By Rose Cohen ’22
Staff Writer
Content Warning: This review describes graphic violence, homophobic scenes and homicide.
The Netflix series “Ratched” promises to tell the origin story of Nurse Mildred Ratched, the notorious antagonist of Ken Kesey’s 1962 classic novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and Czech-born director Milos Forman’s book-to-film adaptation of the same name. The show, which premiered on Sept. 18, feels more like a combination of an Alfred Hitchcock psychological horror and FX’s dark series, “American Horror Story.”
Jennifer Salt, Tim Minear, Alexis Martin Woodall and Ryan Murphy, the creators of “American Horror Story,” are the producers of the show. Sarah Paulson, who stars as Ratched, has acted in nearly every season of the anthology series.
Hitchcock could have easily directed the first few minutes of the pilot of the eight-episode season. The eerie weather — complete darkness and a heavy thunderstorm — mirrors the beginning of the director’s 1959 thriller, “Psycho.”
In the first scene of the show, it’s 1947 and a priest leaves a church sermon. The camera pans to Edmund Tolleson (Finn Wittrock), but shadows conceal his face. Tolleson begins to stalk the clergyman, following him home, where he lives with several other priests.
Once the father’s housemates venture out to a movie theater to watch the Christmas classic “Miracle on 34th Street,” Tolleson — whose face remains hidden — bangs on the door, claiming that his car broke down. He asks to use the telephone. Once he enters the home and we finally see his face, he stares at a knife on the dinner table, adding to his villainous vibe.
When the rest of the priests return home, they find the sole priest left behind dead. Tolleson goes on a rampage through the house, attacking and killing all of the priests but one, all the while smiling. This is once again reminiscent of Norman Bates, the murderous mama’s boy in “Psycho.”
Six months after Tolleson’s killing spree, we meet the young version of Ratched. She drives along California’s northern coast, in her mint green Ford Coupe, to Lucia, California, where she has orchestrated an unplanned interview at Lucia State Hospital, the facility in which the homicidal Tolleson is about to be held. The director of the hospital, Dr. Hanover (Jon Jon Briones), is diving into experimental treatments including hydrotherapy, hypnosis and lobotomies. An assortment of violent patients terrorizes the staff. But because of the focus on the storyline within the hospital, we still know very little by the end of the series about Ratched’s behavior in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
The bloody and brutal scenes in “Ratched” parallel the ones we see in “American Horror Story,” and beware: They’re just as gory. In one especially grisly episode, Ratched locks a man (Corey Stoll) in a hydrotherapy tub and attempts to boil him alive. We see him stagger from the tub, his gruesome burns making it nearly impossible not to turn away from the screen. Another horrific scene from an early episode shows a grisly depiction of a boy (Brandon Flynn) removing his own arms.
Producer Ryan Murphy may have set out to explore what turned Ratched into the tyrant that Kesey created, but we receive only a superficial version of the character. Scene after scene, “Ratched” showcases murder and torture, but fails to provide any source of dramatic tension.
“Ratched” throws around a lot of heavy topics. There’s the sensationalized depiction of people with mental illnesses and the treatment of homosexuality. One patient suffers from dissociative identity disorder (which is derogatorily referred to in the show) and becomes violent when she takes on the role of Olympian Jesse Owens. A lesbian character receives brutal conversion therapy. Both scenes are equally offensive, and they don’t drive the narrative forward in any way. Like the whole show, they just serve as an excuse for “American Horror Story”-style torture porn.
At its best, “Ratched” could be another storyline in “American Horror Story,” presented in multiple episodes. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Murphy stated, “I feel like Nurse Ratched is sort of shorthand for barbarism.” He continued, “What was interesting was trying to create an emotional character from a reputation that’s very cold...trying to figure out every little detail about her childhood, her relationships, her sexuality.” He also admitted that he was scared to take on such an iconic character.
If you’re looking for insight into Kesey’s Ratched, this isn’t the show for you. But if you’re an “American Horror Story” superfan, reserve a weekend to binge the show.