Critic Reviews

Every actor is dutifully committed, even if some of the characters are little more than broadly drawn cartoon characters, the stories are energetically told (even when some of the episodes are over an hour long) and the entire mood and atmosphere of the show is wholly enveloping. For something so bleak and macabre, Ratched really is a lot of fun.

The drama (all eight episodes were provided for review) never seems to settle on whether this corrupt and eccentric woman is the hero or the villain of her own story, the aggressor or the victim. Watching Sarah Paulson navigate those extremes is chilling. ... These inconsistencies work together to make Nurse Ratched more terrifying in her unpredictability. ... But where Ratched really shines is through its stylized love of gore.

Ultimately, though, this is a thoughtful, moving examination of the repercussions of trauma, and a reclamation of queerness and femininity from a genre and source material that has treated both with contempt.

Ratched works very well as a moody, sensual thriller even if it's not so much an intellectual exploration.

It is all the most excellent fun. Paulson conveys a fathomless darkness while appearing to do almost nothing. When moments of viciousness break her affectless surface, it is genuinely disquieting.

No creative or narrative decision in the show really makes sense, and everything is much more intense than it should be. Yet you can’t help but be riveted and swept up. There’s something almost accidentally spellbinding about it.

The pleasures of “Ratched” are dulled by the constraints of IP maintenance. ... Still, it’s a credit to Romansky that “Ratched” remains watchable in spite of the conflict between inspiration and obligation.

“Ratched” is garish and gorgeous all at the same time; horrific and occasionally poetic; glamorous to an almost laughable degree; thrilling for a while and then puzzingly dull for stretches, only to become interesting all over again. The show is a fine and flawed example of who Murphy is and what he makes. You can’t help but be lured in by it.

Through it all the performances of Paulson, Davis, Cynthia Nixon (as Paulson’s potential love interest) and Sophie Okonedo (as a mental hospital patient) keep “Ratched” watchable even as the quality droops under the weight of too much melodrama.

Not a great show by any stretch, because it does suffer from the same narrative bloat that plagues many of Murphy’s other series; there’s simply too much going on here for any one story to be fully satisfying. There’s something entertainingly bold about its vision, and the Crayola-bright world these characters inhabit is a fascinating one—almost despite itself. Ratched is kind of a mess, yes, but can be a compulsively watchable one.