Bates Motel is creepy - critic reviews

Bates Motel has always been best the more it concentrates on the relationship between Norman Bates (Freddie Highmore) and his mother, Norma (Vera Farmiga), and thus the third-season premiere is an excellent episode because its beginning and its conclusion finds the pair in bed together. 

Yes, this remains the only TV series that thrives creatively on the implications of a zesty incesty twosome, played for appalled laughs. What gave this adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho its initial energy was the willingness of producers Carlton Cuse and Kerry Ehrin to address the mother obsession that eventually leads Tony Perkins’s Norman (in the movie) to assume the identity of his dead mother. 

In Bates Motel, Norma is thrillingly alive, thanks to the exceptionally intense yet loose and open-throated performance given by Farmiga. 

The third season commences with Norman, now 18, preparing to attend his senior year in high school. Mom, of course, drives him to school. When he expresses reluctance to begin his first day as a senior, Norma literally drags him out, yelling, “Get outta the car!” 

Related: 'Bates Motel' Preview: Freddie Highmore and Nestor Carbonell Play 2 Truths and a Lie

There is, periodically, a kind of daringly reckless, Lucille Ball-like slapstick physicality that Farmiga brings to the role, and it contributes a welcome lightness to the show’s often grim proceedings. By contrast, Highmore’s exceedingly subtle, adroit work is slowly filling in the portrait of psycho-Norman at a perfect pace for a weekly television series. 

Bates continues to be schizophrenic in its storytelling. In the season premiere, the Norman-Norma scenes have almost no overlap with anything to do with Norman’s half-brother Dylan (Max Thieriot), the broody James Dean-wannabe who continues to get in scrapes with his father, Caleb (Kenny Johnson), and the law, particularly Nestor Carbonell’s Sheriff Romero. Indeed, except to express his disgust that Norman frequently sleeps in the same bed as Norman, Dylan shares no scenes with these two. In a different show, this would be a problem; with Bates, it’s just business as usual.

Speaking of business, Norman is promoted to motel manager this week, which puts him closer to several women, all of whom make Norma jealous. (Nepotism in the workplace cuts both ways, doesn’t it, Mom?) These women include Norman’s friend Emma (the sparkling-even-when-she’s-wheezing Olivia Cooke) and a hooker in a dress of red. She’s played by Tracy Spiridakos, making much more of a visual impression than she did in the drab future-wasteland dramaRevolution. Her appeal is sufficient to compel Norman to turn peeping-tom in an extension of his motel-manager duties. 

Screenshots to explain the creepiness in bates motel

Bates Motel-ish Element		Present?
We need to talk about Norman		Nope. He's just a moody, slightly off-putting yet nice boy this episode.
You can't spell "smother" without "mother"		You would think "spends the entire episode investigating her son for murder" would qualify as a tad smother-y, but honestly, the most unsettling part of the episode? When she and Norman celebrate his announcement that he's dating Emma by engaging in a lengthy mutual backrub.
Wherein someone's dire and entirely correct warnings go unheeded		Alas, no.
Maybe it's Carbonell, maybe it's Maybelline		His act of reluctant I'm-the-bossery this week involves rescuing Norma from a terrible, unspecified fate at the Arcanum Club.
It is raining in every scene because: Pacific Northwest		Yes. And speaking as a Californian, God, I covet it so.
There's a harlot who's going to get punished for being a sexual being, because why not maintain THAT charming element from the movie?		Strictly speaking, the members of the Arcanum Club are not creating a festive environment in which women can feel confident they're being regarded as social or even human equals.
Kenny Johnson remains employed		So far -- but Caleb's willingness to mouth off to Chick Hogan, despite the latter's amiable warnings about what happens to people who act like jerkstores in the woods, indicates that Caleb may have a subconscious death wish.
Dylan leaves the show in a permanent manner		Of the three men who plan to grow pot in these particular woods, he actually has the best survival odds at the moment.
Emma's survival instincts kick in		When Emma spends much of their first-date conversation telling Norman how his mother has infantilized him in an effort to keep him closer, she misses how angry he looks as she delivers her (painfully correct) analysis of the "WHY WILL YOU NOT BONE THE WILLING NUBILE GIRL YOU WORK WITH, NORMAN?" situation
Bone thrown to everyone who's ever seen Psycho		When Norma carries on about how Norman can't keep getting into cars with "Questionable! " "Slutty!" "Oversexed!" women, she's basically writing the template for "I won't have you bringing some young girl in for supper! By candlelight, I suppose, in the cheap, erotic fashion of young men with cheap, erotic minds!"

I was vastly relieved to see the Season 3 premiere pared down to the essentials — this show got entirely too busy last season with extraneous subplots. (I love Michael O’Neill and Kathleen Robertson as actors, but their characters kept us away from the damp, musty rooms of the motel.) And the more the show can bring Kenny Johnson into the same scenes as Farmiga and Highmore, the more crazily intense Bates Motel will be, and that’s a good thing.

Bates Motel airs Mondays at 9 p.m. on A&E.




As for a user's review on 1000-hollywood.blogspot.com 

I SOOOO want Norma and Romero to hook up, I think that they are perfect for each other.  It is the very fact that she frustrates him that makes her good for him.  He is such a cold and controlled man, though you can tell that there is hot lava burning inside him.  He reads people and figures them out and I imagine that he's quite the aloof, controlling lover with most women - if not just a bit scary, because he is quite violent.  Norma, however, is utterly uncontrollable and his frustration is dissolving into amusement because he is learning that it is best to not even try to control her.  And yet the pathos of her is definitely there and I think he gets it and responds to it.  Her freakouts are hilarious but she really is dealing with some heavy stuff.  She's a good woman, though.  She takes care of her boys.  When Romero was at the hotel, she took care of him too.  So she's on his radar and my guess is that he will ALWAYS protect her from now on.  A. she needs it and B. he needs to do it, she's stuck in his craw. 

The need for protection is the oil that runs in Norma's engine.  She never felt safe in her home as a child and was victimized by those who were supposed to protect her.  She married violent and abusive men.  So she turned to her sons at first for comfort but then for protection.  Her relationship with Dylan was so complex because of his origin story and then Dylan, by personality, is very dismissive of her quirkiness, so they clashed.  Although we see, now that she and Dylan are on the mends, she does run to him for protection too - and he provides it.  But Norman from the beginning was both her son AND her man.  She sleeps with him like that not for sex (she's never shown any sexual interest in Norman) but because I imagine sleeping inside the increasingly stronger arms of the one person in the world who loves her unconditionally and is protective and comforting makes her feel safe and warm - so that she CAN sleep.  It's not appropriate but it IS understandable.  But because of that inappropriate closeness with her child who is now a man and the fact that he is psychotic, he feels that he owns her BECAUSE he protects her and so far he's been correct in that assumption.  But we know where this is going, right?  I am speculating that as Romero takes his place as a rightful and appropriate "man" for Norma, being the protector she's always needed in a true romantic partner, that it will be THIS coupling that drives Norman to murder his mother. We've seen that Norma responds to other men who protect her AND are sane.  She's listening to Dylan and trusting him.  And Dylan (who I fear will also fall victim to Norman eventually - especially if they keep with the Gein story ) is slowly making her come to terms with the reality of Norman.  Romero may do this even more and even force her to make a choice with Norman.  But when Norman realizes that she no longer needs him, he will kill her and absorb her, keeping her, forever, all to himself.  

Love this show!  It gives me lots to do in my armchair psychoanalyzing practice.