Congratulations to the show on getting a second season! I can't believe how long it's been since I felt this close to a show, so it's really gratifying to see that A&E agrees. Love it.
Turns out Dylan followed Norman to Shelby's house last week -- a gawky teen zombie-walking through town with a creepy smile on his face being an interesting thing to see in the middle of the night -- and was able to distract the Deputy long enough for Norman to escape Shelby's sex slave's furious grip. But after Dylan and Norman both separately warn Norma that Shelby might not be all he seems, Norma sneaks downstairs herself and sees: Nothing. Old boxes in the places where sex slaves might go, old boxes in the places where a sex couch and video camera might go.
After some creepster run-ins with Shelby that leave him confused and terrified, Norman is pressganged into joining Shelby for a fishing afternoon that he, of course, presumes will end in his death. Shelby gives him a stepfathery speech about trust, Norman looks like he's going to barf from rage every time the beautiful Deputy touches him, and in the end Shelby's called away: Seems they've found Keith Summers's hand in the lake, and are still looking to tie this to Norma. (Norma does the pen-clicking thing a lot, let's put it that way.)
On the girl front, Emma's mesmerizing father informs Norman straight up that she has a crush on him, which doesn't faze him much because it is obvious, but warns Norman of darkness should he do anything to harm poor old Emma. And then Bradley, whose father has finally passed on, leans on Norman harder and harder for support until, by episode's end, they are doing it. Doing it!
Also doing it: Shelby and Norma, much to Dylan's wry horror and Norman's pissy paranoia. They are pretty sweet -- and very hot -- together, if you don't think about how creepy they both separately are. Sherriff Romero pulls Norma in for questioning about the watch, and she stonewalls him, then immediately drags Norman all over town looking for the carpeting they tossed that night. Eventually girlfriend ends up climbing the actual chainlink fence at a dump, screaming like Donkey Kong, which is not something I ever thought I would see Vera Farmiga do -- but because she is Vera Farmiga, she commits to it like a motherfucker, making it 100 percent amazing.
The background we get: Norma clarifies for Norman that she has been getting this amount of hell her entire life, that she knows the difference between self-defense and quote "killing the crap out of" a person, and that Norman has a history of confabulating around his hallucinations and blackouts which is why he doesn't remember that he is crazy. Norman admits to Shelby that his father was abusive, but that goes nowhere as usual. Norma's still working on screwing up the highway thing... It's good stuff, but also still vague enough that you remember week is the season's midpoint.
The last act in particular is taut and thrilling, as several things come to a head: Building on his determination to become a valuable part of the family, Dylan finally gets Norman to open up to him -- about everything from the rape and murder to Bradley's all-clear signals -- and sends him off to hook up with Bradley. It's great because they are both great, and Norman looks amazing in red, but also because when you hear him lay out everything that's happened since they moved here at once like that, you can really see why he's so stressed out all the time. It is a lot, a lot has happened.
Back home, once Dylan lets on about Norman's virginity and etc., Norma literally attacks him, leading to an exhausted moment of intimacy between those two sad individuals that you'd have to see to understand. I dunno, it brought tears to my eyes; it reminded me of Starbuck and Apollo in the boxing ring, just wobbling together with blood coming out of every part of their faces. And but then: Norma gets arrested for murder.
Week: Norma gets a lovely lawyer, turns on Norman for a little bit, hits some obstacles in her relationship with Shelby, and sadly but presumably does not try to destroy another chainlink fence with her bare hands. Well. We live in hope.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Mother told Norman to break into Norma's boyfriend's house and steal back the belt that she apparently hasn't had time to ask for, so he took off down the road and ended up finding a Chinese sex slave chained up in Shelby's basement.
BUT
Dylan saw all of this go down -- on his new motorcycle, which he rides around town dressed like Racer X -- and followed, so that by the time Shelby let his dog (Clementine, btw) out of the bedroom where Norman locked her and came back downstairs, he was able to ring the doorbell and distract Shelby long enough for Norman to get away, which we did not know.
Problem #1: Doped-up Chinese sex-slaves have some serious upper body.
Problem #2: Norman Bates... does not.
Norman: "I will come back and get you at a later date, but I have to leave right now because we are in the house of a cop so paranoid he keeps a baseball bat named ZEUS to his bed, and so scary that he has a you in his basement."
Jiao: "I am pretty sure you should help me out."
Norman: "As I said, young lady, that is on the agenda but it is not an action item at this time. I will return, with tools and remedies. Of all kinds. Sundry aid."
Jiao: "I am just sort of going to pull on your leg while we scream at each other, okay? I get antsy."
Norman: "This is why you shouldn't break into people's houses, I suppose. In case of shit like this."
UPSTAIRS
Dylan: "Hi, we don't know each other so I don't know how suspicious this is going to turn out to look, but could you help me with a motorcycling problem?"
Shelby: "No! I am off-duty and not required to help those in need."
Dylan: "Hypocrite lecteur, -- mon semblable, -- mon frère!"
Shelby: "Okay, because we look like differently nourished versions of the same person, I will tell you that a gas station exists. Somewhere."
Dylan: "Do but point in the direction, sirrah, and I will go."
Shelby, nastily pointing: "Ugh!"
BACK HOME
Dylan: "Hey, welcome home. How come you broke into a cop's house?"
Norman: "Do what? I was just on a little jog."
Dylan: "In the middle of the night? In a sweater and dungarees?"
Norman: "Mere exertion is no excuse for being slovenly, Dylan. Think about that, the time you're not shaving your face because you are too lazy."
Dylan: "Dude. Look me in the eye. Who do you think distracted him long enough for you to get out of there? I saved your ass. Tell me what's going on."
Norman: "I am certainly not in any trouble, or under the orders of apparitions. Good evening, sir."
Dylan: "Is it Mom? Are we keeping secrets from Mom? Tell me we're hiding something from Mom, that would honestly relieve me so much."
Norman: "Ugh. You will never get it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go ice my ankle. An imaginary heroin addict squoze the shit out of it, and then I walked all the way here."
Dylan: "Dude. Look me in the eye. Who do you think distracted him long enough for you to get out of there? I saved your ass. Tell me what's going on."
Norman: "I am certainly not in any trouble, or under the orders of apparitions. Good evening, sir."
Dylan: "Is it Mom? Are we keeping secrets from Mom? Tell me we're hiding something from Mom, that would honestly relieve me so much."
Norman: "Ugh. You will never get it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go ice my ankle. An imaginary heroin addict squoze the shit out of it, and then I walked all the way here."
DECODY HOUSE
Emma's Dad is like so mesmerizing. I've only ever not liked him once, and that was very little to do with him ... and in fact he was my favorite part even then, come to think of it. Beautiful man, aging beautifully.
John Lennon from Backbeat starring Stephen Dorff: "Little boy, why are you so skinny and in my yard?"
Norman Bates: "I am a friend of Emma's and I wanted to walk her to school, because I was a real bitch to her yesterday."
Don Konkey from Dirt, which did not feature Stephen Dorff: "Well, she has the flu. And what with her CF, we don't fuck around with that, so she's taking a week off."
Norman: "And then she'll be okay?"
Professor Quirinus Quirrell, Defense Against The Dark Arts: "Yeah sure, unless she dies. See how that works? Listen, you've got to be Norman Bates, nobody else could possibly be described in a way that would leave that up to confusion, so let me just say this. If you hurt my daughter, I will kill and then stuff and mount you. Are you a decent dude? Because spoiler alert, she's like in love with you."
Norman: "I am decent. And I did like it when she kissed me. And my mother practically purred when she found out about your daughter's terminal illness, meaning she would solve several problems of mine you don't need to worry about. And she is one of the most beautiful young women on TV in recent memory. But she needs to pull it together because the heart wants what it wants, sir, and my heart wants Bradley. (And sometimes, to kill.)"
I don't know if we know each other well enough at this point for me to share a very private Dawn Weiner thing with you, but whenever that Stephen Dorff e-cigarette commercial comes on, I stop what I'm doing and let it play, and hit mute, and Stephen Dorff says the most romantic things. I am speaking for him, true, but I have it down to a science because I have been doing this literally for a year, every time I see the commercial. Just walking on a beach, puffing on an electronic cigarette -- the most embarrassing form of electronics meets the most meaningless form of cigarettes -- and telling me that one day, one day soon, it's going to happen.
"Just what you always wanted, Jacob. To marry Deacon Frost, the vampire messiah from the feature film Blade. We will hold vampire raves and smoke electronic cigarettes and we will sleep upside down, like vampires do. All day long. Come live with me in the Chateau Marmont, where Elle Fanning will be our vampire daughter. It is about to get so good bro." -- Stephen Dorff
NORMA
Hops into Shelby's car day, which is in always the same place, and he immediately starts touching her scars and getting her all het up.
Norma: "Where should we go?"
Shelby: "How about this motel I heard about? The owner is super hot and wicked crazy."
Norma: "Works for me! But then why did I put on shoes and drive over to this place where you always, always are?"
THEY DO IT
Norma: "Congrats on keeping your shirt on for three episodes, at least."
Shelby: "You pay for Mike Vogel, you get the whole shebang."
Norma: "No kidding. You are absolutely beautiful."
Shelby: "Did you know I am a model and I am married to a model and we have two kids in real life?"
Norma: "My deal with men is such that I was speaking aesthetically. You're pretty like an old woman, or an abalone shell."
Shelby: "What a hilariously weird thing to say to a person! No wonder I parked a U-Haul outside your life the second we met."
OUTSIDE
Dylan continues to inhabit more and more territory; in this case, a rocker outside the motel room where he likes to smoke his smokes and drink his bourbon and -- this afternoon -- give his mother and her boyfriend some serious après sex side-eye.
Dylan: "Well hey, kids. Hey, Norma. Gettin' fucked, I see?"
Norma: "Ugh, this is my kid that I hate. Dylan, this is your other replacement."
Shelby: "Hello, young man I didn't meet last night under weird circumstances."
They stare at each other for about an hour and it's creepy and suspicious, and then Shelby takes Norma back to her car, because what happened today is that she drove her car to that one spot from the motel and then he drove her to the motel so now he has to drive her back to that one spot so she can drive her car back to the motel. These people should really think about getting hybrids.
AFTER SCHOOL
Norman is soaping up one of the units' windows when he notices Bradley Martin setting out a roadside marker for her father, who is finally dead. I didn't realize they did this other places than Texas, actually. He crouches beside her with very few words, and she settles sadly into his neck. He smells her hair, but to his credit he doesn't unleash the full scary grin he gives us when Norma does this.
INSIDE
Norma: "Why are you putting groceries in our refrigerator?"
Dylan: "Because I live here? Because I have been eating your groceries and now I have lots of money to pay you back with?"
Norma: "I don't buy it! What's your game?"
Dylan: "My game is, I went to the store to buy food for you and me and my brother to eat. WTF, Norma?"
Norma: "I hate it. I hate you and I hate your groceries and I hate that this is clearly some grocery-related scheme or scam or flimflam."
Dylan: "Man, you are the worst."
Norma: "Yeah, maybe."
Dylan: "So uh, your cop boyfriend..."
Norma: "Here we go."
Dylan: "No, I just... I don't trust him. For reasons I told Norman I wouldn't share."
Norma: "I'm not going to take dating advice from you, my least eligible child."
She stalks off, clicking her pen over and over just like Norman, and Dylan just kind of shrugs, because That's So Norma.
THAT NIGHT
Norman's coming home from the video store with a few DVDs of old movies he thought would cheer Bradley up. I wonder what they are? I bet they're good choices, like, none of those movies where the chick's dad dies and she bones the nearest guy. Which is like every movie. He spots Shelby issuing somebody a citation, and flips out and runs off, much to Shelby's dismay.
Shelby does not know that Norman knows, or thinks he knows, about the girl in his basement, so either he is being legitimately sketchy in one way or fairly sketchy in the other. When he jumps out from behind a building with a flashlight, though, scaring the piss out of Norman and laughing in his face: Either way, sketchy. Although the physically revolted faces Norman keeps shooting him -- in between the scared little-kid smiles -- are quite the response.
Shelby: "Hey, Norman! Why so serious?"
Norman: "I'm taking movies to my friend with the dead dad."
Shelby: "Death is profound, isn't it?"
Norman: "Ugh. What did you just say to me."
Shelby: "You're a sensitive kid, huh. Going through a lot."
Norman: "Bitch, you have no idea. Don't touch me."
It was at this point where I had a sort of brain-fizz and I thought, first, that I hope this whole sex-slave thing blows over somehow because I wish Shelby would stay on the show forever because he is awesome. And second of all, that it would be good if Norma turned on him for some reason and he ended up idolizing Zach Shelby for a little while. I can't see the logistics from here, but I just think it would be good, and within bounds, for Norman at some point to crush on Zach.
"Look, I'm going to be honest with you. Because you're not a kid, and you're going to understand this. I really like your mom. She's a good woman, I care for her. So I think that it would be a good idea -- maybe even a necessary idea -- for you and I to get to know each other better. Do you like ... fishing?"
Norman can't figure out his game, because even if he's not being sketchy he's being totally sketchy, as mentioned, and there's the whole thing also of the belt: Norman has to do everything Shelby says, because of the belt, and what Norman has no reason to understand is that this is even truer for him than it is for Norma, because he can't imagine Norma actually enjoying Shelby's company. So right now he is his mother: Forced by silent blackmail to do whatever Shelby wants, whether it's sex or fishing or whatever. That's legitimately terrifying.
Norman: "As long as it's to a secluded area on a high cliff where you could kill me and nobody would know. Or vice versa."
Shelby: "You bet! It's going to be wonderful, you're gonna hate the shit out of it."
Norman: "That is for sure true."
Shelby: "Cool, I'll tell your mom so you can't back out. And Norman? Don't you ever fucking run away from me like that again. Cool?"
Zach Shelby has no clue how long Norman's been running. Not as a sport, just... The last thing you want when you're afraid is some man's hand on you. Shelby is lucky enough he doesn't understand that. In the world of men, they don't have to. In the world of men, they don't have to run from other men, because they live there.
UPSTAIRS
Norman: "Mom, I have several bombs to drop on you real quick."
Norma: "Hang on, I'm just trying to figure out if blowing up the entire City Council will stop this highway from being built, or if I just need to kill half-of-them-plus-one."
Norman: "Okay, from the top. Shelby has a girl in his basement, in her teens, on drugs."
Norma: "Whut."
Norman: "My belief is that he was running some kind of Asian sex slave business with Keith Summers."
Norma: "The hell, Norman?"
Norman: "A hand-drawn journal under one of the carpets detailed the whole thing. Anyway, I broke into his house last night and I went down in his basement when she came at me. It was like The Ring only sad, and real life."
Norma: "Why? I mean of course you did, but how come?"
Norman: "To find that tool belt. Like you ordered me to."
Norma: "And so... Back up, I what?"
Norman: "You ordered me in no uncertain terms to do this, so I did. Last night, you came into my room..."
It dawns on her what is happening, and she tears up and gathers him to her.
Norma: "I've been meaning to break this to you at some point, but I guess now is an appropriate time. You are crazy as shit. You hallucinate things and black out and..."
Norman: "I doubt that very highly, no matter how many people tell me it's happening. Good day, madam."
She calls after him, but his feelings are so hurt and it's just like, ugh, Norman. Poor old kid. You know how I always say Rule #1 For A Happy Life is, you never explain privilege to a person while they're demonstrating it?
You can't say, "Deputy Shelby, you have worked hard your whole life and you presume acknowledging the facts -- that you are a straight white male in your prime, which to you and to everybody else is the default, even though very few people actually are like you -- gives you certain advantages over other people means your very hard effort is being downgraded, so your brain sets up a whole thing where anybody who brings that fact into the conversation is attacking you, your entire life and existence and worldview." Obviously.
Well, this is why: We confabulate the details we don't know or can't see, and since Norman is not around when Norman does this, mentioning it to him in any context -- but especially in this context, where he's telling you about a crazy thing he saw -- is not just a betrayal of the team, it's a Lovecraftian existential attack: You think the world is like this, but it's really like that. And when you don't know or can't imagine the possibility of the world being like that, your only other option is to double down. Not because you're stupid or an asshole, but because going the other way is literally impossible: "Oh, up is down? Okay, crazy!"
SHELBY'S OLD LADY HOUSE
He looks just like an angel when he sleeps! An angel that maybe keeps girls in his basement, I mean. Norma heads down, down, into the basement, past the part that looks like the garage where Mr. Bates died, past the washing machines opposite the cell where the girl chased Norman, past the sex-tape setup with the disco ball (which is still there, but not at all as giggedy as last week) and unlocks the Jiao door... revealing nothing.
Now, by nothing I do mean a bunch of boxes that were maybe there all along, but also maybe they weren't. If I found evidence that somebody had been messing with my sex slave -- I don't know, I can't imagine knowing for sure, but I would posit -- I would probably move her.
Like: "Hey Sherriff Romero, can I store something in your basement?"
Or: "Hey, I'd like to rent a storage locker with 24/7 access? Climate control not really necessary for at least a few months... Oh, I guess about the size and shape necessary to hold a bean-bag chair and a bucket?"
Norma stands at the door, looking at those boxes and pushing on the bruise once again that her son is irretrievably nuts -- and, one would think, also wondering if any of those boxes contains a certain toolbelt she could snag real fast -- when Shelby abruptly, beautifully, sleepily swings into the frame behind her. It's one of two images I rewound over and over, maybe it's the music as well, but something about the way it's done was very awesome.
Shelby, sleepy-eyed: "Why are you in the basement in the middle of the night?"
Norma, fabulously: "I couldn't sleep. So I'm snooping."
Shelby, charmed: "Oh, okay. Back to bed?"
Norma, cutely: "Back to bed!"
AM: FISHING DAY
Norman puts on his outfit, as tidily as ever, and scowls at his bruised ankle where the girl wouldn't let go with her sex slave dope strength.
Norman: "...And where were you last night?"
Norma: "I took Shelby a pot pie..."
Norman: "Pot pies are our thing!"
Norma: "And then I just stayed there, I guess."
Norman: "I was awake at two AM! You weren't here! I hate it!"
Norma: "You can't keep doing this, kiddo. It's only a bad thing when you're doing the abandoning. (Also, keep doing this. I loooove it.) I know you're jeal..."
Norman: "I AM NOT JEALOUS! YOU ARE NOT MY GIRLFRIEND!"
Norma: "Whoa, that is so not where I was going with that. But continue, if you like."
Norman: "It isn't jealousy if the person really is a creep, though."
Norma: "Here's the thing, the weirdest part you keep not hearing. I like this guy. He's kind of my boyfriend. I know we agreed that he was forcing me to fuck him because of that belt and everything, but... Come on. We both knew. You've seen the guy, Norman. It's not exactly a chore. He cares about us, he keeps talking creepily about how he cares about us, and maybe he does. Maybe he is the one, the one man who is unlike all other men. Maybe we found a unicorn."
Linked so I don't have to say the whole thing over again, but yeah: Married Dylan's dad out of high school, fell in love with a monster seventeen years ago. For somebody who has been beaten into this sort of feral paranoia thing she's got going on, she does at least have a rational approach to the possibility of people. And of all the denizens in man's world, in WPB specifically, he's certainly the least blockheaded, the least aggressive, the least oppressive, the most protective. Young enough to be a softer man, born of a better generation; beautiful as an old woman, and just as strong.
Norma: "It is new. He is not a bad man. I want you to like him. He cares about us."
Norman: "It is a trap, he is a bad man, I do not like him, he keeps girls in his basement. I do not want to fish with him..."
So maybe the reason she believed him, when he started that romance-novel talk in the first hot minute, is because she wanted to. Or needed to.
Norma, verbatim: "That's just because of your father. You can't actually believe that any man is actually kind."
Or else that's just how he knew he'd get away with it. If he's a bad man, he can smell that on her. And every man's hand before him.
FISHING
After Norma got mad, after Norman nearly showed her -- but then oddly didn't -- the bruises on his ankle that prove nothing, she shouted him into obeying. Now they're on a high cliff in a secret spot, fly-fishing down into the deeps. It is a beautiful place and a beautiful day, and Shelby's trying his damnedest.
Shelby: "Sooo... You're like this huge asexual mess, huh. What was your relationship with your father actually like? My understanding is that he was pretty abusive, before you and/or your mother murdered him."
Norman, verbatim: "He had his moments."
Shelby: "Did he ever hurt you, Norman?"
Norman: "No? Which is almost certainly a lie, but you don't get to have that. What's your game, what's the scheme, what's the flimflam?"
Shelby: "Or maybe I'm a good man?"
Norman: "Yeah right. You and Dylan both, just good-manning it up, contra every piece of evidence I have ever experienced in my entire life. Good one."
I love this show, obviously. But especially I love this episode because of this: The one repeated thing where the guy -- Shelby, then Dylan, even Romero -- keeps doing this one trick of the light, it's even the title of the episode, and you've just spent three hours seeing what the world of men can do and how far you have to go to stay safe, and then these men just go ahead and remind you that they're people. But you can't ever know.
"Look, I'm gonna be in your life, Norman. And I want to be in your life. But the truth is I am putting myself on the line every day protecting your mom, and in so doing, I'm protecting you. Look, I want to take care of her. And I want to take care of you. But I think that has to start with trust. I need to know that I can trust you, Norman. And you need to know you can trust me."
Shelby: "Can you do that? Can you trust me?"
Norman: "...Yes. I can trust you."
Your words, coming out of my mouth, because there are no other words. Some man's hand, telling me it's going to be okay.
Shelby: "Good. That's good. That makes me happy."
Norman: "Oh, well then. By all fuckin' means."
Shelby gets a call then, and cuts their moment short. The shudders are still running through Norman, but he's survived the fishing trip, which is more than he thought would happen.
THE DOCKS
Romero has found Keith's hand, identifiable by that ugly watch he wore. "Dumbass," he hisses, and Shelby turns green. That's it, then.
BRADLEY
When Bradley texts Norman for an ice cream date, she's pretty sincere and upfront about how she's only doing it because she finds comfort in him. She can trust him: "You seem to get it. You don't ... judge me, or push me to cheer up. You don't know what a relief that is." Weird, but good weird: A beautiful, calm lake.
Norman: "Well, I'm glad you can stand to be around me."
The music takes us back, like in the hospital, to the possibility of teenagerhood: That it's okay to be a kid for a minute, sometimes. Even though it warns him too that she's a heartbreaker. Still in sunglasses, all day long, Bradley tries to verbalize the enormity of death and -- like we've been doing for thousands of years -- fails. They're here and then they're gone, and you never get to see them again. Norman does a better job:
"I think grief is just the period of time it takes for your brain to accept that someone's gone. Because everything in your body, your mind, your entire being, just keeps bringing you back to the moment that they're still alive. It takes a long time for your body to let go of that."
Norman: "It's the hardest thing of all, to let go of someone you love."
Bradley: "I like being with you, Norman."
She brings up the hand, and he tries desperately to stay in control.
Bradley: "I wonder whose hand that fisherman found."
Norman: "Do they know whose hand it was?"
Bradley: "No, just some man's hand."
BACK HOME
He rushes home, because it's not just some man's hand, it's Keith's hand, and they are going to drown him and Norma both. He comes crashing in the door and she appears at the top of the stairs with cupcake hands, like a Douglas Sirk heroine, before rushing down to grab him and calm him down: "It's just a hand, it could be a million different hands..."
Shelby appears, immediately, at the door, with backup: "Mrs. Bates? We're gonna need you to come with us down to the station..."
THE STATION
Romero: "I need you to tell me what happened."
Norma, snotty: "The police showed up and said you wanted to talk to..."
Romero: "Come on. I want to know what happened that night."
There were carpet fibers on the hand, trapped under the watch, which freezes her blood, and she tries to breathe through it, promising again she doesn't know anything about it. Finally he cuts through the BS altogether.
Romero: "I am trying to help you here, okay? I know you did it. I've been doing this for twenty years, and I know people. I get them, on the inside. It's like a gift. And I know you did it. Now, Keith wasn't always a nice guy. I know that about him. I know he was, um, involved in a lot of things. Any number of which could have gotten him killed."
Norma: "I'm sure."
Romero: "But I also know he wasn't happy about losing his home, and about you buying it, and he's the kind of guy that might have tried to retaliate somehow, maybe threaten you, scare you?"
Norma: "Uh, I'm not scared. Nobody scared me. He doesn't scare me, and you don't scare me..."
He asks where they tossed the carpet they pulled up that night, and she nearly grins in his face.
Norma: "I thought you said you had it. How are you gonna test it, if you don't have it?"
Romero: "Because there are only three dumps it could have ended up. So just tell me what you did with it."
Norma: "...You know what? I don't recall."
Romero: "Ugh. Fine. You can't remember where you physically dumped carloads full of carpeting. Great. Get out of here."
CUT TO
Norma and Norman, driving all over town, looking for some carpet.
Norman: "That was the first night we moved here, it's not just gonna..."
Norma: "Uh, it will be, and also, so what."
Norman: "Fine, whatever."
Norma: "Did you just whatever me? WTF, Norman?"
Norman: "(Whatever.)"
Norma: "Is this Dylan's doing? Has he gotten to you?"
Which was my second-favorite thing of the night, like, look at yourself. That's so far beyond. And the implication that she really does consider Dylan as inappropriately a peer as it's always looked: That the house is a war ground, that Dylan simply by showing up has declared war on her house. "Has he gotten to you?" Like being a man is contagious.
They arrive at the original dumpster, and of course it's not there, so she calls the department on the bin and puts on a strange voice for them: "Hi, I have a problem? I accidently threw out my wedding ring..."
Of all the things. They direct her to the dump that bin goes, but when they arrive it's chained up for the night, and Norma suddenly goes batshit crazy, climbing the literal chainlink and shaking it with her entire body, like a werewolf trying to get you. It's marvelous and scary and, because it's Norma, also deeply sad. He gets her down, eventually.
Norma: "What am I supposed to do, Norman? It's in there, and I can't get it!"
Norman, off wordless screaming: "Mom! Shut up, Mom!"
He bitches at her about how this is all her fault, and how he told her to call the cops and now she's sleeping with the cops and it's too late and everything is going to hell and maybe time you kill somebody in self-defense you tell somebody, and she turns on him, screaming in his face: "I didn't defend myself! I killed the crap out of him! I don't know why I did, I was just so angry that he would come into my home, and he would do that to me!"
Norma: "You don't understand, Norman. My whole life I've had to put up with things."
He doesn't understand. It sounds like complaining, but it's the explanation he asked for: Her whole life, she's had to put up with things, but it's things exactly like this: Scars and pain and being used and being hurt and being tricked and abused and enraged. And silenced. Stuck in a world so sick you can only burn it down, and they won't let you do that either. Keith Summers volunteered, viciously, to become the face of that world. And she killed the crap out of him. And it was beautiful. And now the world wants its revenge.
BACK HOME
With Norma's intense, unending, hysterical sobs rummaging around the house, bouncing through the air shafts and through the walls, Norman sits on his bed tearing in half. She wraps around the world. Finally, he just sets out walking. Not crazy-smile walking, just escaping. Running away.
Down at the units, as far as you can get from the residence without leaving home: Dylan, with his bourbon and his smokes. He's happy to see Norman, but he can't see it.
Dylan: "Hey."
Norman: "Uh, hey."
Norman wanders away again, not wanting to intrude -- and really not wanting to deal with Dylan -- and the hurt translates itself into irritation before Dylan even notices he's hurt.
Dylan: "Why do you always run away from me?"
I don't like it when people, in real life or on TV, try to back time up to before they fucked up. The Willow Rosenberg "let's just pretend" trick is my least favorite trick, because you need to control yourself and show dignity, and that means you just did neither of those things twice in a row. But what Dylan is trying to teach us -- and what we had no way of knowing, anymore than Norman does -- is that he's not doing that. Norma acts like buying groceries is this cheap move, the thing that comes before the disappointment, and maybe it is... Or maybe trust me.
And then Norman, between being frightened and offended by Dylan's masculinity outright and being frightened of the Dylan story he and Norma have concocted -- with Dylan playing right along -- he too has no actual reason to trust the guy. Same smell, same rough hands; same snake waiting to strike, coiled in the same world, calling Mother a whore.
But what we get to see is actual Dylan, who loves to hunt pheasant and worries about crying guys in strip clubs and just wants a motorcycle and a mother and a brother. And they're probably both true, both versions of the same true thing, but Dylan's right to be hurt, because he hasn't done a damned thing wrong since the second he showed up. And further, he deserves to be loved: Because we all do, and because even if it's just desperation that he keeps giving these lunatics chances to hurt him, he's still doing it. He doesn't hold a grudge, which is laudable even when you're not talking about a woman who is a walking knot of grudges.
Without words, because there are no words, Dylan just offers what he's got: The fifth of whiskey in his hand. It's a dare, for Norman; for Dylan it's a gift. He takes a manful swig and chokes on it, so sweetly, and Dylan chuckles. What it would be, to be a big brother.
Norman: "Don't laugh at me!"
Dylan: "That was ... the opposite. I'm so sorry I left you with her, all alone."
Norman: "You have no idea, Dylan."
Dylan: "That she's insane? Oh no, I get it..."
Norman unloads, with hooting owls nesting nearby, in a sudden torrent that washes across Dylan's face: He worries for Norman, he worries for Norma, he wonders how much is true and how much is Norman's particular truth. He has the distinct privilege of knowing how bad things can get, outside their little world: It makes more sense to him than you'd think. And somewhere in there, Norman stops being something she took away from him and starts being something he abandoned.
"I'm so scared, Dylan. Every minute I've lived here, every second, just total fear. And that sheriff's totally suspicious of her, and it's my fault, and Summers was wearing this like police belt when he attacked Mom, and I hid it under my bed -- no, I don't know why -- and Shelby found it and he won't give it back, and now he's got mom doing stuff, so that's why I broke in, but I found -- I thought I found -- this Asian girl, locked in the basement. And I couldn't get her out of there, I told her I'd come back and get her..."
And when Dylan says he'll help Norman, without asking a single question, he means something very different than what Norman hears. He doesn't ask for trust, but he gets it ("Thank you," Norman says formally): The thing is that this story gets worse the less true it is. It would be less awful, less depressing and terrifying, if it all really happened. If the sex slave is real, she can be freed. She can be saved. But if she isn't, then Norman has no such hope.
BRADLEY
Dylan's relieved. About Norman finally giving him something, of course, and about having an even better way of saving him than groceries he paid for as a drug merc, but most of all by the fact that Bradley chooses this moment to text Norman ("Hey."). Because there aren't any other words to say, at this point. Norman's said them all.
Dylan: "Is that a girl? Is she pretty? Do you like her? You have to text her, right now, and say you're coming over."
Norman: "What?"
Dylan: "If she says no, no big. But nobody texts you at ten PM unless it's situation-dependent. This is a booty call. You must go forth."
Norman: "...Send. Oh, shit."
Dylan waits. Drinking it in, like a fifth of whiskey, because who knows when he'll get this chance again. Everybody runs.
Norman: "...And she's asking me to come over. What is this?"
Dylan: "I got laid when I was twelve..."
Norman: "That's sad. That isn't a happy story."
Dylan: "-- But it means I'm right about everything. Go. Now. The best antidote to being involved in a sex slave rape murder is to remember that you are seventeen, and your other girlfriend is on her deathbed being boring, so go. Dumbass."
They feint, they smile, they can't look into each other's eyes. They don't touch.
MARTIN HOUSE
Norman: "Where's your Mother? Making turkey pot pies? I keep mine in the parlor, or sometimes her room. Eventually the basement, spoiler alert."
Bradley: "...Sedated. Come upstairs."
(Ohhh, the Widow Martin. What on earth will she be? I hope she is a Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills amount of trouble, don't you? Specifically BH, nothing else will do. And what will it be like, when the moms are a thing? They're bonding over dead dads now, but they've also both come to live in Mother country. And actually, on that note, where's Emma's mom? She seems to parallel the opposite way... Her dad's just as protective as Norma is, but we can assume he'll eventually become a mentor... Hmm, hope Emma's around for that part, the part where Norman goes looking for an older man to play that role. Frankly, I hope Emma outlasts all these sons of bitches, but that seems unlikely I guess.)
Norman sits on the bed; waits to be asked. He removes his shoes, which is a weirdly intimate move but also 100 percent Norman Bates and plus, you know, his ankle. Bradley seems, um, a little "sedated" herself. She gives such a Lisbon Girl vibe, who knows.
"We felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made your mind active and dreamy, and how you ended up knowing which colors went together. We knew that the girls were our twins, that we all existed in space like animals with identical skins, and that they knew everything about us though we couldn't fathom them at all..."
Bradley: "Thank you for ... helping me so much. I'm just tired of being sad. I want to feel something else for a little while. D'you think I'm weird?"
Norman: "No. I don't think you're weird."
Bradley: "Thank you, Norman."
What she means is trust me. She takes him by the hand.
Norman: "It's my pleasure."
They make love, under Verona sheets. Like ghosts in a house where nobody lives. His smile is a still lake, in a world of concrete. They feel something else. For a little while, they feel something other than sad.
"...We knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them."
His hands on her body could belong to a man.
LATER
It's two AM when Norma wakes up on her bed, still in the clothes she was wearing when she lost it, tearing down the walls. She goes looking for her son, of course; she finds someone else entirely.
Dylan: "Am I my brother's keeper? He's out. With a girl."
Norma: "The fuck you say?"
Dylan: "He's a seventeen-year-old boy who is out of the house, with a girl he likes. And I hope to God he's getting laid, because he deserves it. For putting up with your crazy ass..."
Norma: "My ass? For putting up with my ass?"
("In the end, the tortures tearing the Lisbon girls pointed to a simple reasoned refusal to accept the world as it was handed down to them, so full of flaws...")
She attacks him, but I wonder who her hands are really hitting. Bradley never registered, she's exactly the kind of vague, dangerous beauty Norma's been warning him about. Another fence too high to climb and too steely to pull down. Which leaves Emma, the dying girl. Is he out with a dying girl, getting laid?
Norma: "How dare, you don't know anything about me and Norman, you're a foreign element. We two are defined by excluding you, you can't..."
Dylan: "And yet. Yet, maybe I've gotten to him. But I know he sees the cracks."
Norma: "Norman would never say anything bad about me."
Dylan: "Not if he knew he was, no. But he said fuckin' plenty. Enough to get him out of this house, if need be..."
Norma: "Nobody is taking him away from me."
Dylan: "Uh, that girl is! As we speak!"
He holds so still, against her onslaught. Eventually, to stop her from hurting either of them Dylan backs her up against the wall, hands on her wrists, up above her head. The scariest possible physical position, when they're stronger than you. And she howls, and she resists, but then suddenly, instead of panicking, she goes limp. They just fall into each other, exhausted. It's not sexual but it is very intimate, it is bodies that have known each other for a very long time.
This -- with the violence, the consent to control of her own body, the arms above the head -- is maybe the most striking image yet, of the whole thing. It fires so many synapses, so many wrong associations, that it just kind of shuts the whole thing down and you see what you are looking at: Two wild animals, two worn-out boxers after an epic bout, wavering in a mutual TKO, holding onto each other so they don't fall down. She rests her head on his neck; they aren't embracing, but this is the same thing. It is very sad and it is very weird and very violent, and it is very, very tender. She went to sleep screaming, she woke up the same way. With a monster in the house.
ONE THING I DO NOT RECOMMEND IS
Seeing the film Beloved with your mother. It is harrowing anyway. But I didn't see any of it coming. It came out at the worst time between us, actually; we were going on dates because we couldn't stand to live together and we couldn't stand to look at each other, but we couldn't stand to be apart either. And we got in the car after, shaken separately and together, and stared straight ahead.
"Sometimes when it gets too dangerous, a mother rabbit doesn't know what to do. And for whatever evolutionary reason, to save them from what's coming, sometimes she'll eat her children. It's a rabbit, she probably doesn't think about it too much, but that's the instinct. To save her babies from what's happening ."
And then she looked me in the eye, not crying but not entirely dry-eyed either, not smiling but not asking for anything either. "I thought about it."
Things were better after that. And I don't know how to explain why, but maybe you know what I'm talking about. I don't think we've fought since that day. I had a worse childhood than some but not most, just generally speaking, which is why I don't really talk about it because it's not that interesting or relevant, and I got in my own way a lot, and there was a lot of Dylan in my growing-up, and I am still trying to grow up. But things were so, so much better after that. What a relief. I don't think I've ever been so proud.
And so somewhere in the middle of this moment, this frightening and intimate and violent and gentle moment, you can see how it calms her. It's not a taming, she can't be tame, but it goes through her like a slap, like sparks, and then they can just be there, without Norman in the middle, without the house being about Norman and the family being about Norman, and just be two people that have known each other a very long time, and can't stand to look at each other, and can't stand to be apart.
Which is every son's story, and every mother's too. Because every time he calls her a whore, he is begging to be loved, to be forgiven his trespasses, forgiven for being a man; and every time she says she hates him, hates the man she made, what she means is I love you, horribly.
What she means is it's the hardest thing of all, to let go of someone you love. And yet somehow we do, sometimes. Even when your body says otherwise. In the absence of Norman, they flow toward each other like water, like beasts. And that's the silence the doorbell drops into; that's the situation Zach Shelby drops into, when Romero arrives to arrest Norma Louise Bates for the murder of Keith Summers.
WEEK
Midpoint of the season means big events. Norma and Shelby have to deal with their dating situation, like any couple where one of them is a cop and the other one is a murderess. After much waiting around and neurosis, Norman'll have to make amends for abandoning her in like, a thousand ways, while dealing with the fallout of losing his V to somebody who doesn't love him. Emma helps him follow up on their mystery, Norma's lawyer is fully crushworthy, and hopefully Dylan steps up, because it looks like we're going to have some very broken pieces of people on our hands.
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, Twitter, and Facebook, as well as a regular column for Tor.com, Geek Love.