Ryan Murphy might just be the hardest working man in show business. This year alone, he’s already given us Hollywood and another season of The Politician. He’s produced the documentaries Circus of Books and A Secret Love. He’s spearheading an adaptation of Mart Crowley’s gay classic, The Boys in the Band, that’s dropping on Netflix on September 30. And he’s directing the musical comedy The Prom. (He’s also still very much involved in American Horror Story, 9-1-1, 9-1-1: Lone Star, and Pose.)
So far, it appears that Netflix’s US$300 million investment in him is really paying off. At least with regards to the sheer amount of content that he’s churning out.
The problem with Ryan Murphy, however, is that he’s always been far more prolific than consistent. And his latest efforts have been very much a mixed bag. Good ideas that seem to come up short in execution. These big, bold, expensive shots, while aesthetically accomplished, have been either cold (Hollywood) or directionless (The Politician). And his strongest work, the ones with the most compelling voice, have come, rather unsurprisingly, from his non-fiction indulgences (Circus of Books and A Secret Love).
The idea behind Ratched is an old one. Heck, comic books have been doing it for years. We’ve seen the supervillain origin story many times now, in Wicked and in Maleficent, in Joker, each one pushing the idea that monsters aren’t born but created. By nurture and circumstance. By a dark and twisted past.
Mildred Ratched, you see, wasn’t always the maniacal and unfeeling beast we first met in Ken Kesey’s brilliant One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. She too was once young, and pretty, and full of hope and purpose. At least until the real world came along and broke her in all the usual ways: false promises, cruel foster homes, and sexual abuse.
For a series that roots every episode by saying that it’s “based on the character of Nurse Ratched from the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey and from the Saat Zaentz Company motion picture of the same name,” Ratched does very little to justify its reason for being.
Unlike HBO’s Perry Mason, which was the unexpectedly soulful origin story that we didn’t know we needed, these eight episodes don’t really give us a satisfying answer to the question of whether or not this was a character that needed to be revisited, reimagined, and reclaimed. Perry Mason gave us characters not caricatures. The only thing Ratched seems to get right is the recognition that our enduring image of her is, in fact, an amalgamation of both Ken Kesey’s literary creation and the the person that Milos Forman and Louise Fletcher brought to life in their movie.
Ratched is absolutely exhausting. The series, which begins in 1947 with the vicious and brutal murder of four priests, keeps adding characters and plot lines, twists and contrivances, until it becomes so overwrought that you are left completely unaffected by anything that happens to these people.
There’s the killer, Edmund Tolleson (Ryan Murphy regular Finn Wittrock), who has been sent to the seaside town of Lucia for a psychiatric evaluation. There’s Dr. Hanover (Jon Jon Briones), the drug addled founder of the underfunded institution in which Tolleson is being interned at. Vincent D’Onofrio is a self-obsessed governor looking to execute Tolleson in order to ensure his reelection. Cynthia Nixon plays his press secretary and Mildred’s growing love interest. Sophie Okonedo is a patient with multiple personality disorder. Sharon Stone is wealthy, enigmatic, and distraught mother looking for revenge. And all of this is, in some way, supposed to give us some great insight into how Ratched became Ratched.
Listen, I lost interest about half way through writing that paragraph. So you can imagine what it was like having to sit through eight whole hours of it.
Here’s the thing. Mildred Ratched, that “big castrator of a nurse,” was already a fully formed character when we first met her. She was autocratic, cruel, even barbaric, and despite not knowing anything about her past, she never read as being two-dimensional.
What these eight episodes have unfortunately done is demythologise the character. With its over exposition. With its heavy handed score. By constantly shouting its message at you, Ratched has removed whatever fear and anxiety the character might have once inspired.
After all of it was done, I still had no idea what this series was trying to achieve. Was it an attempt at redeeming Ratched? Are we supposed to sympathise with her? How does Sarah Paulson end up becoming Louise Fletcher? Why should I care?
Ratched might be the series that tips us past peak Ryan Murphy and into the valley of self-parody. Every episode has all the hallmarks of a Ryan Murphy joint. Every character here feels like the stepped out of a Ryan Murphy production. They’re quirky and colourful. They spout wicked one liners. They’re exquisitely camp. Ratched may be beautiful and ornate, but none of that can save it from feeling skin deep. Even superficial.
Ratched
Netflix, Season 1, 8 episodes
Creator: Evan Romansky
Developer: Ryan Murphy
Writers: Evan Romansky, Jennifer Salt, and Ian Brennan
Cast: Sarah Paulson, Finn Wittrock, Cynthia Nixon, Jon Jon Briones, Charlie Carver, Judy Davis, and Sharon Stone
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