Ratched – Got No Strings

By: Kelly Kearney

When it comes to period pieces, queer characters are all but nonexistent in TV land. It’s almost as if an entire community of people have been left off the screen as a way to erase them from history, but not any more thanks to the beautiful relationship unfolding between Mildred Ratched and Gwendolyn Briggs. “Got No Strings” does what past film and television shows have failed to do. It gives viewers a lush and romantic love between two fully fleshed out women and does so unapologetically and without consequence. Blossoming out the dark and twisted thriller is a love story that finally places a queer romance front and center, reminding us all that love was always lurking. It just needed someone like Ryan Murphy and Evan Romansky to bring it into the light.

Truth, Love and a Life on the Run

The episode picks up right after Edmund (Finn Wittrock) and Dolly (Alice Englert) blast their way out of the hospital dance. With the police hot on their trail the two young fugitives stumble upon an abandoned farm tucked away deep inside the overgrown woods. For now, this hidden sanctuary is a decent place to rest while they figure out their next move. It also gives the two lovers a chance to get to know each other, something that was difficult for to do with a set of cell bars between them. Almost immediately Edmund starts to see Dolly for the unstable woman she is saying, You have a taste for the macabre, don’t you Dolly?” And that revelation is an understatement. The blonde nurse’s mood is all over the place. Besides her fantasies of a Bonnie and Clyde life on the run, she starts to exhibit mood swings and reveals her penchant for violence. She’s also extremely intolerant of Edmund’s softer side and shames him for his weakness. After all, she paired up with the Clergy Killer and she expects him to live up to his name. After finding a shot gun and jokingly pointing it directly at him, Edmund tries to get Dolly to see the real him. She might be attracted to his dangerously dark side, but Edmund feels like he’s “probably the least scary man you ever met.”

Speaking of fear, Mildred (Sarah Paulson) follows Gwendolyn (Cynthia Nixon) to the hospital and stands guard outside the surgical doors while the doctors try to extract the bullet from red head’s abdomen. The usually unfeeling nurse is overcome with emotion as she wills the team of surgeons to save the life of her friend? Girlfriend? They haven’t figured that out yet. The surgery goes well and when Gwendolyn is lying in recovery Mildred swoops in to hold her hand. A million conflicting emotions are revealed in her face: fear, love and this undying wish to tell Gwendolyn Briggs the truth about her brother Edmund. Just as she’s about to spill the tea on her killer sibling, Gwendolyn wakes up and Mildred’s past is shelved in lieu of a teary and loving moment of relief.

Back at the barn Dolly and Edmund consummate their relationship and the following morning they wake up hungry and ready to start planning their future. Unfortunately, the farm has been empty for quite some time and the only food around is a can of tomatoes and a rooster, who Edmund refers to as a survivor. After here refuses to kill the bird for their morning meal, Dolly rolls her eyes at his moral code and snaps the rooster’s neck. Edmund can’t bring himself to harm any creature who hasn’t had an evil thought in its life. Senseless killing without a reason just isn’t in the Clergy Killer’s DNA.

The morning also brings light to Gwendolyn who is out of the woods looking much better, and according to Mildred, is expected to be fine. It isn’t long before Mildred confesses her truth about Edmund and their sibling relationship, which darkens the mood in the room. Upset and feeling used Briggs is devastated she’s been a pawn in Mildred’s schemes, but Mildred denies that and she seems to be telling the truth. She truly cares for Gwendolyn, but her loyalty to her brother has made everything in her life difficult. Being tires of her emotional whiplash, Gwendolyn admits that almost dying made her realize life is too short to spend it waiting for Mildred to figure out what she wants. This frightens Mildred into admitting what she wants most is Gwendolyn. “You, getting hurt and almost…It was very illuminating for me, too. I don’t want to lose you.” That seems to calm Gwendolyn’s fears and the conversation soon segues into her love of puppet shows, something that Mildred finds childish and unnecessary. So, when she’s asked to come along on a campaign trip to Stockton and a stop over at a local puppet theater Mildred freezes up and declines the offer. Her hot and cold attitude is confusing to Briggs who wishes she knew a younger Mildred whose heart had yet to be so closed off. Knowing this offer is a chance to prove how much she cares for the injured woman; Mildred agrees to tag along on the trip.

Pulling Her Strings

The next day a nervous Mildred and a happy Gwendolyn enter the children’s theater waiting for the puppet show to begin. It isn’t long before Mildred’s trauma is triggered into a dreamlike sequence of her past. She sees the puppets act out the horrors of her childhood in one disturbingly scene that is definitely not kid approved. The story begins with a drunken mother who abandoned her daughter and left her as a ward of the state. Each foster home Mildred entered into was worse than the last. The only saving grace was fellow orphan Edmund, who made the nightmares bearable. Eventually, a social worker (Roseanna Arquette) took pity on them and fudges their paperwork to say they were biological siblings in hopes they would one day be adopted together. The plan worked and a wealthy couple adopts the young boy and girl and everything seems like a dream. That is until these new set of parents reveal their hidden agenda and the reasons behind the puppet theater in their basement. For their own demented entertainment, they force Edmund and Mildred to commit sexual acts on each other in front of a live and paying audience. After months or possibly years of this degradation, Edmund snaps and gouges their parents eyes out in their sleep. He winds up killing them but not before he orders Mildred to run, leaving him behind to handle the consequences of his actions. This is why she’s been desperate to find her brother. The guilt of leaving him behind when they only had each other in the world is what drives Mildred and the entre series.

After she has an outburst in the theater, Mildred tells this story to Gwendolyn and she finally gets a glimpse of the tragedies his woman had to overcome. Her hesitancy with Briggs isn’t so much a fear of coming out, but a confusing set of obligations to her past that make things difficult for any plans for the future – a future that she seems determines to share with Gwendolyn, but the lies are too much for Briggs. Their newfound love seems over before it ever began.

Back at the barn and Edmund is also struggling with what his future would look like with Dolly. The decision is ripped from his grasp when the police surround the farm and order them both to come out with their hands up. Edmund grabs Dolly and tells her he will take the wrap and say he kidnaped her. There is no reason for them to both go down for what happened at the dance.  Dolly; however, has dreams of going out in a blaze of glory and grabs the shotgun from earlier and blasts her way out of the barn door. As Edmund hits the ground to surrender, the police take Dolly out in a hail of bullets. His love is dead and the Clergy Killer is heading back to Lucia State Hospital and into the not so welcoming arms of head Nurse Ratched.

With Edmund back in custody, Governor Wilburn (Vincent D’Onofrio) orders Dr. Hanover (Jon Jon Briones) to turn the killer over to the state for execution. He uses the hospital funding to convince the doctor to sign off Edmund’s competency, but the whole tactic is a lie. With the papers signed, he insults Mildred and Dr. Hanover, fires Gwendolyn Briggs for questioning his authority and brags about the funding he already cut! He had no intentions of supporting a rehabilitation center for the mentally ill. He only wanted to better his chances in the election. Since the public wants to see Edmund die, he’s going to give them what they want. The Governor, who at best is a misogynistic political hack and at worst a bottomless pit of blood thirsty tyranny, finally got his way. Gwendolyn loses her job and her trust in Mildred. Mildred loses her brother and the woman she’s grown to love. Dr. Hanover loses the safety net for his hospital and Edmund is about to lose his life! Everyone loses but Wilburn and the death chamber. After all Mildred’s scheming and plotting she never once thought the Governor would outsmart her. It was a miscalculation that’s about to cost her everything.