Russian Doll – Brain Drain

By: Kelly Kearney

Hop on the train, we’re going brain mining for memories! this episode finds Nadia digging deep into the recesses of her mother, Nora’s, mind in an attempt to retrace the woman’s steps and locate her mother, Vera’s, Kruggerand (gold coins). Find the gold and fix the family; it’s rebound to repair the broken relationship between the matriarchs. “Brain Drain” is an episode of deep introspection, European history and a trip into the past to fix the present in a desperate attempt to rewrite the future. It’s about to get very sci-fi up in Nadia’s world, so hang on for the ride.

Mending Fences

We begin with a sleeping Nora (Chloë Sevigny) on the 6 train in 1982. When she wakes the train arrives at Astor Place and it isn’t Nora we see but Nadia (Natasha Lyonne), who is still inhabiting Nora’s conscience and not really keeping the news to herself. She heads to Ruthie’s (Annie Murphy) house to fill her in about what’s been happening and for her part, she seems pretty used to Nora’s crazy stories—although, telling her she’s actually the daughter she’s currently pregnant with is probably new one. Nadia tells Ruthie she won’t be going back to the future until she mends the broken fences between her grandmother and Nora. That bad blood set off a generational trauma that Nadia pays the price for every day. Ruth smiles and nods, but then tells Nora/Nadia it’s time for her doctor’s appointment because somehow it slipped Nadia’s mind that she’s about to give birth to herself any day now.

At the doctor’s Vera (Irén Bordán) is waiting for the two and right away you can tell there is bad blood between grandma and Ruth. When she follows Nadia into the bathroom for a urine analysis, Vera starts to berate Nora after the Kruggerand is mentioned. Nadia swears she found the family fortune but promptly lost it again on the subway. Now her mission is to get it back and right this family ship before Nora falls overboard. That’s when an angry and ranting Vera announces that this isn’t the first time their family lost the coins on a train—it’s happened twice! Maybe it isn’t the bloodline that’s cursed but those one hundred and fifty pieces of gold? According to Vera the first time the Kruggerand was taken was during World War II and that’s not the only shocking bit of info she learns – somehow, she also acquired the ability to understand Hungarian! This time jump just got a bilingually interesting. If two consciences exist in one being, does one conscience start to take over? Things get even more surreal when Nadia sees herself on the ultrasound.

After that out-of-body experience Nadia/Nora goes back to Vera’s where she catches bits and pieces of her grandmother talking to her Hungarian friend, Delia (Athina Papadimitriu). She hears them mention the missing gold and later asks Delia about it. She isn’t particularly forthcoming, but she does say her family was known for hiding their treasures. Sure enough, Delia was right; Nadia finds cash and envelopes of important documents hidden throughout her grandmother’s house – mostly behind every picture frame and art work on the walls. As she starts to gather all of her findings something on her arm starts to bother her. Tiny sores start to form on her forearm and the closer she looks the worse they get. She decides she isn’t sticking around to find out what that was all about and with her mother’s pregnant body, jumps out the window and down the fire escape before Vera can notice she is gone. Where is she heading? Where else do you find information in a pre-Google world? The New York Public Library, of course.

All Aboard the Gold Train

The New York Public Library is a beloved institution of knowledge for anyone who seeks it and Nadia is seeking it all over the overworked and underappreciated librarians, especially after she digs up some slides about the gold trains of World War II. Before she can look further into who rode those trains and what happened on them she sees a familiar cop who seems to always be lurking in the background of her mother’s life. His presence means it’s closing time, but after Nadia swats a weird bug and watches it crawl across the map of Europe she has one final question for the librarian (Carolyn Michelle Smith) before she locks the doors—can she do some research on the gold trains leaving Budapest to escape the Nazis? The woman agrees because this was their job before Google launched the information highway into our hand-held devices. Basically, this might take a while so, Nadia leaves her to it and heads to Crazy Eddie’s to talk to new friend Danny (Malachi Nimmons). She needs a projector and everyone (especially New Yorkers who lived through the ‘80s) knows Eddie’s deals were GREAT! Danny lets her borrow one and she takes it back to Nora’s empty apartment to start her research. She has all her findings from Vera’s to go through and it’s a cornucopia of tidbits and snippets of her family’s past that separately don’t reveal much, but together should paint a very vivid picture. As she dives deep into the content, she starts to notice a black smudge on her hands and thinks it’s probably mold from the old documents. She heads to the bathroom to wash it off and sees those same sores on her forearm she tried to ignore earlier; only this time something is different. The sores appear to have something moving just underneath the skin. That’s when she sees it, a wiggly tail! It’s the same bug from the library! She yanks it out of her arm and the beast is otherworldly, like a guppy swimming around her bloodstream. The Kafka-esque discovery is concerning, to say the least, but it doesn’t distract Nadia from the important stuff – namely the fact she can no longer see her mother’s reflection in the mirror. She panics and runs out of the bathroom and directly into Nora, who can not only see her but also talk to her. Nadia fills Nora in on what she is up to and Nora is excited. But first the two head to a bodega for snacks to help them get through a night of research.

Later Nadia sees the gold train on one of the slides just as the librarian calls with news about what she unearthed. According to her, when the Soviet army marched into Budapest the Nazi occupiers forced all the Jewish Hungarians to hand over their valuables and gave them receipts to collect it later. Of course, there was no later and the train with their belongings and Nadia’s family’s gold was lost when the Nazis surrendered in 1945. The librarian cannot confirm whether or not Vera Peschuaeur’s family’s possessions where on the train because she’s only a librarian, not a Holocaust records keeper.

Nadia Gets a New Jacket With Straps

After talking to the librarian Nadia gets a call from Ruth. Nora tells the woman Nadia sees the bugs too and Vera must’ve put them in her apartment. Ruth goes along with what she is saying but then says someone from the hospital is coming to get her. It seems Ruthie thinks Nora has snapped, and she sort of did according to the voice inside her head wondering if schizophrenia can transfer consciences. Sitting in front of the doctor in a straitjacket, Nadia continues to talk to Nora like she is in the room, and it isn’t helping her “I am not crazy!” case. In fact, the doctor is more convinced than ever Nora/Nadia is having some sort of psychotic break. Finally, Nadia can feel what her mother must’ve gone through. It gives her insight into the struggles Nora had and helps her daughter to see her from a new angle, separate from the one she experienced as a kid. At that point, Nadia starts drifting further away in what can only be described as a Hunter S. Thompson inspired moment where she falls through all the pain and trauma both she and her mother experienced over the years. When she returns from that trip, Nora helps her escape out a window but chooses to stay behind in her place. It doesn’t last long because later we see Nora escaped too.

Back in 2022 Nadia finds a note on her apartment door from Alan who seems desperate to find her since she hasn’t been answering her phone calls. Ignoring him again, she heads inside to inspect the items she brought with her from 1982. Apparently, she can bring things from the past but not take things from the future back in time. What she found was a receipt tucked behind a photo of her grandfather, Leo Peschauer, signed off by a Nazi Captain. The answers to this mystery lie in the grandson of that captain, who happens to still reside in Budapest. It looks like Nadia is heading to Hungary! Alan’s concern will have to wait.