Russian Dolls is a new reality series on Lifetime about the habits and lifestyles of women of Russian extraction in Brighton Beach. Alessandra Stanley is an acid-tongued New York Times critic who wants to show you that she was paying attention in sophomore-year European history (or, maybe, during her stint as Moscow correspondent), by totting out her references. They’re defined below!:
- “borscht-and-bling” (a Ukrainian beet soup and gaudy jewelry or a Stanley-coined subgenre of reality television into which this show falls)
- The Kremlin (the governing body of the former U.S.S.R., which Ms. Stanley suggests might make a good Real Housewives series)
- matryoshkas (Russian dolls containing smaller versions of themselves inside, or, somehow, metaphorically, the way plastic surgery has made reality-TV stars look? Unclear/apocryphal.)
- “Pushkin-reciting violinists and math prodigies of Brighton Beach” (a group of Russian-Americans of whom Ms. Stanley approves, unlike the cast members, whom she speculates are from a uniquely reality-TV ready ethnicity: “There seem to be plenty of Russian-Americans who fit the niche; the producers didn’t have any difficulty recruiting a gaggle of vain, vulgar spendthrifts willing to hiss, preen and cry on cue for the camera.”)
- Gary Shteyngart (Russian-American author whose plots might have predicted the themes of Russian Dolls.)
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Russian author and victim of gulag torture whose wounds pale in comparison to watching Russian Dolls)
- “Slavic soullessness” (what differentiates the Russian Dolls cast from The Real Housewives of New Jersey.)
- Volga (River in central Russia whose name conveniently shares four letters with “vulgar”)
ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_
