Bates Motel 5.01.
And the final season begins.
Aka, the one without Norma, but not Vera Farmiga. Norma was my undisputed favourite on this show, in all her messy glory, but I love most of the rest - characters, storytelling - enough that it was never a question as to whether or not I'd keep watching.
Now that we've arrived in Hitchcock territory, time line wise, with Norman as the owner of the Bates Motel and the town aware that his mother is dead while the Mother in his mind is ever present, the show has the problem of how to avoid falling short of the original. So far, it seems to be go for a solution that keeps some essentials but also twists them enough - based on all the preceding seasons - that the audience doesn't always know what's up. There's the Alex factor, of course, with our good (former) Sheriff currently behind bars but plotting revenge on Norman for Norman's matricide in that state regardless, including, apparantly, sending minions after him. There are Dylan and Emma in Seattle, providing us with the firmest indication of just how much time has passed since the s4 finale (enough that Emma could get pregnant, carry a child and for the baby to be several months old, so at least a year, if not two), getting a visit from Caleb which ends with Emma asking Caleb to go for Dylan's sake, which means he'll end up in White Pines soon.
(BTW: I think this Dylan and Emma state of affairs is the hardest to believe so far, because my problem with Dylan in last season's finale carries over now to Emma, with a slightly different reasoning. To recapitulate, Dylan actually knows that Norman killed Emma's mother, and in all likelihood other people. I don't care whether he doesn't want to talk to Norma again - which the show needed him to feel in order to avoid letting him find out about his mother's death so far -, but that's both aiding and abetting, and criminally irresponsible. Any victim of Norman's from the s4 finale point onwards is also on Dylan. As for Emma, I can see her come to the conclusion Dylan is better off without contact to his mother and brother, given all the Bates family drama she witnessed. But she did have strong relationships with both Norman and Norma of her own, and so I find it hard to believe she wouldn't at least try to keep up email contact. Well, we might yet find out she did, and Norman is faking Norma's replies in addition to writing his own. But if not, I'm annoyed that all of Emma's non-Dylan relationships, which were a key part of her for the majority of the show, are now treated as non-existant.)
But the heart of the show were always Norman and Norma, and now it's shifted to Norman and Mother. The show cleverly found a twist here as well to make the set-up a bit different from Hitchcock. Norman in Psycho was constantly berated and controlled from the Mother in his mind because of any sexual interest he showed, and her rantings were solely centred around this. Norman in Bates Motel is also controlled and berated, but fussed about and adored as much, which fits with the fact that the original Norma was different from the one dimensional harridan Psycho led one to suspect. Also, the reason Norman gives Mother to be in the house all the time in his fantasy world he's build to protect himself from the truth that he's killed the person he loved more than anyone is different. In Psycho, he's declared her an invalid. In Bates Motel, he builds on the idea he clung to before her funeral, that she somehow faked her death in order to be with him all the time, and for the ruse to work has to stay in the house. It gives Mother a slightly different way to guilt trip him, too. Even in his fantasy world, she's become a prisoner for his sake.
Another interesting thing: Mother resembles Real Norma more than she used to in previous seasons, which makes sense because Norman has had more time to flesh out her persona and he needs her now constantly to avoid the reality of Norma's death. Mother now even has Norma's little mannerisms, like "pffff". And yet there are still tiny fractures in Norman's elaborate fantasy world, moments when he does know the truth. Otherwise he wouldn't need to preserve the real Norma's corpse. The moment when he goes from Mother to dead Norma in the middle of the night, in her frozen shrine with frozen flowers, presses his head on her knees and asks "what dream am I in, Mother?" comes as close to an acknowledgment of the reality of his situation as he can get.
Mind you: as we very occasionally cut from the house as it is in Norman's imagination - lighted in warm colors, clean, with Mother preparing elaborate meals for him - to the house as it really is - no lights, dirty plates galore, Norma's clothes spread everywhere -, I do wonder whether there shouldn't be more fractures, because clearly Norman has to do at least some cleaning up on his own - otherwise after more than a year, there wouldn't be any more plates left, and he obviously does eat something, even if it's not the elaborate meals of his fantasy world. Presumably when he cleans up the Mother personality takes over completely?
Newly introduced characters: Madeleine Loomis the new hardware store owner, looking like a young Norma, and presumably the wife of Sam Loomis the cheating-with-Marion-Crane husband. (No prizes for guessing that "David Davidson" is really Sam Loomis, and the as yet seen only as a shape from a distance woman he's cheating with is Marion.) I'd say that the Norma resembling and Norman's immediate interest guarantees Madeleine won't be long of this world, but that would be a tad too obvious, wouldn't it? Also, it plays on another Hitchcock movie entirely, as does the first name, to wit: Vertigo. Where Madeleine is in fact not really Madeleine at all but an artificial creation designed to trick our hero and pull off a murder, only for the second half of the movie to get even more creepy as our hero becomes very much our antihero as he forces Judy to become Madeleine again. So, what are the odds of Madeleine Loomis looking so very much like Norma Bates and showing in town now being just a coincidence? My first speculation of the season: someone is playing mind games.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1215852.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
Aka, the one without Norma, but not Vera Farmiga. Norma was my undisputed favourite on this show, in all her messy glory, but I love most of the rest - characters, storytelling - enough that it was never a question as to whether or not I'd keep watching.
Now that we've arrived in Hitchcock territory, time line wise, with Norman as the owner of the Bates Motel and the town aware that his mother is dead while the Mother in his mind is ever present, the show has the problem of how to avoid falling short of the original. So far, it seems to be go for a solution that keeps some essentials but also twists them enough - based on all the preceding seasons - that the audience doesn't always know what's up. There's the Alex factor, of course, with our good (former) Sheriff currently behind bars but plotting revenge on Norman for Norman's matricide in that state regardless, including, apparantly, sending minions after him. There are Dylan and Emma in Seattle, providing us with the firmest indication of just how much time has passed since the s4 finale (enough that Emma could get pregnant, carry a child and for the baby to be several months old, so at least a year, if not two), getting a visit from Caleb which ends with Emma asking Caleb to go for Dylan's sake, which means he'll end up in White Pines soon.
(BTW: I think this Dylan and Emma state of affairs is the hardest to believe so far, because my problem with Dylan in last season's finale carries over now to Emma, with a slightly different reasoning. To recapitulate, Dylan actually knows that Norman killed Emma's mother, and in all likelihood other people. I don't care whether he doesn't want to talk to Norma again - which the show needed him to feel in order to avoid letting him find out about his mother's death so far -, but that's both aiding and abetting, and criminally irresponsible. Any victim of Norman's from the s4 finale point onwards is also on Dylan. As for Emma, I can see her come to the conclusion Dylan is better off without contact to his mother and brother, given all the Bates family drama she witnessed. But she did have strong relationships with both Norman and Norma of her own, and so I find it hard to believe she wouldn't at least try to keep up email contact. Well, we might yet find out she did, and Norman is faking Norma's replies in addition to writing his own. But if not, I'm annoyed that all of Emma's non-Dylan relationships, which were a key part of her for the majority of the show, are now treated as non-existant.)
But the heart of the show were always Norman and Norma, and now it's shifted to Norman and Mother. The show cleverly found a twist here as well to make the set-up a bit different from Hitchcock. Norman in Psycho was constantly berated and controlled from the Mother in his mind because of any sexual interest he showed, and her rantings were solely centred around this. Norman in Bates Motel is also controlled and berated, but fussed about and adored as much, which fits with the fact that the original Norma was different from the one dimensional harridan Psycho led one to suspect. Also, the reason Norman gives Mother to be in the house all the time in his fantasy world he's build to protect himself from the truth that he's killed the person he loved more than anyone is different. In Psycho, he's declared her an invalid. In Bates Motel, he builds on the idea he clung to before her funeral, that she somehow faked her death in order to be with him all the time, and for the ruse to work has to stay in the house. It gives Mother a slightly different way to guilt trip him, too. Even in his fantasy world, she's become a prisoner for his sake.
Another interesting thing: Mother resembles Real Norma more than she used to in previous seasons, which makes sense because Norman has had more time to flesh out her persona and he needs her now constantly to avoid the reality of Norma's death. Mother now even has Norma's little mannerisms, like "pffff". And yet there are still tiny fractures in Norman's elaborate fantasy world, moments when he does know the truth. Otherwise he wouldn't need to preserve the real Norma's corpse. The moment when he goes from Mother to dead Norma in the middle of the night, in her frozen shrine with frozen flowers, presses his head on her knees and asks "what dream am I in, Mother?" comes as close to an acknowledgment of the reality of his situation as he can get.
Mind you: as we very occasionally cut from the house as it is in Norman's imagination - lighted in warm colors, clean, with Mother preparing elaborate meals for him - to the house as it really is - no lights, dirty plates galore, Norma's clothes spread everywhere -, I do wonder whether there shouldn't be more fractures, because clearly Norman has to do at least some cleaning up on his own - otherwise after more than a year, there wouldn't be any more plates left, and he obviously does eat something, even if it's not the elaborate meals of his fantasy world. Presumably when he cleans up the Mother personality takes over completely?
Newly introduced characters: Madeleine Loomis the new hardware store owner, looking like a young Norma, and presumably the wife of Sam Loomis the cheating-with-Marion-Crane husband. (No prizes for guessing that "David Davidson" is really Sam Loomis, and the as yet seen only as a shape from a distance woman he's cheating with is Marion.) I'd say that the Norma resembling and Norman's immediate interest guarantees Madeleine won't be long of this world, but that would be a tad too obvious, wouldn't it? Also, it plays on another Hitchcock movie entirely, as does the first name, to wit: Vertigo. Where Madeleine is in fact not really Madeleine at all but an artificial creation designed to trick our hero and pull off a murder, only for the second half of the movie to get even more creepy as our hero becomes very much our antihero as he forces Judy to become Madeleine again. So, what are the odds of Madeleine Loomis looking so very much like Norma Bates and showing in town now being just a coincidence? My first speculation of the season: someone is playing mind games.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1215852.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.