Russian Dolls: Lifetime Gets Real, Or Does It?

Instead of totally cancelling Russian Dolls, Lifetime has decided to air the entire series again on their sister station Lifetime Real Women.  It's ironic that a reality show that is supposed to be about real women and is on a network about real women, is so totally fake, misleading, false, untrue...well you get the picture.  I knew nothing of the cast except what Lifetime chose to tell viewers in their bios when the show started.  I did some research online, and found some additional information which I based my earliest blogs on.  But, as the show aired, and I found the scenes a bit too contrived, somewhat far fetched and unrealistic, I started to voice my opinions a little more harshly.  Afterall, we were led to believe many things about Russian Dolls, and very little of it was true.  So much for reality!

I have come to learn, from some of my readers who actually know the cast or know of them, that much of what we have seen is fabricated to either create drama or to inject the show with various bits of Russian culture.  The drama that was created by the writers was obviouly not interesting enough to keep viewers coming back.  And as many have noted, the episodes seem to be self contained and do not take into account what happened previously.  For example, in one episode the young Russian Dolls are fighting and Diana and Anastasia call Anna every name in the book; they despise one another.  In a later episode all three are the best of friends.  But there are other things I have learned along the way this season, that I find totally misleading.

I just learned, and it's no surprise, that Renata and Marina were never friends, so when they all had dinner at Marina's house in that one episode, that was all a setup.  Diana and Anastasia live together in that apartment OR did Lifetime provide that apartment for purposes of shooting scenes at that location?  Many feel that was all staged for the show.  And remember Sveta's jewelry showing at Rasputin?  One of our readers tells me that Sveta's husbands sells very high end jewelry and allows customers to enter his store one at the time for viewing pieces.  They could never put out their jewelry on display all over the restaurant as the store would want us to believe.  Again, on the show, Renata and Boris were not supposed to be attendin Women's Day at Rasputin, but they not only atteneded, they also hosted the party.  The boyfriends!  Diana's Paul...that was so not real.  Anna's Albert and Anthony, fake and fake.  Eva's matchmaker 35 year old date...made up for the show.  Anna is supposed to be struggling to help her family and someone tells me she really drives around in a Lexus!  And why is there no mention at all of their real jobs, at least those who have jobs.  One readers tells me that Diana works in a store, Anastasia a medical office (not 100% sure), Sveta works in a bank, Albert does medical billing, Renata, the radio host, works for a hotel, and Boris works for a car dealership.  Now those jobs sound real!  They tell me "no clue what Eddie does."  Well Eddie is a poet and reality star wanna be.  Frankly, after rereading all this I find the truth far more interesting than what they made up.  But you get my point.  The only real things were their names and Marina's obnoxious behavior, that even the best writer could not tone down.

I wonder how the viewers who watch Lifetime Real Women will feel about all the sleazy put downs of women that Eddie and Albert manage to get into every episode?  I wish one of them would comment here and let us know.