At this point in the story, I think that McMurphy is definitely gaining some ground over Nurse Ratched. Towards the end of this section, especially, a lot of action happens in which he beats her. Not only does he, himself, try to go against some of the regulation that occurs in the ward, but he's starting to get some of the other patients to join him. For example, "Harding shuts off the buffer, and leaves it in the hall, and goes pulls him a chair up alongside McMurphy and sits down and lights him a cigarette too... Then Cheswick goes and gets him a chair, and then Billy Bibbit goes, and then Scanlon and then Fredrickson and Sefelt, and then we all put down our mops and brooms and scouring rags and we all go pull us chairs up" (138). This shows the beginning of a big battle with the Nurse, and I think that this event predicts what might come later on in the story: a full-fledged "rebellion" of sorts against the Nurse.
I think that Chief's viewpoint might be a bit warped at times, so his reliability isn't very great all of the time. He doesn't seem to be very important to the plot right now, other than the fact that he's the narrator. Sometimes he rambles on about things that don't really contribute to the main plot of the story (unless one counts the treatment of the patients and how they go through daily life as a main part of the plot). McMurphy has changed the Chief in that the Chief now has more spirit than he did before McMurphy showed up. The Chief is becoming more involved in the rebellion against the Nurse along with some of the other patients.
I'm rooting for McMurphy at this point in the story because he tries to stand up for what is right, while the Nurse is just plain mean to all of the patients in the ward.
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