"Ratched" TV Show Review
October 22, 2020 • Written by Alice Romanov
Adapted from the award-winning film and bestselling novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, Ratched is a thrilling rollercoaster from start to finish, keeping you on the edge of your seat and dying for the next episode. As seen in the preview, the show’s technicolor aesthetic is impossible to look away from. Every episode features beautiful period costumes from the 40’s and 50’s: bright yellows, deep hospital blues, and menacing reds and greens. Each scene looks like a fairytale, and the show’s outwardly vibrant color scheme is a harsh contrast to the darker plot.
As the prequel and backstory of Nurse Mildred Ratched from the 1962 novel written by Ken Kesey: Ratched begins with Mildred Ratched’s arrival to Lucia, a small town in Northern California where she plans to work at a mental health facility. Through her cunning and secretive persona, she slowly begins to turn the place upside down. Despite not knowing her intentions, Nurse Ratched displays incredible passion, guiding the viewer in suspense and left to wonder what she will do next.
Throughout the course of the show, she struggles with her sexuality as well as trauma from a broken childhood, but are these valid reasons for her to create chaos everywhere around her? NPR and Rolling Stone write that Ratched’s character is a confusing one. Linda Holmes writes in an NPR review of Ratched, “The things that are meant to unlock Mildred's psyche — that she's a lesbian, that she suffered horrible childhood trauma, that she lost her parents very young — are baubles that dot the characterization, but none feel like insights into her behavior.”
(https://www.npr.org/2020/09/18/913629938/ratched-is-pretty-but-very-silly)
Although it may not be evident at first, this is a reasonable critique of the protagonist’s motivations. Nurse Ratched goes through so much over the course of the show, but it is still not entirely clear why her intentions are scattered and you cannot grasp what side she’s on and thus creating a stimulating character who appears to have built many walls around her. These walls are detrimental to the course of the plot. In Rolling Stone, Alan Sepinwall writes, “Ratched is a bunch of disparate influences... thrown together simply because they could be, and not because they fit together, or add up to more as a group than they did individually.” (https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-reviews/ratched-netflix-ryan-murphy-sarah-paulson-review-1058869/)
Many critics opposed the show’s success, but surprisingly, 93% of viewers enjoyed the show. There are a lot of wild turns and unconventional character developments from Dr. Hanover to Nurse Bucket. There are gory twists in every episode, especially Dr. Hanover’s backstory. Logistically, not every plot development may make complete sense, but the episodes are still suspenseful and effectively dramatic. The show’s creator, Ryan Murphy (who also made American Horror Story) definitely intended jaw-dropping moments in each of the 8 episodes. Ratched is a very fun show to binge and the colorful aesthetics make it well worth it to stick around. You may have a lot of questions (which will hopefully be answered in Season 2), but you will be in awe at the performances, costumes, and set design.
