Ratched Review: This Formidable Female Villain Did Not Need Such A Backstory

Ratched, starring Sarah Paulson as one of cinema’s most memorable villains, is now streaming on Netflix. The show attempts to provide a backstory to the psychiatric nurse whose apathetic nature and totalitarian rule over her vulnerable patients has made her synonymous for institutional abuse of power and individual monstrousness. The character of Nurse Ratched was created by author Ken Kasey in his most famous work One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

In pop-culture, Ratched gained a formidable status after her portrayal by Louise Fletcher in the 1975 film-adaptation of the novel. Fletcher won an Oscar for her performance, and today Ratched’s reputation stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of many male-villains like Darth Vader, Lord Voldemort, and even Thanos. And no, Nurse Ratched doesn’t wield any cosmic power—she is a human with an inhumane capacity for apathy, which is what makes her more haunting than all the above-named antagonists.

Directed and produced by Ryan Murphy, Ratched gives this nurse a first name- spoiler alert, it's Mildred – alongside providing a glimpse into her past. And like every Murphy creation, Ratched is a feast to the eyes. From the stunning period-specific clothing to the lavishly designed sets, every painstaking detail is displayed in colourful fashion. But sadly, that’s about it. The eight-episode series, which is supposedly a prequel to the events leading up to Kasey’s novel, is more style than substance: it seems like the makers were so heavily focused on the aesthetics of the show, that they completely forgot to work on its content. And even with a stellar cast of stars like Sarah Paulson, Finn Wittrock, Cynthia Nixon, Jon Jon Briones, Charlie Carver, Judy Davis and Sharon Stone, Ratched doesn’t have much saving grace.

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The Plot

The story begins with the World War II nurse Mildred Ratched (Paulson) seeking employment at Lucia State Mental Hospital in Northern California in the late 1940s. The psychiatric hospital is run by Dr. Hanover (Briones), a seemingly passionate pioneer in his field. We see Mildred securing her position in the hospital by means of a little blackmail, importuning of suicide, poisoning and bold lipstick. She presents herself as the perfect image of what a nurse should be, and quickly rises up the ranks. But hiding behind this façade is an ever-scheming mind.

Meanwhile, the hospital welcomes a new patient named Edmund Tolleson (Wittrock), a famed serial killer. Dr. Hanover has been given the task of determining whether Edmund is fit to stand trial and face execution. On the other side, we are not told about Mildred’s precise purpose in joining the hospital, but we know it has something to do with Edmund, who seems to have some deep connection to Mildred. And it is this connection that is behind her wildly inconsistent actions, taking us on a journey that ricochets from being an origin-story to being a bafflingly useless game between increasingly grotesque players.

The Acting And The Aesthetics

Sarah Paulson has always been a great actress, and here too, she delivers a compelling performance. But at times, even a veteran actress like Paulson seems to be having trouble finding her footing. And these slips have less to do with the acting talent and more to do with the plot: as Mildred Ratched, Paulson seems adrift in a way she has rarely ever been, because the way her character is written is largely incoherent. She leads a patient to suicide in one scene and helps two lesbians escape the clutches of hydrotherapy treatment in another scene. One is left highly confused as to whether Mildred finds such therapy barbaric and has genuine goodwill toward patients, and if she does, then why would she be comfortable leading a man to suicide? And the show makes no attempt to answer these inconsistencies.

Another name to be noted is of Judy Davis who is terrific as Mildred's adversary, Nurse Bucket. But just like Mildred herself, Bucket’s character seems to be experiencing personality swings that don't follow any discernible pattern except what's needed to further the plot. The same goes for Finn Wittrock's Edmund Tolleson. Production designer Judy Becker, locations manager Robert Foulkes, and costume designers Lou Eyrich and Rebecca Guzzi deserve all the due credit for creating such a striking world, one that perhaps deserved to have much more interesting things happen inside of it.

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Everything Wrong With The Show

Within the first few episodes, Mildred is already seen involved in a murder cover-up, bounty hunting, and an awkward sexual encounter. So many narrative threads are thrown at us that it’s hard to figure out which one to hold onto. For goodness’ sake, one cannot even determine what kind of show Ratched is trying to be: horror, drama, romance, comedy, or is it all of the above? One moment, Mildred is confessing to a dark secret from her childhood to a close confidant, and in the very next instant, someone is chopping their own arm off with blood splattering everywhere on the screen. As a director, Ryan Murphy has had a longstanding fascination with body horror (watch any season of American Horror Story), but here that fascination has been transplanted into the world of the mentally ill and the downright abusive medical treatments to which they've been subjected over decades.

It’d have still been alright if the explicit images of these ‘treatments’ and the gruesome tortures served a narrative purpose. But they really don’t, and to add shocking amounts of blood and gore just for aesthetics seems uncomfortably close to mere exploitation, making a spectacle of atrocities that don't deserve to be treated as spectacle in the first place. The show also focuses on lesbianism as one of its main themes (one of the main characters is a lesbian after all) but conveniently leaves out the harrowing history of mental hospitals in America, trimming everything down to a story about the one-dimensional trauma of serial killers and confidence artists. To be very honest, Ratched bears no ounce of semblance whatsoever to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in tone, plot or sensibility.

The Biggest Contradiction Of All

As a big fan of Kasey’s novel and Fletcher’s role as Nurse Ratched, the show’s biggest loophole lies, in my opinion, in its very purpose of giving Ratched a backstory. She doesn't need a history and can't be given one without breaking the character's essential purpose. InOne Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Nurse Ratched is the pitiless and apathetic face of the institution and the state. She does what she does to her patients because she can and because she believes in rules; that is what makes her frightening. She is vile, vindictive, sadistic, and does all her evil jobs with a scarily stone-faced facade. She represents the inhumane society in its crushing of the individual: she symbolises archetype rather than a nuanced person.

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So, the question of "How did her childhood experiences make her so mean?" is beside the point when a character represents the absence of individuality and sensitivity. In fact, Nurse Ratched has always been an intriguing force for exactly the opposite reason: she illuminates the might of systemic forces. On top of this major contradiction, the show is so confused in its presentation of the characters, that it does very little to answer even the questions it poses about Mildred’s origin story. And hence, everything boils down to the central issue poisoning Ratched: it is a futile attempt of creating a gritty, traumatic backstory that flattens a character who didn’t need one.

Picture Credit: YouTube Screenshot

Views expressed are the author’s own.