Inside the Cuckoo’s Nest
There’s a scene early in the new Ryan Murphy series Ratched in which Cynthia Nixon’s character Gwendolyn, press secretary to the California governor, not only teaches Sarah Paulson’s Mildred Ratched how to eat an oyster, but feeds it to her. It’s an over-the-top nod to old euphemisms for sex acts, made even more delicious by the fact that Gwendolyn is assuredly queer and secure in her identity. The fact that Nixon and Paulson are both out actresses is essentially the mignonette sauce atop of the oyster, as it were.
takes place circa 1947 and is an origin story for the sadistic Nurse Ratched from Ken Kesey’s (Louise Fletcher won the Academy Award for her portrayal of
