“Bukins’ white line began a decade ago,” boasts Gena Bukin, a veteran shoe salesman, in the opening moments of the television series Bukins, a show that riffs on its own opening. The character Venik in the scene directly addresses the audience, setting a tone of self-reflection that threads through the series. The backstory hints that a ten-year gap might have altered many things, yet the few hints about the white line feel incongruent with the visible reality. In today’s context, such inconsistencies feel almost commonplace in popular culture, a sly nod to imperfect storytelling in long-running franchises.
Viewed on screen, any trace of the white line seems irrelevant in the premiere of The Bukins. A bank shadows Gena and Dasha (Natalia Bochkareva) with the threat of repossession of their home, while their son Rome (Iskender Yakin) loses his job and their daughter Sveta (Daria Sagalova) faces a breakup, arriving at a moment of vulnerability with a child in her arms. The family ends up under one roof again, forced into proximity by circumstance rather than harmony.
The house itself is new, a symbolic shift as regional audiences catch up to the capital’s pace. The Vasnetsov family from Daddy’s Daughters relocated to the suburbs in 2012, and now the Ekaterinburg Bukins arrive under different skies. Yet the core tensions persist: repairs never quite finish, and the inhabitants never quite love each other, though they tolerate one another a touch more than the world at large.
The static, almost ritual nature of sitcoms—where characters do not undergo sweeping transformations yet must stay within familiar boundaries—sits atop a broader Russian reality in the show’s world. The early history of Bukins mirrors that of the Vasnetsovs, once energetic and later exhausted by the repetition, ending on a note of unfinished conversation. The last moments of a certain monument to Gena Bukin in Yekaterinburg linger in memory, even as the series itself loses momentum. If Daddy’s Daughters faded into the background, the finale of Happy Together drifted into an existential reflection: interdependence and affection seem woven into the subsoil of these characters, chained together even as friendship battles with resentment. An imagined collaboration with writers and composers might have altered the tone, but the studio’s choice turned away from that path. [attribution: entertainment analysis]
In broad terms, Bukins follows a familiar pattern. New neighbors arrive—Maxim Lagashkin and Ekaterina Stulova—Venka, now with a beard, and the actor Iskender Yakin, who has gone bald. Yet the essence remains the same: the show mimics its ten-year-old self, delivering a blend of sharp humor and a casual, irreverent view of the surrounding world.
One running thread in episode six brings a subtle, perhaps cheeky, misread about masculinity and sexuality. Characters played by Loginov and Lagashkin are mistaken for gay men during a playful, metaphorical exchange. The moment nods to cinematic sentiment while staying rooted in the show’s own language. The humor occasionally dips into a broader European sensibility and a tone of everyday banter, sometimes anchored in simple domestic glee such as a pot of borscht and a splash of vodka. It is a playful reversal that hints at a larger intention: to lampoon the era’s mood while clinging to the mechanics that made the show recognizable in the first place. The question remains, who crafted this approach and why it works for a certain audience. It is a rhetorical inquiry, left to the viewer’s own sense of humor. [attribution: TV critique]
There is a quieter sadness in the reboot conversation. Bukiny had known massive popularity a decade ago, and the new season seems poised to strike a familiar chord with the public. In the first episode of a plotline about debt and family, Gena quips that they will endure for a month and then persist. Yet the pattern remains clear: very little has truly changed over ten years. If happiness in the show’s world is a long-running joke, then the audience has been “happily together” for a long stretch, finding in the same setup a way to connect with familiar faces and familiar flaws. The result is less about novelty and more about shared nostalgia, a reminder that comfort can endure even when the times themselves shift. [attribution: cultural commentary]