Ratched – Season 1 Episode 3 Recap & Review

Angel Of Mercy: Part One

Episode 3 of Ratched confirms that Mildred and Edmund aren’t the only ones with a dark past. It turns out Dr Hanover has more than a few skeletons in his closet.

Lenore Osgood offers up a substantial amount of money to serve Dr Hanover’s head up on a platter. The man tasked with doing this is none other than Charles Wainwright, Mildred’s motel guest. Upstairs, she feeds her son Henry who’s clearly mentally unstable.

Back at Lucia State, Mrs Bucket heads in to see Hanover. She tries to sweeten him up with some flowers but he’s having none of it.

Instead, he mentions what Mildred saw last time out with the lesbian act between the two patients. On the back of this, Hanover has a brand new procedure he’s going to conduct and this includes the shower block.

Lily Cartwright is the patient and the experiment is that of hydrotherapy. As Mildred watches in horror, she’s forced to bite her tongue as a 20 minute bath in 119 degree heat is followed up by an icy cold descent for 5 minutes.

On the back of this, Huck refuses to watch people get tortured. He vows that Lily Cartwright is going to be the last person enduring this procedure if he has anything to do with it.

Dolly heads down to the basement and hands over a plate full of food to Edmund. Stunned by his physique, he convinces her to relieve him sexually. Only, the guard on duty sees all of this take place and news inevitably gets back to Mildred.

Dr Hanover narrowly avoids the assassin, hiding in his car from rogue gunshots. As the back windshield shatters, he drives off to Lucia State. This causes him to become paranoid and frazzled. Checking nervously out the window, he half-listens to Bucket’s update on the lesbians.

Mildred heads back to the motel and engages in her strange sexual fantasies with Wainwright. Only, afterwards he tells her she’s the worst lay he’s ever had. Ouch.

Meanwhile, the situation between Gwendolyn and her husband Trevor takes a turn for the worst. Both of them are obviously hiding their sexualities but she can’t stop thinking about Mildred. He tells her not to do anything rash but it seems her mind is made up.

Mildred heads out for dinner with Dr Hanover. She wastes little time and asks the man who’s following him. It’s here she convinces Hanover to open up.

It turns out he was tasked with trying to fix up Lenore Osgood’s son, Henry. He was convinced he could find what was wrong and used a hallucinogen in a bid to free his mind.

Only, it turns out Henry switched the glasses and instead of 20 mg, added 200 times the prescribed amount to Dr Hanover’s tea. Within his acid trip, Hanover realized that the boy is insane and wanted to replace his arms with someone else’s.

After sawing off his arms, Hanover stitched up the Gardener’s arms onto his. Henry very nearly died but recovered. Unfortunately the infection spread to his legs and now he’s a twisted, bitter shell of the man he once was.

On the back of this story, Mildred promises to make sure Lenore Osgood doesn’t speak of it again.

The Episode Review

With a bit more characterisation this time around, it seems a bit more obvious what Mildred’s game is here. It’s good to see more of Hanover too and it seems like Mildred is gunning for his position.

If not, then she’s definitely trying to manipulate the man and have him on her side. Surely he would have lost his job after this experiment though? How is he still working after that acid trip?

That’s to say nothing of Wainwright either who shot in broad daylight in view of an entire petrol station.

The cliffhanger ending leaves the door open for more though and this Edmund/Mildred situation continues to feel like the central arc of this season. Quite what will happen next though, remains to be seen.