Netflix reveals first look at Ratched, Ryan Murphy's One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest fanfic
Aux Features TV
Even in 2020 the existence of a Nurse Ratched origin story from Ryan Murphy inspires a little disbelief. This could easily be self-parody, and while the first photos from Ratched definitely read like a Ryan Murphy Joint (Finn Wittrock, everyone!), there’s still something kind of mystifying about this whole thing (Sharon Stone is here and she is extremely casual about the actual monkey—in a dress and pearls—on her back). Netflix released several photos from Murphy’s upcoming series, which debuts on September 18 and imagines the origin story of the eponymous nurse (played by Sarah Paulson, of course) and iconic villain from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. Casting aside, you can clearly tell this is a Murphy project based on the cinematography and costuming alone.
Featured in the photos are Sarah Paulson as Nurse Mildred Ratched, Cynthia Nixon as Gwendolyn Briggs, Judy Davis as Nurse Betsy Bucket (HAHA WHAT), Finn Wittrock as Edmund Tolleson, Sophie Okonedo as Charlotte, Liz Femi, Charlie Carver, and Jon Jon Briones as Dr. Hanover. But wait, there’s so much more: The series also stars Corey Stoll, Rosanna Arquette, Vincent D’Onofrio, Alice Englert, Amanda Plummer, and Hunter Parrish.
The photos give you a pretty good idea of what Murphy’s thrown in his wacky narrative blender this time around, throwing in a little bit of Mildred Pierce, The Knick, and perhaps even his own American Horror Story: Asylum for good measure. You can check those out below the official plot synopsis:
From Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, RATCHED is a suspenseful drama series that tells the origin story of asylum nurse Mildred Ratched. In 1947, Mildred arrives in Northern California to seek employment at a leading psychiatric hospital where new and unsettling experiments have begun on the human mind. On a clandestine mission, Mildred presents herself as the perfect image of what a dedicated nurse should be, but the wheels are always turning and as she begins to infiltrate the mental health care system and those within it, Mildred’s stylish exterior belies a growing darkness that has long been smoldering within, revealing that true monsters are made, not born.
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What really makes her scary is that she genuinely does think she’s doing the right thing, and her treatment is the best that people with such severe mental disorders can hope for (and the place is indeed pretty much a day spa compared to most mental asylums of the ‘70s). Seeing how she got to that way of thinking could conceivably be a story worth telling, but at this point Murphy is really not the guy I trust to do it.
Exactly. I will be taking a pass on this one.
I agree. I’ll watch it, but I go in knowing and fully expecting it to start out great, jump the shark around episode 6, and be a waking corpse by ep 8 – 10.Even knowing that, I still clicked on the link hoping it was a series and not a movie. Even a Ryan Murphy series is more fun to watch than most movies.
And the thing is, I dont’ think she’s that bad, at least, not as she’s made to appear in the ‘75 adaptation. Increasingly I find that film (and the story) to be misogynistic and prejudiced against the need and importance of mental health, and I thought Nurse Ratched came off as competent and committed to her job.
Did you catch the Unspooled episode about OFotCN? They felt pretty much the same – the film goes to a lot of lengths to make McMurphy look like a cool and reasonable guy (such as skating over the crime he was actually convicted of, and rounding up the age of the victim), and apparently the misogyny is even more obvious in the book. I haven’t read it, but I understand Ratched is stripped naked in front of the whole group, as though the author feels that a female clinician having power over male patients is an injustice, and that turning her into a sex object is just punishment for [checks notes] being a nurse doing her job.Ratched may not be likeable, but it’s pretty wild how she’s routinely painted as one of the worst villains in Hollywood history, all the while lionising McMurphy, who is genuinely an awful person.
I think for a long time I gave Ken Kesey the benefit of the doubt what with his being counterculture and all that, but more and more I see him as more of a counterculture opportunist, who embraced the new freedoms and liberation of the 60s more as a pretense to indulge his own hedonistic desires, like Hunter Thompson. They’re poseurs who claim to be allies mainly to get into womens’ pants, and have no time to investigate the experience of women. Ratched may be stern and unyielding, but she’s also a person of authority who is a woman, and I can easily imagine how much harder she has to work to earn the respect of her colleagues. A very different story could be told, about how a woman worked her ass off to reach her position, and then was nearly murdered by patient who resented her. And I get so angry when I think of all the people who would’ve benefitted from mental health treatment, who were scared away by the book and movie. Lobotomies were on the decline, and ECT therapy when done correctly has real benefits and isn’t the torturous experience as depicted. The things that are presented as so horrific to McMurphy are precisely what works about mental health: routine, structure, group therapy. Most bad books and movies are merely bad books or movies, harmless enough, quickly forgotten. OFOTCN is that rare work that has done real, lasting harm, and for that, I condemn it.
Were Kesey & Thompson really exceptions within the counterculture?
I don’t think Kesey or the film (which he never saw) were suggesting that mental health is unimportant, but rather that the institutions created to address those issues (especially back then) were built on and further developed power dynamics that inevitably do a disservice to the people who are supposed to be helped. It’s very similar to schooling where there are many devoted people working in a system that regularly and predictably makes a large portion of students utterly miserable. I’ve worked for years in education and mental health and the very worst people I’ve worked with are the very confident ones who feel like they have the wisdom and authority to know what’s best for other people, and resistance to their actions simply increases their confidence.
Well, maybe right up until she internationally exploits Billy’s insecurities to break his new found self-confidence just to prove her dominance to McMurphy…
I don’t know I could go both ways. I forget how old was Billy? I get the impression he was supposed to be under age, i.e. committed at the behest of his parents, which would mean Ratched would be bound to report what happened to his parents. More to the point, I think the scene is founded upon an untruth, that stuttering is something you just “get over,” which in Billy’s case was due to getting laid. It’s more profound than that. Ultimately there is just so much that is wrong with this book and film.
exactly. the “hero” of the story is a child molester, for god’s sake.
I agree with you, especially since we know what was going on in a lot of mental hospitals until the early 80s or I’m sure even later in some cases.
Ironically, Reagan joined with anti-institution forces on the left to close those terrible mental health institutions. It’s why there are so many mentally ill people who are homeless. I worked in tech for mental health providers, some of whom had court-mandated plans due to negligence. I’ve seen the files. But man, out of the frying pan and into the fire.
That is a hell of a catch 22.
Even by the insanely hit and miss standards of Ryan Murphy, his Netflix shows so far have been complete disasters. The Politician started out not great but at least somewhat interesting, and completely flamed out by season 2, while Hollywood was a bizarre self-indulgent masturbation fest about how important artists are. Makes me wonder how much his best shows were a result of compromise and collaboration at FX.
FX has the Midas touch so Imo they are the ones responsible for the greatness of any show he has made for their network.
Calling this “fanfic” was brilliant, it will be all I think about when I see or hear about this show from now on.
That’s like the third project from Murphy on Netflix.
That’s good, I’m still pissed that somehow Netflix threw money at matt reeves and absolutely nothing came out of it.
Ryan Murphy has become such a fucking hack, that even watching his productions for the sheer amusement of his cheap, tawdry aesthetic, the artificiality of the worlds he is trying to replicate, and the unchecked hamboning by his platoon of actors has now become dull and repetitive. I mean did any of you watch HOLLYWOOD? Jesus Christ…………That’s my take, and I stand by it.
Yeah my issue with Hollywood is that it had too happy an ending and most of the plot was too neatly resolved by a deus ex machnina.
I couldn’t even make it through the first episode of Hollywood. It was phony claptrap.
Ugh. I thought it was kind of offensive, honestly. The premise seemed to be “One movie could have ended racism and homophobia forever! And it would win all the Oscars!”
Hollywood was so awful. But I still like Murphy productions. I enjoy over the top, campy content quite a bit. So I’m excited for this one.
You’re not alone! *group hugs
sure whatever.
This seems about as interesting and necessary as VICE.Do we need more origin stories for banal horror? It’s banal.Cuckoo was great because people needed someone to say fuck these people and this dishonest system. I don’t care who wedgied them and made them lifelong pricks.
For me, Feud: Bette and Joan is Murphy’s best and most mature and restrained project. It was excellent television and had a story worthy of the effort. Hollywood seemed like an extension of similar themes of the Old Hollywood system that Feud touched on, just gayer. His American Crimes were both sensational but well-handled. Ratched, however, looks like an excuse for Sarah Paulson to ham it up while wearing precise period costuming. I’m sure it will be well crafted production-wise but probably silly and ultimately unessential viewing.
I really enjoyed Feud too, that and American Horror Story Season 2 are the two things that I really enjoyed that Murphy’s been involved in, and prove he is capable of creating a decent tv series, but as others have said all too often he starts well but it becomes a mess or dull by the end.
It’s not truly a Ryan Murphy production unless Sarah Paulson’s face is wet for at least 60% of her appearances
2022 – Ryan Murphy does an origin story for Robert Mitchum’s character in The Night of the Hunter
(also One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is amazing, and all the handwringing over it above can bog off)
I have sort of tempered enthusiasm for this premise. I have always disliked the misogyny of the OFOTCN and wouldn’t mind someone rebooting the premise, to comment on the original. I don’t know if that’s Murphy but I like the idea of _somoeone_ discussing in a big forum the things we assume when we watch canonical film.
Nicholson was presented to us at the beginning as a child rapist and physically violent individual without remorse who may have had some sort of borderline personality or bipolar disorder. He also fought against treatment and counciling tooth and nail.
I agree. Nevertheless, most other aspects of the movie sets up Nicholson as the guy to root for and the nurse as the baddie. He reminds me of Don Draper in that sense. Sure, we know he’s a bad guy. But the entire world is presented from his POV and thus we root for him. It’s been many years since I watched the movie, so it’s possible my memory is doing a disservice to it, but I was much less aggressively feminist in those days, and even then, I was like, No thank you.
…what?
Cuckoo’s Nest supposedly took place in 1963 (was filmed in 1975). What’s with all the 1940s faux glam? Nurse Ratched wasn’t some old hag in the film, I assume she was probably Nicholson’s character’s age. Considerably younger than Sara Paulson is currently.