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For starters, White Pine Bay is a very creepy place. I mean, we knew that, but now we know that: Not only are most of the citizens on the make in some secret shadow economy, but some of them run huge drug farms, and they don't even try to hide the fact that their town, and affluence, is a huge grody lie. Scariest of all, Emma uses Norman's porno comic to uncover a sex-slavery ring that's probably still going on -- and which investigation leads them onto a drug-crop property that nearly gets them shot to death in the process.
Bradley's father is one, but not the only, of the burning victims this week: In fact, the school day starts with his car careening into the side of the road -- with his burnt-up ass inside -- near the motel, while Norman and the other kids stare. That's about all we see of Bradley this week, between Richard Slymore's handy (and snarly) interception, the fact that she spends the episode in the ICU with her burnt-ass dad, and the focus on Norman's adventures with Emma.
Dylan spots one of Mr. Martin's employees weeping openly at a strip club, and before you know it he's taken a job as a killer (or pot-farm guard), which I guess means he's going to be sticking around. He accidentally goads Norman into the first berserker violence we've seen, which is pretty scary, and then hits Norma with a lot of exposition about how her second husband -- Norman's father -- was fairly abusive to them all, which would put a much bigger spin on his life insurance payout if it became public.
Norma redoubles her attempts to work Deputy Shelby as the Sheriff's suspicions about her accrete, but once she learns that the townspeople's "eye for an eye" extends to setting arsonists alight, locking him down becomes a much more important proposition. So while she's off pretending to be a secret agent in order to go on a pretend date that's actually a real date with a hot guy, her son is off solving ancient comic-book mysteries -- and getting his first kiss in such a breezy, sweet, lovely way it's one of the more enduring memories of the hour -- and the only person who realizes they're cheating on each other is Dylan, who finds the whole thing grotesque ... and couldn't be more jealous, of course.
The style is there -- it's a visual shock to see Dylan in his motorcycle jacket, standing in the Bates's timeless kitchen -- and the music queues are just as heartbreaking and clever as last week, which is worth a lot. The acting is stellar, of course -- Olivia Cooke is a powerhouse -- and we see just enough of Norman's quieter, scarier stuff to get a fuller picture than last week. The only thing hotter than Vera Farmiga flirting with a person is Mike Vogel getting flirty right back, so that's going to be fun. And funny! I didn't know they'd be funny, but they have a charming, friendly chemistry that crackles with more wit and layered implications than almost anything I've seen on TV in a while.
While it was great getting to know Emma better -- she's charming and gorgeous and maybe even more interesting than Bradley -- and we're grateful to Dylan for every bit of light he can shed on Norma's tortured history, it's still a bit of a comedown to see last week's claustrophobic shadowy mysteries open out into even the Town With Secrets we've been promised. A lot of the mysterious doings at this point seem to be splitting the difference between the grand guignol weirdness of Twin Peaks and the more mournfully banal corruption of The Killing, but it's a bit early to be making those comparisons and anyway, not my usual way of doing things. (If the latter's DNA keeps turning up as regularly as this episode indicated, though, we might need to have a little talk.)
In the meantime, introducing a rival into the house itself is a bold move: Dylan's relationship with Norma is every bit as inappropriate as his brother's, and has the benefit of being completely on the table. Norman's jealousy of her pursuit of the Deputy is played not so much for laughs or cringes as for a somber dance of manipulations by them both, but as with last week he's just outmatched enough that you can see how it would fuck him up. And finally seeing the snappin' gators at the bottom of Norman's lake probably satisfied more people than it didn't, although I'd like to see a few more dots connected -- is this a blackout thing, for e.g., or are we in constant-repression Bruce Banner territory? -- before the pacing of his development really presents itself.
Week: Dylan takes to White Pine Bay culture in a natural way neither Norma nor Norman can even understand, I'd imagine. Emma wants to stir up all kinds of shit about the sex ring, but Norman -- understandably; even moreso now that his mom's cheating on him with one -- doesn't want to mess with the police. He has another freakout and possibly ends up in the hospital this time, while Norma continues to work on Deputy Shelby now that she knows she's one false move away from maybe getting set on actual fire.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
In the wake of her husband's "mysterious" murder, Norma Bates bought herself and her seventeen-year-old son Norman a motel to run in a lovely seaside town called White Pine Bay, leaving a life of tragedy and a much less dependent son behind. Of course, it wasn't long until the community's secret creepiness made itself scarily clear and Norma was -- I'm comfortable saying -- forced into killing the motel's very vile former owner, Keith Summers, which has brought her onto the radar of the WPB P.D.
Meanwhile, Norman picked up some BFFs -- including a hot girl named Bradley and a dying girl named Emma -- hit up a fairly intense party, and found himself the proud owner of a very dirty torture/porn comic... not to mention some conflicted feelings toward his encouraging slash discomfiting English teacher, Miss Watson.
All in all, an eventful couple days.
THE TORTURED WORLD
Norman obsessively strobes a flashlight over the pages of his little creepster manga, flipping them like a zoetrope: the girl in the shower of Room #4 bound and gagged. Nothing too graphic yet, but there are two men in a couple of the drawings leering like wolves, with just enough detail to their cartoon faces to again suggest that this is something that actually happened -- or is happening -- here at the motel or elsewhere. His fascination is blank, perhaps a little spooked. But he keeps looking. And when the doorbell rings, he swiftly hides the book under his mattress and slides the flashlight back into place: on Keith Summer's rape utility belt, under his bed.
It's late -- or early -- enough that Norma's got her robe on when she heads downstairs. And when she sees her firstborn, Dylan the Halfblood, all she can do is stand, unblinking as ever, and stare him down. He's wearing a motorcycle jacket and he has a feral Volchok cast to his face, like a Son Of Anarchy or one of the Shameless kids -- he looks lost. All we know for sure is that he needs money and has no problem with calling his mother a bitch.
MORNING
Norma: "...Because if I ask him how long he's staying, that implies that he's staying. It opens the conversation to include the possibility. No, he's here for money. I'll give him money and send him on his way..."
Dylan: "No breakfast for me, thanks."
Norman: "Could you at least not leave the bread sitting open like that?"
Norma: "Also why are you here at all?"
Dylan: "Because it's home, Norma. It's what people do."
Norma(n): "Yeah, we're teaming up on you obviously, just like you assumed."
BUS STOP
Bradley: "Where'd you go after that party? Hook up with somebody?"
Norman: "No, just snagged my book and went home. It was about studying, I thought."
Bradley: "Studying sucks, no doubt about it. But you now, we could actually study together sometime..."
Right then, Bradley's father's car goes zooming past the stop, careering and eventually crashing. The kids go running after it, screaming all the way, and Norman throws his back into opening the driver's side door: Inside, Bradley's father is barely alive, still smoking, burnt to a crisp.
LATER
Norma: "Wait, you're thinking somebody set fire to his warehouse? That's insane and awful."
Sheriff Romero: "No, that's White Pine Bay. You're going to need a much stronger stomach."
Dylan: "Nice town you picked, Norma..."
Norma: "Stop calling me that. And go run some errands for the motel, if you're gonna stick around."
Romero: "Have you seen Keith Summers? Because this is his abandoned truck."
Norma: "That's so weird. Everybody keeps getting the horns this morning. Good luck with that, though. I hear he was a swell guy... for a drunk rapist who lost his family's property and didn't know when to keep his goddamned mouth shut."
(Swoosh.)
LANG ARTS
Miss Watson assigns them a list of classic poets, with a partnered assignment: Why is this old poem still relevant today? Why would you, for example, take a poem from 1960 and construct an entire TV show about it, in a post-cellphone/post-PC world? What parts of our humanity are inextricable enough to cross that divide? What parts of your humanity -- even what parts of your day -- still reach back across the decades or the centuries? Writing is about telling somebody who isn't there that they aren't alone, so you feel less alone: Poems break time just as they break language.
Emma: "Your staring at Bradley is nothing new, so I don't really care whether you're staring at her empty chair is in the context of this assignment or just an achievement in regular creeping."
Norman: "Yes, Emma. I would love to do this assignment with you. Please do invite yourself to my house of horrors where I live. Bring your oxygen tank to make it even bleaker, would you?"
Is it possible Emma Decody has somehow gotten more even beautiful since the pilot? That's nice. Looking better always makes you feel better, that's what I say. And vice versa.
After school, Norman brings a potted pink flower to the ICU, but Richard Slymore intercepts and coldly promises to hand the plant over to Bradley just as soon as he fucks right off.
CANDY STICK
Is the name -- and motif -- White Pine Bay's finest/saddest (/same thing) ecdysiastical establishment has given itself, after what I'm sure was an exhaustive search for the grodiest possible name you could give a strip joint. "What really says infantilized idiots but also involves licking?" Now if I had a strip club...
Well okay, I always said that if I had a strip club it would be called "Naked Keanu" and all the girls would look like Keanu Reeves circa 1992, but that's only because I read about this very real club in a magazine when I was a kid and have never been able to convince anyone that it was real and not a dream I had or an urban legend.
But for the purposes of this conversation, I would call my strip club "Wangdoodles" and there would be a caricature cartoonist on staff at all times who would draw a picture of you sitting there with your exaggerated erection and sell it to you for five bucks, because from what I can tell strip clubs are mainly about showing other men how big your heterosexual boner is getting, which is just one more thing I don't understand about straight guys and how that whole thing works. All the video screens would be closed-captioned loops of the dancers, sans makeup, tucking their kids into bed and then explaining directly to the camera what happened to them.
Dylan can't help but notice a guy bellied up to the stage, weeping and although at first he is defensive about his tears, he immediately apologizes. Quite an emotionally open environment, this "Candy Stick." Turns out he's crying about his boss, Bradley's Dad, about whom he seems to care very deeply.
Dylan: "I just moved here, but I respect your emotions and I support you unequivocally."
Crying Man: "Let me buy you a beer for your kindness."
Dylan: "Is that money? I too would like some money."
BACK HOME
Norma: "On the one hand, thanks for picking up the motel's new linens. On the other hand, you are coming home very late and you smell like candy. Not the good kind, the gross kind."
Dylan: "I get it. This is me ruining your idyll fantasy with Norman, your child-boy-husband Mini Me. Okay? I get the memo. I grew up with this crap."
Norma: "He's a good boy! He eats off plates, like a person!"
We get some background now: Norma married Dylan's father when she was seventeen -- leading me once again to compare Norma and Lorelei Gilmore, in that we stop at the age of our trauma and then heap undue pressure on our kids when they turn that age -- and then eventually left him for Sam, Norman's father who is now quite dead.
Dylan: "Yeah, how'd that second marriage work out?"
Norma: "Here's the thing, I hate you. Just fully hate your ass."
Dylan: "I'm well aware. But what to you looks like resentment and anger feels a lot to me like being left out of the seventeen-year tea party you've had going on with the Boy Prince..."
Norma: "Uh, we're cool? We're buds? He likes me? You're acting like it is less healthy to have a positive and loving relationship with your kid. Like your constant bitching and malice are the norm."
Dylan: "So to speak."
Norma: "So to speak."
Dylan: "And the motel? The new car? Where'd all that come from? What's funding this little..."
Norma: "Sam was an insurance salesman, so he was well-insured."
Dylan: "My implication is resounding, Norma."
She bursts into tears, finally, demanding that he call her by her name: Her name is Mother.
It's a very interesting dynamic, this: You have two sons, each of whom relate to her in a much more adult way than is maybe optimal. One of them, she subsumes, the other resists. One of them is a native, the other an invader. But when you defend the walls around your domain as strongly as Norma Bates -- we know -- must, it doesn't really matter if the invader was born here. He's just another envoy from the nightmare beyond those walls. Whatever darkness he represents for himself is nothing compared to what he symbolizes: They'll never stop coming. First you dream and then you die.
AM
The Bateses start the day on their knees, obsessively scrubbing down the scene of the crime. No, lower. Not even on their knees, on their bellies.
Norman: "Just because they found his truck doesn't mean they're going to..."
Dylan: "First of all, you two are pathetic. Even cleaning the kitchen obsessively together?"
They don't even look up; when the doorbell rings, Dylan's grateful to answer it.
Emma: "Hi! Look at you with your bad-boy self. I'm here to study poetry."
Dylan: "But you're a girl! A cute one. That's... I wanna see Norma deal with this shit."
Norman: "Oh hey. Listen, Norma. This is a school person. Let's do normal for a second. Don't let her ask you questions."
Norma grills her to death, to the point where even Dylan takes pity on his brother and tries to distract: No good. We get the whole Decody story -- dad owns a shop in town, family's originally from Manchester UK (just in case Olivia Cooke's accent slips, I bet, although it never does) -- and finally she digs in, almost greedily, on the obvious.
Emma: "The tank? I think of him as my pet. He goes with me everywhere. Perk of having CF."
Norman: "Mom, we have poems to..."
Norma: "-- Let me get the full story on cystic fibrosis, honey. Nobody really knows what that is."
Emma: "My lungs produce hella gross mucus, making it impossible to breathe. Lung transplant, but that comes with its own problems and demons..."
Norma: "I hope you get one! But if you don't, what's your life expectancy?"
Emma: "Uh... like twenty-seven? Did you really just say that shit to me?"
Norma: "Twenty-seven, huh? Sounds good."
Dylan: "Jeeeeeeeeezussssss."
When she finally lets them go, Dylan moves in for some shit-talk.
Dylan: "Think she has to take that tube out of nose when they make out?"
Norma doesn't speak, just keeps mopping. It's actually a fairly cute moment, all things considered.
UPSTAIRS
Emma explains Blake's "The Tyger" to Norman in the context that they are on a show about Norman Bates -- i.e., that scary evil things somehow exist in a just world ruled over by a loving God -- while leaving out the actual point to be made, which is that the world is still just as loving, for having monsters in it. We find the tiger scary, the poem finds him "fearful," because we're on the outside looking in; we observe and we put ourselves at the center of that observation. But from the tiger's perspective, he's just a tiger. The trick to understanding a loving universe with monsters in it is realizing that the tiger's right.
Norman and Dylan are both Norma's sons, mortal boys, fearfully and wonderfully made. She made them. You don't blame a tiger for being born a tiger. It's why Blake was so obsessed with duality. For every Tiger he wrote a Lamb and still asking the same question: Do you even know who made you? Does not knowing make it hurt more? Or does not caring make it hurt less?
Glossing over more talk -- O.J. Simpson, Charles Manson -- Emma jumps back into the poem, finally noticing Norman's shameful little secret sticking out between the sheets.
Emma: "Never saw you move that fast! I bet its porn. That's awesome, let me look... this is lovely. Did you draw this?"
Norman: ("Even my sexual issues have sexual issues...")
Emma: "Whatever, I clearly read dirty manga all the time. This is nothing. Can I borrow it?"
Norman: "...Sure? My flashlight was getting a little, um. Overworked anyway."
The tiger doesn't always knows it's a tiger. But it suspects.
NORMA
Takes a moment to moisturize, in that sensate way the ladies do on TV, but just when you're wondering who's watching her -- what man's gaze justifies this moment -- or why this is even happening at all, she runs her fingers over a jagged scar that runs like lightning up her thigh. What does she remember when she sees it? It seems sad. She's interrupted by Romero and Shelby, asking questions about the missing man.
Romero: "You said you hadn't seen Keith Summers, the other day? Because a drive-by witness saw him crazily standing in your yard yelling at you and your kid..."
Norma: "I meant, uh, I haven't seen him recently or anything. He's a crazy creepy crank, but that doesn't make me a suspect in some kind of missing persons..."
Romero: "I never said he was missing, Mrs. Bates."
Norma: "Okay, but you totally did. Missing truck, missing guy..."
Romero: "Now I'm going to get needlessly authoritative. I don't like mouthy women. I'm coming in."
Norma: "How about a warrant? You got one of those?"
She addresses the whole thing to Shelby, absolutely sure he's on her side and working the angle, but eventually once the warrant talk starts Shelby fades out into the shadows: Too hot. Romero lays down some veiled threats and the boys take off. I don't think Romero picked up on any of it: The oppositional stance she took with him, the conspiratorial way every word out of her mouth was a secret message to Shelby that his boss is a numskull. Romero didn't get it, but Shelby sure did. I'm thinkin' this jurisdictional threesome is very close to becoming a twosome.
SANTA MONICA
On her way into town Norma settles on Everclear's post-apocalyptic ode to California, in which the singer takes his beloved past the limits of the world of men far enough to watch it crumble and finally spots her deputy.
Shelby: "Helllooo, Mrs. Bates."
Norma: "Go head, cuff me!"
Shelby: "That's the sheriff's style, don't take it personally. Can I buy you an apology coffee?"
He's beautiful, yes, and playing right into her hands: For a moment she pretends to consider it and suddenly she finds herself considering it, and then they're having coffee.
Norma: "This whole thing is about my son's life falling apart. To lose your father... I thought this would be a clean slate. Hope. And Romero's really fucking with that."
Shelby: "Let me be completely honest, I don't think he was being entirely as accusatory as you seem to think."
Norma: "I know when I'm getting bulldogged, cutie."
Shelby: "He just really loved Keith Summers. He's taking it personally and that makes him intense. Not to mention his Billy Zane eyelashes making everything so creepy all the time."
Norma: "I get that. The feelings of men."
Shelby's invited to something called a Woodchuck, which he laughingly explains is a local festival, to which she is invited. She finds herself happily agreeing and he immediately reminds them both that it can't be a date-date: Keith Summers wouldn't approve. But they could both go and both be there at the same time... she laughs, loving it. A little cloak and dagger.
UPSTAIRS
Norma: "First of all, how do I look? Do I look like I'm trying?"
Norman: "You're Vera Farmiga, you don't ever have to try. But I am a little annoyed by the implication. What's this about?"
Norma: "So apparently somebody saw me nearly get into that fistfight with Summers..."
Norman: "The guy we killed? Well, that can't be good."
Norma: "I know, right? But I'm going to seduce Deputy Shelby, so it'll be..."
Norman: "Fucking A."
Norma: "I'm doing what I need to do, bro."
She shucks her top and he can't stop watching; it worries them both. It worries her that it worries him.
Norma: "I'm your mother! It's not weird or anything."
Norman: "Don't do this. You do not have to and you cannot do this."
She plops down to him, nearly roughhousing, and takes him by his jealous hand.
Norma: "It doesn't mean anything. It's not a real date. It's for us. It's for us, here."
Norman: "It's a community event? Then I'm coming."
Norma: "You aren't. And you know you aren't."
She kisses him goodbye. I like it when she tells him things he already knows; it's part of the game but it's also like, there are a million things going on under the surface of that lake, he knows everything he could know, so she's not just telling him what to think: She's taking one possible thing and making it concrete. Her words, in his head:
"You are not coming and inside yourself you have known that since the conversation started, making your performance of wanting to come both flattering and futile. Now, isn't that right?"
MARTIN WAREHOUSE
Dylan's crying friend brings him to work, the better to indoctrinate him into the corrupt underbelly of large-vessel maintenance. It happens incredibly quickly: The guy (another Battlestar alum, and trust me I wish I could stop doing that, too) barely has his sawdust mask off his face before he asks whether Dylan can handle a gun. A gun! This place!
BACK HOME
Dylan: "What's for dinner, Honey?"
Norman: "Shut up and nothing."
They way they clash around the kitchen, her kitchen, presages violence long before it comes. Norman is fussily offended by the name that pops up when Norma calls Dylan's phone: "Apparently The Whore is calling you?" He answers brightly, calling her by name, and Norman immediately attacks. They fight, discussing the Whore as they toss each other around the room.
Dylan: "Norman, you do not seem to understand that she is ruining you."
Norman: "True or not, why are you here? You really are messing up everything. It's just like she..."
Dylan: "I am not here to mess anything up. I am here because I have no options. But rest assured, if you come at me again I will destroy you."
It comes fast, and slow. You see him think it out, you see him try not to give in, but when it does it comes fast. Sometimes I get overcharged/ That's when you see sparks. He needs a rival. Has he noticed, do you think, just how much the Deputy looks like Dylan?
Did She who made the Lamb make thee? Norman comes at him again -- already near tears -- this time with a giant hammer; Dylan ducks out of the way just in time and he carries through all the way into a plate cabinet, shattering glass and ceramics everywhere before Dylan puts him down again.
"She's not a whore," he grits into the floor. Not on his knees, but lower. On his belly. She doesn't really want the Deputy, didn't she say? Didn't she say it was all for him?
THE WOODCHUCK
Homey banjo/fiddle country plays, as a burly man helps Shelby win a victory sawing a log.
Shelby: "I told you it's stupid. But fun."
Norma: "It's fairly great, actually. Regular people doing things in plaid clothing."
Shelby: "I am sure that Keith Summers is in a ditch somewhere. He was into bad shit. Generally the man was a trainwreck."
Norma: "Why does weird shit keep happening to me and my kid? Like, this town seems to be like this, but then it isn't."
Shelby: "There is no town that is actually like this. We make artisanal cheeses and sell organic pork foods. And yet everybody here drives expensive cars and lives in mansions. The White Pine Bay economy is not built on..."
Norma: "You surely don't allow illegal things -- bad things -- to happen here."
Shelby: "We deal with things. Things are dealt with."
Norma: "Like that guy that got burned up?"
Shelby: "That'll be handled."
Norma: "Not what I asked, but even creepier. Great. I need to be home by nine, which is now."
AFTER
Norma: "What has happened to your beautiful face? It has gone to hell!"
Norman: "Fight with Dylan. The why is not important. Don't worry about it."
Norma: "You both have to realize that I won't stand for you getting hurt."
Norman: "So kick him out, with my blessing. Today has been a shitstorm for the Norma/Norman Tea Party department, and knowing you went on a date isn't helping."
Dylan is attracted to this thing, the Norman/Norma thing, for about a hundred reasons: It's something he has never had but in even brighter colors; it's fascinating because it's fucked up. Like Norman before her date, he can't stop looking at it. But most of all it's his particular tiger, his form of crazy, focusing right down in on that dynamic: We play the roles we were taught to play. He's always been an intruder -- then be an intruder, represent the whole world of men. Normalize them both. He's always been jealous of their closeness -- then point out how toxic it is, obsess on that. Sometimes protecting Norman, sometimes attacking Norma: Whoever is going to give you the most attention, that's who gets it. He loves Norman because she does; he hates Norma because she loves someone else; he hates Norman for being the beloved second try, the second pancake. He's always been the mistake, that's fine: Every Cain has an Abel. That's when you see sparks.
DECODY TAXIDERMY
Emma summons Norman to her family's shop -- and, one presumes, his future place of employ -- for something important. She's amazed by the state of his little face, but he distracts her handily with family questions until she can't stand it anymore. Because dead things don't interest her; because the only thing worse than living with death is thinking about what happens ; because she has something much more vital to tell.
Emma: "Sit! I'm going to tell you a real story about real, living things."
Turns out she's been translating his porn, because we live in the future and you can do that now, and the story is terribly sad: Four Chinese girls get tricked into slavery in America and end up prostitutes. One of them is bound and beaten, eventually OD's, and the other girls are made to bury her in the woods. One by one, they're sold off into other sex slave rings. Based on a picture of a mountain, Emma has determined that they can find this grave and prove the whole story.
Norman: "This is all a little peculiar."
Emma: "What's peculiar is a seventeen-year-old boy using the word peculiar."
She kisses him, and he goes still. After a moment, looking at his face, she grins. "You in?"
He's in.
She's in, too. Maybe more than he understands, because in a way this is her story. She's not a sex slave or a drug mule or anything like that, but she is going to die without ever having seen the world. She sees these girls and she wants them to be real, because nobody will ever tell you a real story about real, dying girls. Nobody will ever tell their story, either, except for Emma. Emma and Norman and this strange, awful book. She reads the story and she wants to know them; she wants to save them. She sees these girls and she thinks, "That's exactly how I feel."
YOU SEE THIS GUY?
Dylan puts on "This Guy's In Love With You," keeping the vinyl theme inside the house. The song gets to its most operatic heights when he complains -- as if it's killing him -- just how much he needs her love. Looking at pictures of Norma, holding a baby; the world full of Norman: "We know each other very well..."
Norma: "The fuck, it's the middle of the night! Turn down that Bacharach!"
Dylan: "Take it easy, skirt."
Norma: "You fucked up Norman's face and you need to leave. You're toxic. Out by morning."
Dylan: "How did Sam die, Norma? You made it so hard to find you, I ended up doing a lot more research than I should have. The other insurance guys told me all about what a great husband and father he was and I thought, it would be pretty interesting to tell them how great a husband and father he really was. How well you guys really got along and all."
It's an old scar. She just smiles, sadly, and tells him to keep the music down at least. Right at the saddest part of the song. Who made you? Some of us grow up in fire, some of us in rain, but not one of us is born angry. She's just selfish enough that she can't hear him, sitting there -- he's still a child, his face is so soft and so hard -- letting the music speak. "I want your love," sings the song. "I need your love..." She just wants it quieter. Like God ever looked at the tiger and saw what She made, and just went back to bed.
And if that did happen, what would the tiger do? Miss Her. Miss Her and Hate Her. Norman hasn't even escaped yet and it's going to destroy them both; Dylan started out on the outside and he wants her to love him just as much as he wants to take her down. It's a rare love triangle in which nobody really owns anybody else.
THE MOUNTAIN
Emma's pet tank goes in a little backpack. She leads him to the very spot -- majestic, the Pacific Northwest looks like a beer commercial, every time -- and he smiles. It's a poem and it's very relevant to our world today, but it's not the kind of thing Miss Watson would understand.
Halfway up the mountain, Emma starts coughing. It's thick and sludgy and altogether terrifying, so Norman orders a halt.
Emma: "My dad taught me to meditate. You see yourself rise up out of your body, past the town, into the golden light of the whole universe. You realize how small you are, and how closely we are connected to the larger thing."
How you get to a loving universe, in my experience, goes similarly: Tigers and monsters happen, sure. But what made those things? Bigger tigers, bigger monsters. And so on, forever. So it's a dead end, a hallway that ends nowhere, a clock wound up to breaking and slowly leaking entropy. You go looking for fear, you're going to find it.
So that means, then, that you have to go the other way: Determinism is a love story between you and the entirety of space and time and it does not -- technically, absolutely, by definition -- get sexier than that. You are held, lovingly, at the center of something so infinite and so massively complex that it concretizes words like infinity and complexity. Makes them actual. It's a stark light but a bright one, a compassionately dispassionate one, burning bright: All the tigers under it aren't monsters and never could be. We were only ever tigers.
She wrinkles her nose at herself, giggling, and sits. But over the rise he sees it: A huge pot field, big as a lake. And then the tenders, big guys with guns: Dylan's new army. She runs with him, fast as she can, for a very long time. Her panicked breath, wheezing, takes them to the very shed they were looking for, but they keep running. This part goes for a while. They ford a stream and keep running, all the way back to her very recognizable, bright orange VW Bug. Another thing Norma would probably appreciate.
XII. THE HANGED MAN
Shelby waves Norma through, past the maddening crowds and the ambulances, but she still sees it: A man, hung upside-down on fire. Right in the middle of town square. Dealt with, Summerisle-style. Maybe Richard Slymore was being more than unfriendly, the other day at the ICU. Maybe he was protecting everybody, if this is the way the town runs itself.
Horrified and confused, she drives on. Breathing harder than Emma Decody. He barely even looked her way, when he was waving her on. The thing about being a woman is, if you know their game you can fight with tricks. But this newer generation, these younger guys, they're just as sneaky as a woman. He looked her in the eye, when he told her what they'd do. He looked her in the eye and smiled, just like a Bates: Set a man on fire, we'll string you up right on the wharf. Burning bright.
If this is what they do to a man who breaks their rules, what would they do to a woman?
WEEK
Norman has an attack of some kind, probably due to Miss Watson being accidentally sexy; Dylan continues to try to cockblock the Tea Party through reasonable doubt; Norman continues to try to cockblock Operation Deputy through irrational fears and accusations; Norma probably tries to hide the fact that she's apparently now in danger of being set on fire by the entire town; Norman fights Emma over whether or not to trust the cops with their scary sex-slave story; we learn more about the bizarre WPB economy that apparently involves cash crops along with boats and hired killers; presumably, more hard-to-watch violence erupts suddenly with very little warning.
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps The Good Wife, Bates Motel, and Defiance for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, on Twitter, Facebook, and an upcoming biweekly column, "Geek Love," for Tor.com.
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