Ratched Season 1 Episode 3 Recap – Angel of Mercy

[00:01:00] The man from the motel meets with Miss Osgood. He hands over a file containing pictures of Dr. Hanover. He tells Miss Osgood the man she’s looking for now goes by the name of Dr. Richard Hanover. Miss Osgood thinks Richard is a patient at Lucia State Hospital, but the man tells her he’s running the place. She tells the man Richard’s real name is Manuel Bañaga and offers him $250,000 to kill him. Richard did something awful to her son, and she can’t forgive herself for allowing it to happen. The man agrees to kill Richard. Yet, Miss Osgood wants more than just killing him: she wants Richard decapitated so that she can give his head to her son as a birthday gift.

[00:04:30] Miss Osgood visits her son, who lost both his arms and legs. She feeds her son, but he demands to have dessert first. Back at the hospital, Dr. Hanover calls over Nurse Bucket because their two patients: Mrs. Cartwright and Miss Blix were engaging in lesbian fornication, as Mildred saw them. Richard finds it alarming because Miss Blix didn’t show signs of being a lesbian when he first diagnosed her. He wants Nurse Bucket to administer a new treatment that came from Switzerland. Mildred and Huck go over to Mrs. Cartwright’s room to fetch her and bring her to the room where the hot and cold baths are installed. Huck tells Mildred Nurse Bucket will be administering the treatment for Mrs. Cartwright.

[00:10:00] Mrs. Cartwright arrives in a wheelchair with Mildred and Huck. Nurse Bucket instructs them to place her in the hot bath at 99°F. Mrs. Cartwright enters the hot bath. Nurse Bucket boils the water to 119°F, but it is too hot. As soon as Mrs. Cartwright feels the pain, she begs Nurse Bucket to get her out of the bath. Mildred and Huck try to get her out, but Nurse Bucket tells them not to touch the bath and just follow Richard’s orders. They leave Mrs. Cartwright inside the bath for 20 minutes. After the procedure, they take her out. She suffers from multiple burns on her skin. But then Nurse Bucket tells them to put her into a cold bath for five minutes. Mrs. Cartwright continues to beg for mercy. Mildred tells her to endure five more minutes, and everything will be over.

[00:14:30] After the procedure, Mildred and Huck bring Mrs. Cartwright back to her room. She lays her down on her bed and tells her they’ll wake her up before dinner. Huck doesn’t feel comfortable watching patients get tortured. He tells Mildred he won’t tolerate such treatments even if he loses his job. She tells Huck to calm down. He has a scar on his face from the war, and she knows if Huck loses his job in the hospital, he may never be lucky enough to find a decent job ever again.

[00:16:00] Gwendolyn wakes up and wonders what the time is. Her husband tells her it is already 7:30 in the morning. Gwendolyn panics because she has an 8:15 appointment with Governor Wilburn. Her husband tells her to relax since breakfast is already on the table and her lunch is already packed. She makes it in time for her appointment. They discuss how to move forward with his election campaign. Wilburn wants to sign Edmund Tolleson’s death warrant because he doesn’t want to be seen as a soft governor, especially to criminals. Gwendolyn tries to de-escalate the situation by telling Wilburn mercy doesn’t mean being soft, sometimes it’s a show of true strength. Wilburn doesn’t care, he wants Edmund dead, and there are no negotiations.

[00:18:00] Meanwhile, Nurse Dolly brings Edmund his daily meal. The guard on duty doesn’t want her anywhere near Edmund because he could kill her. She doesn’t care; she is just doing as she’s told. The guard allows Dolly in. She slowly approaches Edmund’s cell, hands the meal tray over to Edmund, and tells him to call for her if he needs anything else. Edmund flirts with Dolly and tells her he has a problem—he’s had an erection for the past three days. He thinks it’s because of the medication prescribed to him. A pill named Niacin does have that side effect, Dolly replies. He asks Dolly to relieve him of his erection. She gives in and approaches the cell as Edmund pulls down his pants.

[00:23:00] She tells Edmund she wants him to cum for her. After a few strokes, Edmund ejaculates on her hand. Dolly tells Edmund her name before leaving. The guard tells Huck what happened between Edmund and Dolly. So, he tells Mildred what happened. Mildred says she will handle it. Meanwhile, Dr. Hanover goes to a local gas station to get his car filled up. While reading a couple of patient files, the gas attendant gets startled and runs. Dr. Hanover looks over his rearview mirror and sees a man with a gun aimed at him. He ducks for cover; the man misses his shot. Dr. Hanover drives away as the man reloads his gun. It is the same man who went to see Miss Osgood. He enters his car and chases Dr. Hanover.

[00:26:00] The same man left Mildred a note at the motel. The note read, “Wanna try again?” The owner of the motel got curious as to what the note meant. Mildred tells her not to stick her nose into other people’s business. That night, Mildred waits for the man to knock on her door. As the man knocks, Mildred goes to her bedside and tells the man to come in. The man locks the door behind him as Mildred tells him to take off his shirt and tie. Mildred comes up with another scenario for her foreplay: she tells the man he’s a young marine who just came back from storming the beaches of Ormoc Bay in the Philippines. As Mildred continues with her scenario, she imagines kissing Gwendolyn instead of the man in front of her.

[00:31:00] Mildred tries to focus and allows the man to fuck her from behind, but nothing changes. She still imagines kissing Gwendolyn as the man reaches his climax. After having sex with him, Mildred tries to make it a regular thing to forget about her lesbian thoughts. She introduces herself to the man, but he no longer wants to come back for seconds. He tells Mildred his experience with her is the worst, and the scenarios are too weird. The man doesn’t even bother to reveal his name and just leaves. Mildred somehow regrets she allowed the man to have sex with her.

[00:33:00] That night, Gwendolyn is having dinner with her husband, Trevor. He tells Gwendolyn she didn’t touch her lunch. Gwendolyn responds she’s preoccupied with work and fatigue. Trevor tells her about a wine tasting they will attend on Saturday. It is the last straw for her. She tells him she can no longer live with him. It seems they don’t share the relationship because of love: Trevor is gay while she is a Lesbian. Everything was just arranged between them, but they both benefited from their marriage. Gwendolyn tells him about Mildred. She wants to end their marriage right then and there, but Trevor asks her to think things over for a few days.

[00:36:00] Dr. Hanover looks at his car from his office window. Nurse Bucket enters his office and asks him what happened to his car. He tells her kids used a slingshot to shoot some rocks at him. Nurse Buckets wants to alert the staff about the hoodlums who wrecked his car, but Richard doesn’t want to talk about it. Mildred enters the room and overhears their conversation. Nurse Bucket is looking for one of their patient, Mr. Dario. His family members are looking for him because he didn’t attend his brother’s funeral. Mildred and Richard made it look like they released Mr. Dario to attend his brother’s funeral. No one knows he committed suicide, and Mildred cleaned up the mess. Upon hearing the topic of the conversation, Mildred butted in to remind Richard about their dinner.

[00:38:00] Richard sends Nurse Bucket away to end the conversation about Mr. Dario. Richard thanks Mildred for stepping in. She tells Richard Nurse Bucket is in love with him and adds that once the head nurse learns he doesn’t like her the way she likes him, she will sabotage the entire operation of his hospital. Mildred decides to make dinner real to cut the situation’s tension: she invites Richard to the oyster bar she went to with Gwendolyn. Mildred goes straight to the point of the dinner: why is he being hunted. Richard tries to evade the question and asks Mildred who she’s talking about. Mildred rephrases the question and asks Richard why he’s being followed. She knows Richard committed a crime, but he doesn’t know how to tell Mildred.

[00:40:00] Mildred reminds Richard she also committed a crime with him; hence, he could trust him with his secret. Richard tells her he did a very bad thing that still haunts him. He narrates that a few years ago, he thought he was invincible. He went to an heiress who asked him to treat her deranged son. Richard didn’t think the son was deranged. The boy has a sexual disorder named piquerism. Later on, he became violent and stabbed their gardener. The injury wasn’t too serious, so the gardener decided to stay on his job.

[00:42:00] Richard took Henry as a patient. He was confident he could heal Henry, but things were about to turn dark. Richard experimented with LSD and asked Miss Osgood for a day with Henry. She agreed and spent the day away. Richard gave Henry the standard dose of LSD, but then Henry also asked him to take it. Richard fakes the dosage; he couldn’t engage in LSD while treating Henry. But as Richard reached for his notebook, Henry poured the entire vial of LSD into Richard’s glass. The moment Richard drank from the glass, he knew something was wrong. He saw the LSD vial empty—he just took four thousand micrograms of LSD—two hundred times more than the approved therapeutic dose.

[00:44:00] Everything was a downward spiral moving forward. Richard described it as being in the room with Henry while frequently leaving his own body. As the LSD took full effect, Richard lost control of his mind and body. Henry freaked out while starting to talk utter nonsense. Henry told Richard a goddess entered his room and stole his arms which he thought was the source of his psychosis. Henry suddenly left the room and was gone for a while. When he returned, he brought the gardener’s arms with him. Richard had no control of the situation and panicked internally. What happened next haunts him to this day.

[00:46:00] Henry decided to chop his arms off. Richard knew he would bleed to death, but he didn’t have any choice. He sewed the gardener’s arms on Henry with whatever tools he had. Richard thought Henry wouldn’t survive, so he made a run for it. He was certain of Henry’s death because the arms would reject his body, and the wounds would instantly go gangrenous. Henry would survive, but the gangrene spread to his legs—both his arms and legs had to be amputated. From that day onwards, Miss Osgood wants Richard dead. Mildred responds they need to make sure Miss Osgood doesn’t find him, so she won’t be able to kill him.