Thread by @AlexandraErin

I keep mentally referring to Ratched as American Horror Story: Disability, but that could really describe so much of Ryan Murphy's corpus.

I think the character of Ratched is better when she's unexplored and unexplained. You really don't need a Joker Origin Story for the ableist control freak medical professional who just bulldozes over patients' lives. That's *normal* in our society.

But as a prequel for the book/movie and an origin story for the character as she exists within it... Ratched worked better than I had expected? It understood the character better than it might have, showing a character who can identify institutional and personal pressure points.

We see her talking a fragile patient to death in order to hurt/gain control over another person, and misusing a lobotomy for personal reasons, the two most morally abhorrent actions she takes in the source material.

It's elaborately detailed, beautiful and harmful garbage... in other words, normal Ryan Murphy fare.

Yeah, she's very much like the "composite character" that gets added to non-fictional dramatizations in order to distill a lot of bad stuff happening in a way that is filmable and cinematic, and put a face on it.

https://twitter.com/popeguilty/status/1314611874512728064

It very much does feel like a spin-off season of American Horror Story, minus the presence of more of the AHS Repertory Players. (We kept waiting for Evan Peters to pop up, and declared numerous background characters and props to be him.)

It's got WLW playing WLW and finding (at least, temporary) happiness with each other. And it openly condemns the interlocking systems of "mental health" and "justice" that are also being openly abused (in ways apart from and beyond their abusive natures) by the characters.

The opening title design is gorgeous and seems calculated to (vainly, in my opinion) try to set it apart from the AHS oeuvre, with a distinctly different theme song (Camille Saint-Saëns's Danse Macabre) and overall aesthetic.

It's definitely interesting to see a queer female version of the "mastermind villain" who has elaborate plans within plans and immediately identifies and incorporates the machinations of others into her personal goals.

https://twitter.com/queerthecloset/status/1314613230388629506

But the inescapable baggage of the source material and the whole high concept revolving around mental illness and medical abuse does tend to bog it down.

I do hope to see Sarah Paulson get more leading roles and more chances to play queer women alongside other queer women.

I guess the question at the end of the day is "Who was this for?" I don't think anyone was clamoring for Nurse Ratched to get the Maleficent/Joker treatment. I think this is More Ryan Murphy for the sake of More Ryan Murphy. You want more Sarah Paulson and American Horror Story?