Photo: Joseph Lederer / A&E
Norman's Just A Cock-Eyed Optimist
This idiot still thinks the best of Bradley and gives her all his money, but misses his chance to say goodbye because Norma's making him try out for South Pacific, because of course she is.
We pick up Bates Motel more or less where we left off last week: Norman is harboring Bradley in the basement (good move filling it up with half-finished taxidermy projects so that Norma will not want to go down there), even though in the time it took him to set her up on a dirty cot, and even though now she's demanding that he give her money and a bus ticket, she apparently didn't tell him what she actually did that she's hiding from, until now? Anyway, Norman the chump leaps into action, providing Bradley with a bag full of cash and everything she'll need to dye her hair, even a blow dryer, which seems like a big investment under the circumstances, particularly since if he's hiding her in the basement, how's she supposed to use it without the noise attracting attention? And though Bradley verbally expresses gratitude, she not only doesn't bang him but doesn't even give him the token gesture of a kiss on the cheek. What a dick! Unfortunately, when the time comes to pick her up and drive her, in Norma's car, without his having a license, to the bus stop -- the time when she might have at least kissed him, if she were ever going to -- he ends up trapped with Norma...
...because when she's checking out every book in the White Pine Bay library about mental diseases that cause blackouts, she happens to spot a poster advertising an upcoming community theatre production of South Pacific and decides that she and Norman should try out. Sure, normal stuff, exactly how a teenager would want to spend a summer that even the town sheriff thinks he should be trying harder to fill with carefree youthful activities.
Speaking of the town sheriff: we get more evidence that he has a selective policy with regard to enforcement of marijuana laws, judging by a clandestine meeting with a local kingpin, and Dylan zzzzzzzzzz.
Two episodes in, how Bates-y are things?
| Bates Motel-y Element | Present? |
|---|---|
| Norman's weirdness makes someone uncomfortable enough to react (verbally or non-verbally). | Cody, an overly friendly/nosy cashier at the supermarket where Norman's buying his Bradley makeover supplies comments on his purchases; when he claims the hair dye is for his mother, she replies, "You do errands for your mom. Well, aren't you a dying breed." Norman: "I guess we're all doing that too." "What?" "Dying. I mean, once we're born, that's what we're doing, right?" "..." |
| Norma has a public meltdown. | She shrieks at Norman outside the South Pacific auditions, but since no one witnesses it, I guess it doesn't count. Then she has a public triumph with an a cappella "Maybe This Time" for her audition piece. Norma's the toast of White Pine Broadway! |
| So that's how it is in their family. | Norma talks Norman into auditioning for the show by caressing his shoulders, later defending the idea of their doing it ("it" = "the show," perverts!) by calling it "some fun [they] can have together!" Norman shoots back that he thinks they're plenty close already: "We sleep six inches away from each other with a thin wall between us!" (That old-ass house has thin walls? I don't buy it, but okay.) |
| The weed business is boring. | That dude at Miss Watson's grave was her father, who's another weed kingpin; the guy who's replacing dead Gil is a psycho (no pun intended) named Zane who thinks he's Scarface; this other dude Kyle was one of apparently a cast of thousands to leave a semen sample in Miss Watson and is also involved in the weed business, and gets arrested for her murder. The murders of Miss Watson and Gil are being treated as parts fired in escalating drug-business hostility. And it's all dull. |
| Dylan evinces resentment about his place in the family. | More like he's resentful at the position Norman's entanglement with Bradley has put him in, particularly once he finds out that she's the one who killed Gil. |
| Emma pines. | A little too excited to run out and tell Norma and Norman about Kyle's arrest; also makes a ham-handed attempt to prolong the conversation by saying how nice Norma is. Yeah, she's...she's a real sweetie. |
| The bypass!!!!!1!!!1 | Uh, if she were fighting the bypass, could Norma take the time to wow the director at the South Pacific audition?! |
| A Bates has sex. | No, but Norma decides that the right time to muse about Norman's blackouts (which she attributes to her "sister") is when she literally has her knees up at the gyno (not just posing that way, like last week). |
| A Bates commits murder. | Again, they're technically innocent, though Dylan is present when Zane kills a guy. |
| Winky Psycho foreshadowing. | Norman gets cash out of a paper wrapper (a bag, not an envelope as in the movie) to give to an icy blonde who does not want to sleep with him? |
| 5 / 10 Merely half as psychotic as it potentially could be. |