From the time it was announced, Russian Dolls (Thursdays at 10:30/9:30c on Lifetime) was compared to Jersey Shore. But local-cultural focus is where the similarities end — borscht will never be the new pickles. Instead, this show, which is set in Brighton Beach ("Like another planet, it's one square mile of Brooklyn jam-packed with crazy Russians," one cast member explains in Thursday's premiere), is more tempered and a lot less wild.
Like Jersey Shore, though, it does spell out the parameters of this Russian-American cultural intersection explicitly (think back to the first few Jersey Shore episodes when virtually every sentence started with...
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