Tamal Kundu
Newcomer Evan Romansky originally penned the script for ‘Ratched’. It later found its way to Ryan Murphy, who then added his typical flair for melodrama and shock to it. The penultimate episode of the series, titled ‘The Bucket List’, contains a lot of action and surprises. Multiple plotlines come to unexpected conclusions and several characters meet untimely ends. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Ratched Season 1 Episode 7 Recap
Episode 7 opens with the series providing a brief account of Hanover’s (Jon Jon Briones) past. He used to work with the Japanese-American children separated from their parents and held at the internment camps. His complete devotion to his work led to his estrangement from his wife and daughter. A month after his divorce was finalized, he met Osgood (Sharon Stone).
Back in the late 1940s, Huck (Charlie Carver) asks Ratched (Sarah Paulson) out, who gently turns him down by revealing to him that she likes women. Bucket (Judy Davis) confronts Ratched with the evidence that Louise (Amanda Plummer) previously gathered from her room, a recording of her performing transorbital lobotomy on Father Andrews. This forces Ratched to divulge yet another aspect of her past. She wasn’t a nurse when she joined the military but lied as she desperately wanted to be one. She also revealed that her superior officers had started suspecting that she was asphyxiating the critical patients under her car. Although they did not court-martial her, they nonetheless threw her out of the military.
In order to save the hospital from imminent bankruptcy, Bucket and Ratched meet its biggest private donor, Mrs. Mayfair, and convince her to further increase the funding. They also persuade her to remove Hanover and appoint Bucket as the head of the hospital in his place. Hanover leaves with Charlotte and is later killed when she has an episode. Ratched meets Briggs (Cynthia Nixon), and after an initial argument, they confess their love for each other. Briggs later tells Ratched that her doctors have found a tumor in her lungs.
Ratched Season 1 Episode 7 Explained
Episode 7 absolves Bucket of all her horrible actions by blaming Hanover and her erstwhile feelings for him. She even turns out to be a better administer than him and transforms Lucia State Hospital into an exemplary mental health facility. Ratched quits the hospital, and Huck is appointed the head nurse.
At one point during her conversation with Ratched, Bucket remarks, “We have all done stupid things in the service of stupid men.” This line sums up Bucket’s character arc in the season. Her repeated acts of casual cruelty are viewed as deeds she only performed because she was working under and in love with an incompetent and failed individual. It’s only by discarding him completely from her life that Bucket finally gains something worthwhile.
The Closet
When Hanover leaves Lucia for good, he takes Charlotte with him, the only patient with whom he has experienced some success. However, during their stay at a motel, he panics when there is a knock on the door, believing that police or Osgood’s people have found him. He puts Charlotte in a closet to hide her, completely forgetting that her disorder is the result of a traumatic experience in which she was kept captive in a closet for nine days by several young men. It triggers the disorder once again, and Apollo emerges from deep within Charlotte’s psyche and kills Hanover.
After she gains consciousness and realizes what she has done, Charlotte contacts the hospital. Ratched arrives and takes care of the body, just like a couple of times she has done for Hanover. She then takes Hanover’s head to Osgood. Although she refused to work for the heiress any longer, she realizes that she needs the $100,000. It is the same money with which she later tries to entice Briggs.
Osgood’s moment of triumph is short-lived, as she is killed by one of the family’s servents on her son’s instruction. It’s a very poetic ending for arguably the most extravagant character in the series. She is well-aware of what her son is. In fact, she ensures that he will not inherit anything from her wealth after her death and will be institutionalized. And yet, she somehow overlooks her son’s ability to manipulate anyone into doing anything.
Annie’s Revelations
Annie (Rosanna Arquette), Ratched and Edmund’s old caseworker, comes for a visit and tells her some shocking truth him. His mother, a nurse named Margaret McGuire was raped by Joseph Sullivan, one of the four priests he murders. She makes Ratched see that Edmund has gone well beyond saving. It is then that Ratched truly gives up on the prospect of preventing his execution.
Read More: Where is Ratched Filmed?
