Secret Asshole
Expert in things that never, ever happened
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- Jan 18, 2017
Ok, so I was fucking sick as a dog Friday until Sunday. I've got other reviews I'm doing, but I wanted to save them until I was more cogent. Ratchet doesn't require that. The entire story is basically a prequel to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest. The aforementioned Ratcheted (played by Sarah Paulson) feigns and interview in a struggling California mental hospital. There, she begins to slowly worm her way into it by blackmailing a young nurse who was fucking an orderly. She threatens to tell her husband and its off to the races. Almost. There, she encourages a patient to kill himself in the head doctor's office. She just 'happens' to stumble in to help him, earning his trust. And now we're off to the races.
So Ratcheted is really a slow burn. She's definitely manipulative and has monstrous tendencies right from the start, which I admit is interesting in the plots she weaves. The downside is, this show has a real obsession with Lesbians. At first it was basically to introduce the absolute barbarism of mental health in the 1940s. But it gradually got more and more involved and I kind of don't really know why. Sarah Paulson becomes infatuated and friendly with this gay character, basically on the verge of coming out. There's a lot more than I expected revolving homosexuality of the time. Of course, there are lobotomies and the like. Just to go out of the way for some lobotomy lore, in the show the doctor first preforms what is known as a leucotomy. This procedure was INCREDIBLY involved, required an operating theater, general anesthesia and highly trained neurosurgeons. It took a long time, and recovery was about a week, with rehabilitation. I can't find results, because an incredibly small number of these procedures were preformed, maybe 100-200. In contrast, the transorbital lobotomy, or ice-pick lobotomy basically took you like 15 minutes. The guy who invented it boasted about the speed at which it was done. This was first tested on a...grapefruit. The reason why the transorbital lobotomy is worse is because you don't have a team of trained neurosurgeons carefully aiming for the specific part of the brain, you have untrained psychiatrists using a kitchen icepick and ramming it into skulls.
But that is my last lobotomy derail. I'm not criticizing the show for it, just some interesting facts. ANYWHO, Paulson sucks up to the Filipino doctor, who she finds out forged his credentials because of a disastrous operation he carried out and a rich woman wants him dead for it. I'm not going to go into spoilers, but shit hits the absolute fan, Paulson's plans are fucked and it just gets worse from there.
I guess my main problem with the show is that the lesbian aspect is too stronkt. Like, I don't care, show me how nurse ratchet became a monster. But there's this weird relationship between her and this woman, where Paulson might be gay, might not be gay. And an emphasis on treating lesbianism over other mental illnesses, which gets a more horrific treatment specifically for lesbianism than spreading the terrible treatment around (besides lobotomies). I mean, there's hetero stuff too (Ratchet has really fucking weird and disturbing fantasies) and a patient's relationship with a nurse. So I guess it evens out? I honestly don't care about the sex part. I want the horror part. Plus I always thought of Ratchet as asexual. So it was kind of weird seeing her in sexual situations.
Ratchet, naturally, is going to be a female-centric show because (duh) its main character is female and lesbianism seems to be a bigger component with Ratchet struggling with her sexuality. After all, a show about nurses in the 1940s isn't going to have many dudes as mains. But out of....around 5....2 are completely under Ratchet's thumb, though one seems a lot friendlier to her. He's a cool dude war vet with a burned face and is kind. I'm rooting for him. The main Filipino doctor is just manipulated and made desperate as Ratchet constantly just fucks with him. He also gets high off his own supply. Another is a blatant asshole, but his job is...won't spoil it, but you wouldn't picture a nice person in his profession. One is kind of inscrutable right now, just insane or sane, depending on the scene. Another guy dies, even though he was nice. And then you have the stereotypical greedy Governor character. I guess I can't fault it for falling back on old tropes, as he's more of a plot device than a character, so it can be forgiven. There is one important male main, but I'd be spoiling it, so its best to find out yourself. I can't really make heads or tails of him quite yet. Maybe he's just fucking insane.
All in all, I don't care about Ratchet struggling with whether she's gay or not. I really, really don't care. Tonally, its kind of off with her. Sometimes she's nice and you can tell she's not acting. Maybe she still has a soft spot for people she perceives as genuine. Idiots she has no problem manipulating, man or woman. I like that she's forming a spider-web of plots and plans, but she's not perfect and some of them go awry in massively spectacular fashion. I like the Filipino doctor trying to cure people slowly going insane under the pressure to cure patients, the budget of the hospital, his past, horrific fuckup and Ratchet's machinations.
The problem I think is the relationship shit really bogs things down. Its more fun seeing Ratchet manipulate people, kill them and faking them out. And then when everything goes wrong, how she comes up on top. Much better then her having a lesbian identity crisis which is boring. And I think too much time is spent on that, because I just don't see how it matters in the formation of her character. Maybe I'm not far enough into it to see, but its like...give me more horror. More tension. Tell me how her struggle with her sexuality informs on the transformation of her character into a monster, not just an external identity crisis, which feels separate from her.
Its more of an origin story, which I mean, ok. But that's not really the appeal of the character. I want to see an unabashed monster, abusing the mental health system to increase her own power in hideous ways, how she overcomes challenges. Whether she has a gay identity crisis is something I legit do not care about, and the faster the show gets over that, the better it will be.
So Ratcheted is really a slow burn. She's definitely manipulative and has monstrous tendencies right from the start, which I admit is interesting in the plots she weaves. The downside is, this show has a real obsession with Lesbians. At first it was basically to introduce the absolute barbarism of mental health in the 1940s. But it gradually got more and more involved and I kind of don't really know why. Sarah Paulson becomes infatuated and friendly with this gay character, basically on the verge of coming out. There's a lot more than I expected revolving homosexuality of the time. Of course, there are lobotomies and the like. Just to go out of the way for some lobotomy lore, in the show the doctor first preforms what is known as a leucotomy. This procedure was INCREDIBLY involved, required an operating theater, general anesthesia and highly trained neurosurgeons. It took a long time, and recovery was about a week, with rehabilitation. I can't find results, because an incredibly small number of these procedures were preformed, maybe 100-200. In contrast, the transorbital lobotomy, or ice-pick lobotomy basically took you like 15 minutes. The guy who invented it boasted about the speed at which it was done. This was first tested on a...grapefruit. The reason why the transorbital lobotomy is worse is because you don't have a team of trained neurosurgeons carefully aiming for the specific part of the brain, you have untrained psychiatrists using a kitchen icepick and ramming it into skulls.
But that is my last lobotomy derail. I'm not criticizing the show for it, just some interesting facts. ANYWHO, Paulson sucks up to the Filipino doctor, who she finds out forged his credentials because of a disastrous operation he carried out and a rich woman wants him dead for it. I'm not going to go into spoilers, but shit hits the absolute fan, Paulson's plans are fucked and it just gets worse from there.
I guess my main problem with the show is that the lesbian aspect is too stronkt. Like, I don't care, show me how nurse ratchet became a monster. But there's this weird relationship between her and this woman, where Paulson might be gay, might not be gay. And an emphasis on treating lesbianism over other mental illnesses, which gets a more horrific treatment specifically for lesbianism than spreading the terrible treatment around (besides lobotomies). I mean, there's hetero stuff too (Ratchet has really fucking weird and disturbing fantasies) and a patient's relationship with a nurse. So I guess it evens out? I honestly don't care about the sex part. I want the horror part. Plus I always thought of Ratchet as asexual. So it was kind of weird seeing her in sexual situations.
Ratchet, naturally, is going to be a female-centric show because (duh) its main character is female and lesbianism seems to be a bigger component with Ratchet struggling with her sexuality. After all, a show about nurses in the 1940s isn't going to have many dudes as mains. But out of....around 5....2 are completely under Ratchet's thumb, though one seems a lot friendlier to her. He's a cool dude war vet with a burned face and is kind. I'm rooting for him. The main Filipino doctor is just manipulated and made desperate as Ratchet constantly just fucks with him. He also gets high off his own supply. Another is a blatant asshole, but his job is...won't spoil it, but you wouldn't picture a nice person in his profession. One is kind of inscrutable right now, just insane or sane, depending on the scene. Another guy dies, even though he was nice. And then you have the stereotypical greedy Governor character. I guess I can't fault it for falling back on old tropes, as he's more of a plot device than a character, so it can be forgiven. There is one important male main, but I'd be spoiling it, so its best to find out yourself. I can't really make heads or tails of him quite yet. Maybe he's just fucking insane.
All in all, I don't care about Ratchet struggling with whether she's gay or not. I really, really don't care. Tonally, its kind of off with her. Sometimes she's nice and you can tell she's not acting. Maybe she still has a soft spot for people she perceives as genuine. Idiots she has no problem manipulating, man or woman. I like that she's forming a spider-web of plots and plans, but she's not perfect and some of them go awry in massively spectacular fashion. I like the Filipino doctor trying to cure people slowly going insane under the pressure to cure patients, the budget of the hospital, his past, horrific fuckup and Ratchet's machinations.
The problem I think is the relationship shit really bogs things down. Its more fun seeing Ratchet manipulate people, kill them and faking them out. And then when everything goes wrong, how she comes up on top. Much better then her having a lesbian identity crisis which is boring. And I think too much time is spent on that, because I just don't see how it matters in the formation of her character. Maybe I'm not far enough into it to see, but its like...give me more horror. More tension. Tell me how her struggle with her sexuality informs on the transformation of her character into a monster, not just an external identity crisis, which feels separate from her.
Its more of an origin story, which I mean, ok. But that's not really the appeal of the character. I want to see an unabashed monster, abusing the mental health system to increase her own power in hideous ways, how she overcomes challenges. Whether she has a gay identity crisis is something I legit do not care about, and the faster the show gets over that, the better it will be.
