Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
I know the Emmys just happened and we are just about as far away from another ceremony as we can get, but I don’t care: every single member of every single relevant voting academy needs to set a reminder in their iPhone to rewatch Episode 2 of Netflix’s Ratched whenever voting takes place for next year’s trophies. That’s because the peach argument in Ratched deserves all the Emmys.
Yeah—in Ryan Murphy’s gorgeous period piece drama about the horrors of post-WWII mental “healthcare” centered around a ruthless, scheming scammer of a nurse, the most thrilling showdown occurs in a totally average break room over an item as innocuous as a peach.
For context—although, truly, you don’t need any context for a clash of wills this epic—newcomer nurse Mildred Ratched (Sarah Paulson) notices that the peach she brought in her brown sack lunch is currently in the hand of her rival, HBIC Nurse Bucket (Judy Davis). What follows are 107 seconds of escalating intensity instigated by a stolen peach but about something much, much more. It’s a marvel of acting, screenwriting, editing—it’s a bit of glorious melodrama that’s as juicy as a ripe peach.
Give Sarah Paulson another Emmy for this scene, for the way she performs Ratched’s rage, rattling against a cage of exasperation. Give her an Emmy for the way she shuts down Nurse Dolly not once, but twice, wielding her words like they were a baseball bat (the crack and smack of that “No you haven’t“). Give her an Emmy for the closing threat, quite possibly the scariest threat in the entire season (“I’m just thinking of all the things I’m going to do about it”).
Give Judy Davis her fourth Emmy for this scene, for the precisely zero fucks she gives as the biting Nurse Bucket. Give her an Emmy for making the most snide, pedantic comebacks feel like they were pulled from an epic diss track (“I haven’t eaten anything” “And I brought it here“). Give her an Emmy for making the words “felt tip” simultaneously hilarious and cutting. Give her an Emmy for that big bite she takes out of the peach. Give her an Emmy for her next-level ridiculous, grating delivery of “she sure could use a peach!”
Give Ian Brennan an Emmy for writing this entire scene, for centering the tensest moment in the show between Ratched and Bucket up to this point on a damn peach. Give him an Emmy for making what could have been the lamest argument ever into a clash of titans. Give him an Emmy for taking the scene down detours that arrived at delicious lines like…
Give Peggy Tachdjian an Emmy for editing this scene, for framing every single line delivery in its own cut like a true work of art. Give her an Emmy for the pacing, for letting Davis and Paulson bounce off of each other, for creating a vibe on television that feels more like you’re watching two performers on stage, spitting lines in each other’s faces from mere inches apart. And I mean, obviously give Ryan Murphy another Emmy for making this enthralling madness happen.
The peach argument is a perfect 107 seconds of television, of acting and writing and directing and editing all coming together to form the best sack lunch ever stored in a break room fridge. It’s the kind of sack lunch you’d threaten a co-worker’s life over. All I know is, if anyone else wins any of the aforementioned categories at the 2021 Emmys, then everyone involved in this Ratched episode has a right to take to the stage and say, “You’re holding my Emmy.”
