Thursday, October 13, 2011

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.

7 comments:

  1. Nina, just a slight correction. I did not say that Sveta's husband sells high end jewelry and buzzes in one customer at a time. I wrote that in general, high end stores do that. I don't know for a fact how Sveta's husband sells his jewelry, but looking at their website - it seems like they are positioning themselves as one of those high end places.

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  2. Ok sorry Anon, I stand corrected because I do not know how high end jewelry stores tend to operate. I did see a little bit of Sveta's store on a Russian News program a couple of days ago. The point of the blog remains the same though, there is not enough reality in this reality show. BTW their store looks wonderful and the pieces expensive. Sveta was trying on a 2,300 ring for a customer.

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  3. Yes, their store is called Perlina Jewelry or something like that. Looks expensive:-) That's why doing a flea market type show in Rasputin for a few extras hired by Russian dolls producers would have not happened in "real" life:-)

    Nina, you mentioned Russian News. This brings me to another topic. There were three programs on Russian TV in Russia within the last month (on three different channels), all dedicated to the topic of image of Russians abroad. Two of them had some of the "Dolls" on for a few minutes via teleconference. The third one was actually fully dedicated to the "dolls". Bottom line - the first talk show on Russia 1 was relatively sympathetic to them, even Marina did not screw things up:-). The second one on NTV had the Russian "Nazis" of the worst KGB/fashist kind in the audience, and they really ripped poor "Dolls" apart. In fact this is the first time I was on the side of the "Dolls":-) The third show (don't remember which Russian channel) was actually a 20 minute documentary dedicated entirely to the "Dolls" and shot in Brooklyn/Brighton Beach area. And it did not even have Marina (or very little of her for a change - surprise surprise:-) It had mostly Sveta, Renata, and Boris, as well as some other Russian speaking folks from South Brooklyn, from passers by to civic leaders. Interesting to watch...

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  4. Anonymous I belive I saw the third one you described courtesy of Roman, who always likes to keep me abreast of everything that goes on. I could not understand though so I did not blog about it. Marina does not do herself, Rasputin or any aspirations she has of maximizing her 15 mins of fame into a cookbook or talk show. Too bad she doesn't get it.

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  5. Nina, one other thing kinda off-topic. There are a lot of rabid nationalists in Russia with inferiority complexes, delusions of grandeur, and mania of persecution. In their paranoid thinking, all the evil West ever does is plot against poor Russians 24/7:-) So, on NTV talk show, Marina was on videconference. She spoke in her whiny voice, mixing Russian and English (which is in itself not a sign of social grace, because educated people stick to one language at a time). She said that Russian Dolls is aimed at folks in mid-America to educate them about the emigre community. Not only Marina sounded lame, but this evil guy on the talk show made this long conspiracy connection. He said, OK mid-America has Republican leanings. Obama is friends with Russia (says who??? IMHO). So, Russian Dolls show was a Republic conspiracy to unseat Obama by showing Obama's friends (the Russians) in a bad light:-) How is that for workings of a twisted mind? All of a sudden, Marina with her megalomania and artificially high perception of herself doesn't look too bad. These people are plain dandgerous. Their influence in Russia is on the increase, and Putin quietly supports them...In fact, he is probably one of them... So glad I am in America.

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  6. I don't know who you are Anonymous, but I do enjoy your commments very much and if you ever start a blog be sure to send me the link. Thanks for giving me that little summary on the NTV show and a little background history. I even got a couple of good laughs out of it!

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  7. Thank you Nina! If I ever start a blog (frankly, didn't think about it), will be sure to drop you a note! I surely enjoy everything you write!

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