So, I just started watching Russian Doll Season 2. I’m barely three minutes into the first episode, Nowhen, when Nadia says, “All right, what is the game plan around here? I mean, is Lenox Hill actually treating patients today, or are we putting on a Beckett play?” For context, Nadia and Ruth are sitting in the lobby/waiting room of a New York hospital, Lenox Hill, filling out a patient information sheet for Ruth after a minor car accident. They’re cracking jokes, filling out whatever they feel like, and Nadia wishes the process would go along faster bc surely Ruth has been waiting longer than she has. No doubt she’s worried for her godmother to get care as soon as possible and impatient waiting for the doctor to call for them to be seen. Back to the quote, “Is Lenox Hill actually treating patients today, or are we putting on a Beckett play?” I think Nadia is referencing Samuel Beckett’s famous play, Waiting for Godot, one of my favorite plays to read. In that play, the two main characters do whatever, complaining, telling jokes, all by the side of the road while waiting for someone named Godot to appear. By the end of that, Godot never does, but the characters continue waiting and it seems like the play never ends or loops on uncertainly. Nadia must see herself and Ruth paralleled there in the waiting room, waiting for a doctor that will never come or call in the long list of patients there. Luckily, the doctor does call in Ruth not too long after the joke, but I thought this inside joke was too witty and humorous to pass up without context. Ngl, a similar reference to Oedipus and a different male doctor holding the door open to Nadia was also clever. Gosh, I love classic literature and comedies, so for Russian Doll to be playing into that makes me adore it more. XD
