mirror at her 36th birthday party, commiserates with her friends on being over the hill, spars with her ugly ex-boyfriend John (Yul Vazquezl left), and flirts with the uglyMike (Jeremy Bobb, below) (apparently she has a thing for ugly guys).  She takes Mike home to screw. Later she goes out again, sees her lost cat, and rushes across the street to fetch him, whereupon she is hit by a car...

And appears at the bathroom mirror again, at the start of her 36th birthday party.  Natasha interrogates her friends on whether they gave her a weird drug, tells John about the weird experience, sees Oatmeal and fetches him, avoiding the car.  Then she trips and falls...

And appears at the bathroom again.

Life is fragile.A trip on a staircase, a chicken bone, a moment of inattention while crossing the street, a gas leak, a friend who mistakes you for a burglar, and it's over in an instant.  And return to the moment of your 36th birthday party.

Natasha interrogates her drug dealer, investigates the house where the party was held, buddy-bonds with the homeless Horse  (they sleep together but don't screw, at least not on camera)...

Then she meets Alan (Charlie Barnett), who is also reliving a pivotal day in his life: the day he asked his girlfriend to marry him.  She rejected him because she was screwing her literature professor...Mike, the ugly guy Natasha hooked up with!

He openly admits to screwing other co-eds, but the girlfriend doesn't care. 

Natasha and Alan are connected in other ways:  They ran into each other the night of their first deaths.  And they always die at the same moment in time.

To the director's credit,they don't fall in love (although they do screw).  They buddy-bond as they try to unravel the mystery, and either die permanently or go on.

The premise falls apart at at the end -- the last episode makes no sense.  But it's interesting to see Natasha grow from amorality, and Alan from frozen with indecision (think Eleanor and Chidi from The Good Place)

Gay characters:  Half of Eleanors friends are lesbians, although the morning after the party, they awaken in a multisexual pile.  No gay men exist.  '

Beefcake:  Alan always wakes up in his underwear.  The other male characters don't show their physiques, but most of them are startlingly ugly anyway  Brendan Sextan III, who plays Horse, is rather cute, but unrecognizable under the homeless guy makeup.