Home Staff About Us. Search this site Submit Search. Recent News. November 9 Drama Fall Play: Puffs! September 30 The Roaring 20s! What to Expect at Saturday's Homecoming Dance. Smoke Signals. Are you wearing PJs right now? I swear. The ending is already known. To be sure, Bates Motel has suffered its own prequel problems in the past. And for its first season and a half, Bates Motel struggled to give its characters enough to do while the audience waited for the Psycho ties to develop.
Instead, it was his mother, played by Vera Farmiga , who ruled the series. But they also need to play as stories in and of themselves. As Bates Motel grew in strength and quality, the show blended these two elements together. Norma tried desperately to help her son learn to cope with his mental illness, in what ultimately played out as a twisted family drama. TV prequels are a special beast, because they can theoretically run for long enough to catch up to and maybe even overtake the source material that inspired them.
Think of how Hannibal eventually got to the part where Hannibal Lecter was in prison and offering the FBI the knowledge it needed to catch serial killers. In season five, Bates Motel has caught up to Psycho.
So nothing good can happen to them right now. Dylan has cut off contact with his mother and Norman, so no one outside of White Pine Bay knows Norma is dead.
This shows that Norman feels his mother is the only person he can trust, and his mind uses her as a way to rationalize what he does to Bradley, one of his only friends that Norma greatly distrusted.
One could view this as Norma beginning to distance herself from her son to a more healthy level, and Norman creates his own version of Norma that he views as his true mother. In this sense, to Norman at least, Norma died long before he made it a reality. The Psycho sequels made it clear that Norman was simply a victim of Norma Bates and her abuse. After the first film, Norman wants desperately to live a normal life, but his mental state is damaged by the memory of his mother.
But Bates Motel shows that Norman is mentally ill from the very start, and no help is needed from his mother. While Norma is neglectful toward her son by not getting him the help he desperately needs, she doesn't contribute to it by abusing him. Norma tries to convince her son that he is mentally well, only urging him to get help after a point.
While one could argue he is a victim of neglect, Norma doesn't directly cause Norman's mental issues, as seen in the movies. The most iconic scene in Psycho and one of the most shocking character deaths in a horror movie is built up in the final season of Bates Motel when it merges with the events of the film. Marion Crane arrives at the motel after stealing a large sum of money from her employer. Norman is clearly attracted to her, but Mother does not approve. After talking with Norman, she decides to take a shower before retiring for the night.
As the camera follows her into the shower, horror fans know exactly what is to happen. The suspense builds and then Marion realizes the error of her ways and leaves the motel alive the following morning. This was one of the first indicators that not even hardcore fans will know what to expect.
Soon the distraction of Bradley takes over, but in the end nothing can come between the two Bateses—even when wild child Dylan shows up and throws a wrench into their party of two. Of course the story has to take some big turns; how else do you stay on TV for five years?
But as out there as it gets, the characters keep it all too real. We feel like a fly on the wall watching the craziest family drama unfold. Glen What's amazing is the series gets better as it goes along, but it has the good sense to end at the right time. All too often, if a series is holding its audience, they'll keep it going, milking the story like a tired cow, but here we see the end coming, and though I'd watch more episodes if there were any, the conclusion is truly satisfying.
It's also worth noting that instead of filming on the Universal Studios lot in Hollywood, where the original set of the film Psycho still exists, this series was filmed in British Columbia, where a replica of the creepy Queen Anne-style home and s-era motel were painstakingly built. The house, perched on a hill looming over the motel, is a character unto itself. There are a lot of characters, subplots, twists, and turns, but at its heart, Bates Motel is the story of a mind unraveling, and it's impossible to turn away.
Anna It's interesting coming into this series knowing the characters from the film and letting this unfold in its own right. Norman is increasingly unpredictable, and especially in the later seasons he's straight-up unhinged. Dylan's character is also really interesting. Abandoned and unliked by Norma, we soon learn that while Dylan has done nothing wrong, his origin story is deeply painful for Norma.
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