Ratched – The Bucket List

By: Kelly Kearney

In the penultimate episode of the season, a surprising partnership between two former foes gives Mildred the peace of mind to shelve her brother’s drama long enough for her to explore her feelings for Gwendolyn.

Mildred comes out to Huck

We begin with flashback to Doctor Banaga A/K/A Hanover (Jon Jon Briones) fresh out of an American Japanese Internment camp and thrown directly into a custody battle with his wife. Apparently, his release from the camp was only made worse by abandoning his family for work. The judge ignored his pleas and grants his wife full custody of his daughter.

With no family to keep him away from his work, we find him signing up to be the personal doctor of Henry Osgood, a young man with a very strange affliction. His wealthy mother offers to pay the doctor to cure her boy of his sexual deviance and Hanover promises a relieved Lenore he can deliver.

Back to the present and Mildred (Sarah Paulson) is forced to come to terms with her sexuality when the very smitten Huck (Charlie Carver) asks her out on a date. Her hesitation is interpreted in a way that Huck assumes Mildred doesn’t find him attractive due to the scarring on his face, but that isn’t even close to the truth. Feeling like he’s a safe person to come out too, Mildred admits the reason is she recently discovered her attraction to women and that  the one woman she likes is a certain redhead who isn’t speaking her to her at the moment. She lets Huck down gently, but his ego is bruised and he mutters something about never finding his purpose in life. Is he destined to be lonely orderly forever? Her secret is safe with the gentle and forgiving Huck, who walks off feeling depressed and trapped in his current predicament.

Bucket and Ratched Hatch a Plan

While Mildred is at work, Louise (Amanda Plummer) does friend Betsy (Judy Davis) a solid by snooping through Mildred’s room. Whatever it is she is looking for she hopes it will help the former head nurse get rid of her competition. What she uncovers is a recording of Nurse Ratched lobotomizing the priest who survived Edmund’s (Finn Wittrock) attack! Considering Mildred’s kindness towards her when Dr. Hanover broke her heart, Betsy has to use this information to her advantage.

Later that night when Mildred returns to the motel she finds Betsy Bucket sitting on her bed with the tape recorder. Having no choice but to come clean, she confides in Betsy about Edmund and why she came to Lucia. Mildred falls apart telling Betsy her story, which also includes a flashback to her time as a war nurse. Considering Mildred’s orphaned life, the young woman was poor and uneducated but had a desire to help people in need. That led the unqualified woman lying her way into the military where she put injured soldiers out of their misery. When Huck referred to her as “an Angel of Mercy” he wasn’t far off. After her patients started dying from suspicious circumstances that didn’t manifest from any injury that led them to her care, she was tossed out of the army and court marshaled. Somehow she managed to avoid prosecution and that’s when she heard about the Clergy Killer in Lucia. Having already been a professional at scamming her way into the medical field, a job with Dr. Hanover was ripe for the picking. Betsy hangs on Mildred’s every word and, luckily for her, the former head nurse feels some empathy for her and understands why she wanted to help her brother. In fact, Betsy agrees that Edmund shouldn’t be put to death, but instead “he should be studied.” That’s when the two hatch a plan to team up to help Edmund while also pushing Hanover out of his job. Betsy has a taste for revenge and so the two take in a meeting with a hospital donor, Mrs. Mayfair (Shira Barnett), to tell her all about the doctor’s past. They also make sure to include his current drug abuse and his past with the Osgood family. That’s enough for Mrs. Mayfair to fire Dr. Hanover and hand the hospital over to Betsy Bucket! Under Mildred’s advice, Bucket appoints Huck to the head nurse position, finally giving him the purpose he not only needs, but earned.

A Split Turns Deadly

Later that day Nurse Bucket gets her revenge when she hands Dr. Hanover his pink slip. He is irate and decides to take Charlootte (Sophie Okonedo), his star patient, with him for further care. Seeing as she thinks he cured her, Charlotte agrees to go with him. A first everything seems to be going as planned. Sure, Dr. Hanover has some hair brained idea about sneaking into Canada by hiding in the trunk of a car, but Charlotte trusts him and she is willing to do what it takes to continue her treatments. It’s not long before their plans hit a killer snag when the police come knocking on their motel room door. Hanover shoves Charlotte into the closet and tells her to hide while he takes care of the police. There is just one problem with that plan; the enclosed space triggers Charlotte’s memories of the time she was held captive against her will. When Hanover returns to the closet door Charlotte isn’t there, but her split personality is and they are ready to fight! Hanover is shocked because he assumed she was cured after he hypnotized her, but the alters were hiding deep in the cortex of her mind. With unimaginable rage, she tosses her doctor around the room and brutalizes him until he’s dead! In a panic, Charlotte comes too and calls Nurse Ratched for help and it’s a good thing she does because when Osgood finds out Mildred let Hanover leave, she goes from quirky elite to homicidal. Now is Mildred’s chance to clean up Charlotte’s mess and also bring Lenore (Sharon Stone) the head of her enemy.

When she arrives at Charlotte’s motel room she promises to take care of everything. She hands the rattled woman some money and convinces her to hop a bus to Mexico. With her out of the picture, Mildred purchases a saw and gets to carving up Henry’s present. She places the doctor’s severed head in a hat box and delivers it to an almost orgasmic Ms. Osgood. “I clearly sent a man to do a women’s job,” she says as she hands Mildred the check for one million dollars. Lenore takes the hat box up to Henry (Brendon Flynn), but the head doesn’t have the desired effect she was hoping for. In fact, Henry blames his mother for his limbless life and has the family’s servant stab her in the back! She falls into his lap as she gasps her last breath.

Back at the motel in Lucia Mildred gets a visit from her case worker (Rosanna Arquette) and the woman does her best to warn her about Edmund. She refers to him as a lost cause thanks to his rapist priest of a father and mentally insane mother, Margaret. Mildred had no idea that one of the priests Edmund killed was his father and that sends Mildred down a spiral of guilt. The case worker tries her best to get Mildred to realize Edmund’s penchant for murder couldn’t have been spurred on by her abandonment as he was broken long before that. This does seem to help soothe her guilty mind, but she still doesn’t want her brother to pay for these crimes with his life.

Mildred Takes a Chance on Love

After her sudden firing from the Governor’s office, Gwendolyn (Cynthia Nixon) starts panning her next move. Her marriage to Trevor (Michael Benjamin Washington) is over and there doesn’t seem much keeping her in Lucia now that she’s given up on a future with Mildred. Moving to the east coast to live with her mother while she figures out a career change seems to be where she is headed unit there is a knock at her door. Its Mildred, who wants to explain why she felt she needed to lie to protect her brother. Gwendolyn doesn’t seem interested in her reasonings and berates her for dragging her into this scheme. “I understand that the world has not been kind to you,” she says, but her selfishness and lies have cost her a job, her husband and a chance at love. Mildred tries to get Gwendolyn to forgive her, but when Briggs reveals her recent cancer diagnosis the mood changes from anger to desperation. The lump in her breast was discovered accidentally and the doctors claim she doesn’t have long to live. Surely there is a million dollar cure! As she professes her love for Gwendolyn, Mildred promises to use her newfound fortune to find a cure. Briggs’ anger and resentment makes way for an emotional declaration of mutual love that ends in an incredibly passionate kiss, along with a vow to fight this illness together.

As the episode closes we head back to the Osgood house where Lenore’s lawyers are reading her will. Henry, the matricidal heir to the family fortune, must have dropped some clues about his murderous intent that his mother picked up on. When it’s announced that her fortune will be divided between an art museum and her monkey, Petunia, Henry is furious! That’s not all, the limbless deviant will also live out the remainder of his days in the care of the doctors in Lucia State Hospital. The payback Lenore tucked into this codicil is just too sweet not to choke on and Henry is certainly gasping in horror. Considering Betsy Bucket has decided to not add any doctors to her staff, in lieu of dozens of nurses led by Huck, means Henry will have to give up the lap of luxury for boiling baths and lobotomies – a fate worse than death, which is still an option considering how many bodies landed in the basement furnace.