Ratched on Netflix - We've got a call for a Les Bean. Is there a Les Bean here?

[Getting tard comed]

My point is I don't see a connection between her being pragmatic about her brother and treating patients terribly. She's not a cunt to everyone. in fact she does posses compassion in the show. I'm just saying, what makes her the way she is? Why does she do the things she does? In the show, its made quite clear she wants to be merciful, not treat people with cruelty. What lead to the shift? We don't know.

Not having watched the show but based on your assessment it's quite possible there isn't a shift because the creators don't think she was cruel on the movie. That's a possibilty. Another is, they'll get to it later if they have 4 seasons.

 

[Tour of Italy]

She's been with her current girlfriend since 2015. The woman is 32 years older than her.

gross

 

[Secret Asshole]

Ratched is very much a Ryan Murphy show. It feels a lot like AHS and it has a lot of the same subtly campy elements.

I enjoyed watching it but I was also glad when it was over. And yeah, too much lesbian sturm and drang when it could have been matter-of-fact hey these women are lesbians, let's move on.

Like they could have cut out half of the OMG I'm not a lesbean but YES I AM A LESBEAN? shit and replaced it with more of Sophie Okonedo as Charlotte Wells.

Well, it is very very very very very very clearly shot like a Hitchcock movie. Very similar lighting, very similar swipes and transitions. The problem is it is shot on digital, so you don't get the nice grain effect you'd normally get. But shooting on film is massively expensive, so I can't blame them. It was already an expensive show because it is a period piece. I mean, it does have a ton of camp, and I think that's intentional. Which is fine. The mental hospital is brightly lit and cheery, the patient rooms are hotel rooms, but all sorts of horrible shit happens in there, you get a decent contrast. I changed my mind. If they went with the shit treatment of the time, it wouldn't have fit the image and mood they were going for. Its very much 'superficially pretty, really fucking ugly underneath'. And uh, quite literally with the Silence of the Lambs cages in the basement.

But yeah, I mean holy shit. There's just so much of it. I guess they know they have four seasons, so they were 'lets just get this out of the way in the first season so people don't go, 'why is Ratched a lesbo in the second'. That's what it kind of felt like to me. Thinking back on it, the whole season was basically just set-up. Plot threads are still hanging loose.

She was fucking amazing in the series. I totally fucking lost it when she she kills Doctor Hanover and then comes BACK and merks the nice orderly and frees the serial killer and they start an inter-state killing spree. Seriously, that asylum has lost so many guards you need hazard pay. And then the flapper lady from the motel joins them for some reason? I don't know, it was funny. It didn't have to make sense.. But yeah, Charlotte Wells as an MPD patient with the quack doctor trying to cure her through hypnosis was amazing. She gave really good performances.

And contrary to what we're saying, it didn't really feel all that SJWy. Its a show that is primarily about women and that's fine. Everybody comes out pretty filthy in the end. But it kind of sucks nowadays that's in my mind. I used to not have to go 'Ok, where are they going to insert politics and annoy me'. I'm not a crazy person, so I really didn't see any of it. The lesbian stuff was ham-fisted, but so was the hetero, so it all equals out.

Not having watched the show but based on your assessment it's quite possible there isn't a shift because the creators don't think she was cruel on the movie. That's a possibilty. Another is, they'll get to it later if they have 4 seasons.

I think they're going to have to. There isn't much interaction with her and patients, so we truly don't know what her demeanor is. The show mostly focuses on her manipulations and relationships, along with the plot to free her brother. With 8 episodes, it doesn't leave much for patient interaction. I would actually have them cut out the nurse part of her backstory for the first season and just put that in the second, when they have more time.

Like, in this show, she's not a bad person. She knows she's amoral, but her love for her brother, her regret and the ache she feels over leaving him basically overcomes her sense of morality and turns her into a pragmatic individual. That's not really cuntish. Like, she's thinking this poor orderly is hitting on her, but he has PTSD from the war and a face that's fucked up. She feels sorry for him and gives him a purpose, unrelated to her own selfish interests. She really didn't need to do that.

I would sum up her character as one of deep regret, scarred not only by abuse, but an inability to save her brother. It makes her extremely pragmatic and amoral in certain circumstances, but she isn't when she doesn't need to be. She possesses compassion and genuinely feels like she wants to be merciful to people (unless you're in her way) and patients. Even a character that blackmails her later on she doesn't go out of her way to harm and works with them. So yeah, there really needs to be more.

When her purpose of pragmatism is no longer there, what converts her to cruelty? Its really left on the table.

 

[2021Murder]

imagine watching a Ryan Murphy show made this century and being angry about there being gay characters in it. No wonder that one guy compared this place to Stormfront. Jerry Falwell and WBC used to whine about all the fags in Nip/tuck too

 

[Secret Asshole]

imagine watching a Ryan Murphy show made this century and being angry about there being gay characters in it. No wonder that one guy compared this place to Stormfront. Jerry Falwell and WBC used to whine about all the fags in Nip/tuck too

Whoever said I was angry? I don't care. I don't care Racthed is gay. The problem is you've got 8 episodes and that's not really what people want to explore about her character. You don't have a lot of time to tell a story, and a lot of that time is dedicated to her exploring her sexuality. And the same for her brother. Like the American Horror Story one about Witches I liked. I didn't care that there was a lot of lesbian stuff in it and sex stuff, because that's pertinent to the source material of Witches. Here it feels out of place and I mention it because I wasn't expecting so much time in a very short series to be devoted to it.

Its a strawman to say I was angry, I didn't like the time wasted on the hetero relationship either. Yeah, the lesbian stuff took precedence because Ratched is the main character and her brother is a side character. But you're telling me that this series is exploring the darkness within this character and its kind of not. I'm disappointed, because the more time spent on sexuality, the less time spent about the growing darkness within Ratched herself. I didn't really see that. I saw a very pragmatic, driven, manipulative individual who pursued one goal with a singular purpose because she felt guilty and terrible about leaving her brother behind. She's also damaged from the abuse she suffered and is exploring her sexuality to boot. That alone is a lot to pack into 8 episodes.

I'm more disappointed. It was fun to watch Ratched make her plans and just have shit luck, or fucking up or overcoming the odds when she was manipulating people, or not taking into account/underestimating certain character traits and overcoming her mistakes or just having her plans succeed. She can be gay, I don't care. But we have very little time to explore her character, because the show is very heavily plot based. So using that precious time to explore her sexuality, which I don't care if she's trans, gay, straight, queer or whatever is just a waste of time. It distracts from possible horror elements and possibly sends a wrong message which @Ruin points out.

I get Ryan Murphy has his standards he goes back to, and Sarah Paulson and Cynthia Nixon are both gay. But the quality of a good showrunner is to know your material and know the time and place for things. If you've got 4 seasons, the first season needs to hook you into that darkness. And it kind of doesn't. It should have been devoted to Ratchet's backstory. Why she feels the need to become a nurse. Show her terrible and abusive foster life, not through flashbacks. Let us get to know her brother and her relationship better. Why does she feel the need to unnecessarily sign up and lie about being a nurse of all things during the Pacific Theatre of WWII? Why does she feel the compulsive need to be merciful, causing her to kill or maim? How has she become so manipulative? What sort of life did she lead that allowed her to be so skilled at it? Many people are pragmatic, but not amoral. How did she become that way? How can she remain compassionate while being so ruthless in her goals? None of these questions are answered. Instead we explore her sexuality, troubled relationships with men and eventually realizing she loves women. You can use the excuse that the show has 4 seasons, but there's no guarantee that these questions will be answered.

The main idea that people want is: how did Ratched become the way she is? And the show doesn't really explore that, opting to explore her sexuality instead, which is honestly just a waste of time. You use the excuse that its a Ryan Murphy show. But that's not an excuse. 'Oh, its just his trademark.' Then he's inept. I should be able to come into this show not knowing who Ryan Murphy is and expect to know why a character is doing what they are doing. I'm not given that, instead he indulges himself to the detriment of the show.

tl;dr: We need to know why she's doing the things she's doing now, because we need that characterization to line up with her actions in the current plot of the show, being that its plot is heavily favored over characterization. The show has precious little time for characterization, and opts to use to that time to explore her sexuality, which is irrelevant to the current plot. Her sexuality could be explored across several seasons instead of using up the little time that the first season had.

EDIT:
One last thing. I don't consider a character's sexuality to be of paramount importance, unless there's a major point to it. Or if its a romance or something, or it advances the plot or characterization. It advances Paulson's characterization, but the characterization is irrelevant to the plot at hand, so there's a disconnect between plot and character. We're getting information we don't need. As this is a plot based show, the characterization needs to be in favor of the plot. Which it is not. This is why her sexuality is a waste of time and causes a thematic imbalance in the show itself. It would be another matter entirely if the show favors characterization over plot, which it does not.

 

[Idiotron]

Let's see:
- taking a self contained story and making a prequel to it
- taking a villainous character and giving them a redeeming backstory
- inserting modern socio-political issues

NOPE.

 

[Secret Asshole]

Let's see:
- taking a self contained story and making a prequel to it
- taking a villainous character and giving them a redeeming backstory
- inserting modern socio-political issues

NOPE.

I mean...its hard to say its modern socio-political. They don't treat it is delicate as it was for the time. Its not so much about a political statement than it is wrong time, wrong place. They did treat lesbians for mental illness, but they do treat homosexuality way too lightly for the 1940s. Like you've got people freely admitting they are homosexual to others when for the time that would be dangerous as fuck. I'm sure there would be people who were sympathetic, but you couldn't trust anyone during those days. Your life would be over, sometimes literally. So them being more open about it is another thematic disconnect. This is because of the intense focus on it. They treat it as (mostly) modern, because they don't have the time to treat it the way they should have.

If anything, Ratched is an example of why everything in a story needs to have a purpose, especially if you are constrained for time.

I wouldn't say the backstory redeems her. She does amoral and horrible shit. Its a starting point. The problem is, we don't know why she's doing that in terms of her character. We know why she's doing that for the plot. I want to know why she felt the need to become a nurse. What drives her to become an angel of death? Why does she go from being merciful to cruel? How can she kill so easily and do horrific things? These aren't explained. We just have to sort of make up our own answers. The problem with this is, like I said, in plot based stories, the characterization needs to be in service of the plot. And with Ratched, it just isn't.

 

[TungstenCarbide]

I personally liked it, but it took more investment than I'm usually asked to give by other shows (except Dark). I found the first episode visually stylish (well, the whole show has a beautiful cinematography), but also very slow. It isn't bad, but it could have been better. I think there were storylines I would have enjoyed much more if the characters would have been more fleshed out. EG:
Sharon Stone's disabled son - I admit that I cackled when it was revealed that his mother left half of her money to charity and the other half to her pet monkey, but it would have felt more deserved if the kid had had more space inside the story.

Anyway, there will be a second season, so there's still time, for Ratched, to become a bitch.

 

[CWCissey]

This was certainly a thing.

Sometimes it felt like a proper OFOTCN prequel.

But most of the time it just felt like another American Horror Story. Especially with the lesbian crap. Nurse Ratched was always sexless but hated it to me, and that's why she was so cruel to Billy after he fucked the hooker.

 

[Dysnomia]

I personally liked it, but it took more investment than I'm usually asked to give by other shows (except Dark). I found the first episode visually stylish (well, the whole show has a beautiful cinematography), but also very slow. It isn't bad, but it could have been better. I think there were storylines I would have enjoyed much more if the characters would have been more fleshed out. EG:
Sharon Stone's disabled son - I admit that I cackled when it was revealed that his mother left half of her money to charity and the other half to her pet monkey, but it would have felt more deserved if the kid had had more space inside the story.

Anyway, there will be a second season, so there's still time, for Ratched, to become a bitch.

I figured she cared about him more if she wanted to bring him Dr. Hanover's head on a plate. Maybe that was really more for her. We know the son is fucked in the head and probably had that illness where you think your limbs aren't your own. I actually thought the servant that killed her was going to turn out to be his lover because this show is so gay happy. But no, he just needed a fall guy.