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Last week, Norman lost favor with his mother after telling Dylan about her scary, sad secret -- but gained it back when he produced for her the sex slave her boyfriend has been keeping chained up. We left things with Norma considering her options, and start this week with the old girl in quite the fugue state. While Emma and Norman watch, concerned, she eventually goes nuts and tries to drive off and confront Zach, but -- after a hilarious trainwreck struggle that gives Emma a close-up view of Bates Family Drama -- they decide to take care of Jiao and avoid the cops at all costs. Without even knowing that Emma's motherless, Norma jumps into super-manipulative mode, welcoming the girl into the family with an ambiguous embrace.
Dylan's murder of Ethan's killer last week earns him a promotion and new partner-in-crime, the intriguing Remo, which ups his confidence so much he decides to storm the Summers boat in search of the missing belt. The boys toss that in the harbor, setting Norma free from Shelby's smothering protection... But while they're gone, he shows up for a little nookie, and Norma is forced to go along with what's played pretty close to yet another violation. When he hears Jiao moving around in the motel, Shelby gets protective again, and with a spaced-out Norma not really protesting properly, he finally comes upon Jiao and chases her off into the woods, presumably killing her.
On the way back from the boat, Dylan puts a bug in Norman's ear about her killing his father, which pushes him further toward moving out -- and when they get home, Norma's so completely out of her mind she can't focus on what to freak out about first: Norman leaving her, or her boyfriend chasing his sex slave through the woods. (Guess which one she settles on!) Shelby returns and takes the entire family hostage up the hill.
A few minutes of unsettling domestic violence, as Shelby implodes, sends Norman into redrum mode, and he attacks him just long enough to set Shelby and Dylan up for a big gunfight that rages through the whole house, before passing out. While the boys chase each other around spraying bullets everywhere, Norma drags the comatose Norman out to the car, where they wait -- keyless and Cujo-like -- for the outcome. Shelby arrives, looking half-past dead, but before he can gun them down he drops: Dylan is the victor. She rewards him with an honest-to-goodness hug and then, while we wait for the cops to come see her latest murder, she tells him -- you guessed it -- the story of what really happened to Norman's dad.
At this point, halfway through the season, you probably already guessed it, but yes: Some hideous middle-class violence sent Norman over the edge that morning six or seven months ago, and he killed Sam Bates with a blunt object before spacing entirely. Norma put Norman to bed, set up the garage-accident, and got in the shower to clean off the blood, which is when the show started.
Following on last week's hair-trigger episode, this week's installment raised the ante considerably, while also reversing the majority of the storylines going into the season's last act. Shelby's dead, Dylan's been accepted into both the WPB crime syndicate and -- provisionally -- the Norman/Norma family unit, we've presumably lost the last remaining sex slave, the only piece of evidence that remains is the carpet sample, and everything's on the table w/r/t Norma and her kids. What could possibly come ?
Week: A weird man shows up at the motel, and going by history I'm going to guess that Norma accidentally has some kind of sexual contact with him and then murders him. But now that Dylan has irrevocably -- and explosively -- brought the protective/violent world of men into her house, and she's seen just how far down Norman's stuff goes, maybe she'll start listening to her poor beleaguered kids? Ha, just kidding. Norma's just gonna do Norma. Thank goodness.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Deputy Shelby is, in many ways, the perfect man. Which is how they get you. Nobody's actually a villain in their own movie, and he told Norma Bates a lot of stuff they both wanted passionately to believe -- and he meant it -- but at the end of the day holding murder evidence over your girlfriend's head isn't too far off from keeping her locked up in your basement on heroin, and he had both. Norman and Emma, in solving these twinned mysteries, ended up unraveling everything, and presented one sex slave to the other in a cliffhanger that twisted everything upside down and can only have redoubled Norma's feelings about men, their world, and her place in it.
MOMENTS LATER
Emma: "So your mom is in a total fugue state now? Is this normal?"
Norman: "Generally I'm the one who blacks out. I guess we broke her."
Emma: "Must be pretty tough to find out the person you're in love with is a monster."
Norman: "Spoiler alert!"
Emma: "...Oh, there she goes."
Norma goes tearing off, hilariously as ever, and Norman chases her down. The walk to the office from Room 11 is a long one, we know that -- but this chase to the parking lot is impossibly long and impossibly scary, and after watching Norma seethe silently and unmovingly for a good five minutes, somewhat cathartic. At least she's doing something.
Once Norman makes it to her, though, it turns into a whole different crazy struggle, with her peeling out in the gravel and aiming herself like a weapon at Shelby; she locks the doors and Norman dives in -- all eleven gawky feet of him -- for a new and improved Norma Freakout. Now, nothing is as loveable and funny and scary as Norma flipping out, she's physically one of the funniest people in the world, so there are economies of scale in play: Is this funnier than the King Kong fence-climb? Is it funnier than the trip-tropping vehicular evac from last week?
Maybe. It may be. But as they're doing donuts around the BATES MOTEL sign -- literal donuts, okay -- at least we have Emma to marvel at what we're watching, which makes the whole thing funnier but also more comforting: "Holy shit," she says, her passion for Norman and his entire situation growing exponentially with every revolution.
When he finally gets the keys away from her, he knows the words; it's like a magic spell: "You're not gonna just 'talk' to him, Mom. Let's be honest. He won't get away with it! He won't be one of those men who's always 'getting away with everything.' We will get him. He's a bad guy, a bad man, and I promise he will get got. But we have to do this the right way." The Norma way of doing things is not going to work this time, because it never works but especially not this time, so let me use the scant knowledge I've gleaned about the world of men to help you solve this. I'm your man on the inside.
GIL
Is finally here. He's the "he" that started out a "they," whom I figured would be Romero but it's actually Vincent Gale: Chief Laird from the Battlestar Pegasus, who played a significant and sad role in Felix's rebellion, and which I guess counts as Vancouver Bingo even though he's Scottish. He's the head of the drug ring, Ethan and Dylan's boss, and he's stiller than a snake.
Dylan: "So... Ethan got shot in the neck and I took him to the hospital. And then I ran away because I remembered we're drug traffickers."
Gil: "Would you recognize the guy? Because I have an idea..."
Dylan: "Way ahead of you, boss. I sort of went on a murderous rampage. But even scarier than usual on this show because I didn't black out. I was just very sad."
Gil: "That is awesome."
Dylan: "I just want to do a good job and prove my worth. It's my main thing on this show."
Gil: "I am very proud of you."
Dylan: "I never really had a dad."
Dylan's still crying -- for Ethan, for the yellow-crayon fears of having fucked up somehow, but mostly with gratitude and a particular kind of love that only men understand -- when Gil explains to him what to do with the truck: Take it up into the mountains and blow it the hell up.
When he's done, Ethan's replacement shows up: A rough-trade hottie (think Wolverine with medium-pirate hoop earrings) named Remo (Vancouver Bingo again, this time a main guy from the DaVinci's Various Things series of serieses but who I only know from The 4400, which I barely remember except for how much I loved him in particular) who spits out a lot of nails about how young Dylan is before admitting that he's not Dylan's partner so much as his subordinate.
Which makes tremendous sense on this show, of all shows: Dylan's reward for being more murderously man than the regular men with tenure, just like Norma wouldn't have a motel if Summers hadn't fucked up at life.
RM 11
Norma checks on Jiao, whose track-marked arm is hanging over the side of the bed; she brings it up to her chest and covers the girl with a blanket, then leaves some snacks on the side table. These paired scenes are the first time you see her with girls, really, and she does have a softness about it, beyond whatever manipulations she's running. Norman was only ever half a daughter.
But there's also a definite mirror-effect in her eyes: Norman (and later Dylan) couldn't stop talking about how her relationship with Shelby was sexual slavery -- and I was appalled and Norma was appalled by that because it denied Norma's agency and oversimplified both her and Zach into sex cartoons -- but looking at this girl and feeling righteous rage on her behalf makes it okay, makes the parallel okay: When she looks at Jiao, "Beautiful," she looks on the outside how Norma feels on the inside. Beat to shit, used up, and most of all humiliated.
BACK UP THE HILL
Emma: "So we're going to the cops like immediately, yes?"
Norma: "Shhh. She's sleeeeeeeping."
Emma: "Wake her junkie ass up, I am tired of having no closure on this."
Norma: "I appreciate that, honey, but how much good will she do us like this?"
Emma: "Two different problems. One, I want to go to the cops right now. Two, she is our main evidence of the Asian sex-slave ring because she is one. The remaining one."
Norman: "Good points, valid points. Allow my mother to hypnotize you like Kaa."
Norma sits on the couch with Emma, eyes whirling her into a false sense of complicity, and explains that the last thing you wanna do with a human slave is put them into stressful situations. Especially when they're coming down from a massive drug addiction. thing you know you've driven them right back into the arms of the dragon. Just let her sleep, and go away, and shut the fuck up and don't tell anybody, and you are a very pretty girl with a well-developed moral sense, and all of these things give you value.
BACK DOWN THE HILL
Norma: "Now, are you good to drive? The fuck on out of here?"
Emma: "I guess so."
Norma: "Should I call your mom and tell her you're on your way, so you don't accidentally blow my spot and get me thrown in jail for murder?"
Emma: "I don't have a mom. It's just me and Quirrell and a bunch of dead animals."
Norma: "That is very sad. You are very sad. You are dying."
Emma: "Yeah, I guess my mom couldn't handle it?"
Norma: "That sucks! It's my favorite thing about you, for what it's worth."
Emma jumps on her, for no reason other than Norma is being sweet and has the charisma of a cult leader, and because for a second Norma's narcissism parted to let a little empathy through, and because she's having a tough fucking day, and because her aim is to have Norma on her side as her future mother-in-law.
And again, you have this moment of Farmiga magic where Norma is first totally grossed out that somebody is hugging her, and then realizing that she better make this work because their entire futures right now depend on giving Emma a false sense of inclusion and achievement, and then... She relaxes into it. Wraps her arms around the tiny girl, and just hugs the shit out of her. Even Norman is amazed.
These two sad broken individuals who get to think Emma is the weaker one, who needs their love and their support, and you have Norman who honestly is just trying to do right by her -- even as wedding bells are going off in his crazy head with Bradley -- and then Norma who's like, "It's no skin off my ass. Ten years max, and then I get him back." And still, the very period at the end of the sentence is relief: Emma's a girl, a broken thing, which -- just like she only trusts men when they throw her up against the wall -- paradoxically makes her the only person from whom Norma Bates can accept comfort.
She hilariously hammers Emma into the car with a repeated mantra -- "We will, honey, we'll go to the cops tomorrow, tomorrow okay, tomorrow" -- and they see her off, and then the Bateses reconvene to watch her drive away.
Norman: "That was nothing short of amazing, what you did there. The real parts and the fake parts. You are a complicated, wonderful creature."
Norma: "My ass we're going to the cops. Where do you find these people?"
BEDRM
Norman: "Both because it's dangerous and because I am viciously jealous, I'm going to ask you not to tart yourself up and go back to Camp Shelby. You can't ever go back there."
Norma: "I'll swing by, try to avoid having humiliating sex if at all possible, or at least refrain from vomiting on him if that's what goes down, grab the belt, drop off a turkey pot pie, and then we'll fry his ass."
Norman: "Okay, Mata Hari, but your batting average is -- I'm just gonna say it -- low. How about you sneak me into his house while he's asleep?"
Norma: "Somehow that is the creepiest thing you've ever suggested. I can't even parse why, but it's very unhealthy for you to go there in your mind."
Norma: "Look. Occam's Razor and I apologize for not immediately believing you that my boyfriend was keeping a sex slave in his basement. I even went to go check, is how much I love you. And I guess you need to hear that I should have trusted you, even though that's blatantly false. Okay? Now let mommy get her face on."
Norman: "Distraction strategy two, deploy! Mommy, am I really crazy?"
Norma: "Stop being a drama queen. Sometimes people just say things, in the heat of the moment, to emotionally destroy each other -- and then it turns out they were just trying to get you to shut the fuck up."
Norman: "Because I'm starting to feel like maybe you are right and I am crazy."
Norma: "We can worry about that later -- meaning never -- but right now I need to focus on getting that belt."
Dylan, appearing: "You mean the one Norman hid under his bed after your brutal rape?"
Norma: "Oh, here we fuckin' go. This choad."
Norman: "Quick update, we have the sex slave downstairs, so I am not crazy."
Dylan: "Baby, you're still crazy. But that is a lot of new info."
Norman: "We found her on a boat."
Dylan: "Then that's where the belt is. Norma, you sit tight and please let your boys actually take care of you, like you spit blood out of your eyes about last week."
Oh, Dylan! Way to get it ten percent right for once in your...
Dylan: "And you can wipe that lipstick off."
...Well, you tried. First of all, I can already tell you that ten years from now I'll still be referring to Dylan Lastname as one of the all-time great characters of television. I just freakin' love him, I've never seen a character remotely like him. Maybe Matt Long's character on Jack & Bobby, that's the last time I loved a kid this much. All the MRA idiots in the world can't equal the social power of one fictional character who manages to get masculinity right. Or I guess if Street and Riggins had a baby it could conceivably turn out this way: Beautifully strong and damaged, hopeful and self-destructive, in exactly equal amounts.
But also, she stares in the mirror and starts to wipe off the lipstick because I don't know if I mentioned this, but Norma spends this episode 100 percent unspooled. It only gets worse, actually.
THE SEAFAIRER
Dylan: "I have signed a lease on a two-bedroom bungalow."
Norman: "Well, that moved quickly."
Dylan: "It already was, but once the whore got outta jail I double-timed it. Plus I needed to get rid of my random wad of cash."
"Ocean views. No crazy people allowed. Just... Live life the way it's meant to be lived. Just peaceful and easy. Normal."
Norman: "Speaking of the opposite of that, what about Norma?"
Dylan: "You seem to have missed several important key factors of this plan."
Norman: "Yeah but what about Norma?"
Dylan: "You know how I'm awesome? That's because I broke away from my parents. It's also because of the specific parents."
Norman: "I follow you. But where will Norma sleep?"
They tromp all over the boat looking for the belt, and Dylan presses his case.
Dylan: "Like, did you know your father died?"
Norman: "That was a hell of a thing."
Dylan: "And you know how he was mentally and physically abusive?"
Norman: "Life is tough for everybody, Dylan."
Dylan: "First of all, I can't believe you're sticking up for both of them now, but more to the point, have you ever met Norma? Because she would totally kill a dude, and that goes double for dudes that keep her locked up in a cage."
Norman: "He was a handful. But I mean, it still wouldn't really be her fault."
True. I mean, "fault" is the wrong word, but I have this rule where nobody ever hits you twice. But also, check out this marvelously layered, ad-libbed-sounding sentence: "She wouldn't have killed my own dad!" Norman yells, which is not how you say that in English, but is absolutely how Norman would say it, on like three different levels. You can substitute any pronoun for any other pronoun and he's still saying several vital things: One, that he and Norma are a blended person, two, that Sam was in some ways their shared father/male authority/jailer, and three, that he killed Sam Bates and doesn't know it.
Dylan: "Okay, sure. Now that you're establishing a pattern where Norma kills dudes but only if they deserve it. But what about lying to you about it? Don't you feel crazy in your head, all the time, like something isn't lining up?"
Norman: "Bingo!"
Dylan: "Whoa, I actually got through to you?"
Norman: "Kind of, but I mean literally. Check out this rape belt we just found."
UP THE HILL
Bookending the end of the episode (and the character) nicely, when Norma sees the car drive up she thinks it's the boys, and because of the headlights backlighting him, for a long time she mistakes Shelby for his double. And by the time she can see him, it's well too late. He grabs her on the porch, hiking up her skirt, and -- while there's some more funny-Farmiga physicality to it -- suddenly the distance from Norma to Jiao is not so far at all. There's an Antebellum kind of rapeyness to it, this grand house and the rascal gent and her pushing him away weakly, like all that's missing is the fan in her hand.
And the whole time she's trying to make him stop without seeming to be doing so, tossing out rhetorical gambit after rhetorical gambit, she's also forced to make these little sighs and gasps because he's "turning her on" so much, and it's so gross, and it's like watching all of her stuff at the same time, but at least right now she is repulsed, solely, by his touch. I was afraid at this moment it would get complicated. I'm not entirely sure it doesn't, but for now she's not having it.
THE HARBOR
The Boys toss the belt into the Bay, and directly address the audience: "It's not a hand, it's not going to float. Nobody is ever going to see this belt again. The show is about to be something else. The belt is about to stop mattering. Don't worry about the belt, stop talking about the belt, this is a Shelby thing, and the show is about ten minutes from not being about Shelby anymore. It might still be about carpet fibers, but the sexual threat is no longer a major issue, and Romero is a different kind of storyline entirely. Plus we might get to see that cute attorney again, which would be nice."
Dylan, verbatim: "There. Now she's safe."
Norman, verbatim: "Thanks."
Dylan: "No prob, little man. Now let's go pack your shit."
Norman: "Oh, I thought that was like ... a metaphor? We're actually doing this?"
Dylan: "The great thing about you having zero ego to speak of is that marching orders actually work on you. I'm not Norma, but if we play this straight and she doesn't fuck it up, I can force you to move in with me just through willpower."
RM 4?
Actually I think it's Room 2, which thank God because that's the only thing that would make this grosser. I, ugh, I don't know about all this, unpacking all this. I'm not a woman, thank God, so a lot of this probably doesn't mean the same thing to me, but the visual is so intensely awful that you start filtering in the details one by one. Basically, Norma has opted for a fully-clothed rear entry, for at least one legit reason plus one terribly sad reason, so we start with the sound of the bed, and then it's a close-up of her face, mashed into a pillow, just repetitively shoving. And that's awful.
We've seen her in this posture before, and that's weird, because it reminds you that just because she's been sleeping with this guy doesn't mean it's not a violation now, or that retroactively it always was. And she's still making the creepy whines, which somehow makes it worse because there is not a lot of finesse in what Shelby's up to, back there.
But then on the other hand, you wouldn't be able to do it, if you were looking in his eyes, so that's pragmatic. That's something. And her eyes are trained on his gun, on the bedside table, which -- yes -- is strung on a belt of black leather, but also, she's stroking it the whole time. Just lightly, I guess stroking is the wrong word, she's running her fingers along the edge of an idea. Smith & Wesson has a way of shutting that whole thing down.
The possibility of ending this is almost as good as the actuality of ending this because either way she knows to play this cool until the Boys confirm she's out of danger. Not that you ever are. To his credit, I guess, Shelby realizes they're doing a creepy scene and asks why she suddenly has turned their lovemaking into kink -- and also why is she not into it since she made it up -- and Norma dumbly grasps at the first thing she (ever) thinks of: "I'm just worried about Norman?" Realizing that was weird -- even though it gives him the opportunity to play his usual "you are safe and free from all that in my arms" stuff -- she asks if they can start over and do it semi-normal, so he's happy because she's happy, and he focuses on the job at hand for a second, but then he hears Jiao taking a shower.
Never take a shower at the Bates Motel, are you kidding me? Do we really have to talk about this?
Anyway, Shelby puts his dick away and straps on his gun and heads out. And again, he's compartmentalized -- the genius thing about Shelby, the thing that makes him such a great character in this story, is that he's not either/or, he's both-all-the-time -- and goes right into "I'm the man who will protect you" mode. It's not fake, it's not even disingenuous. At this moment, he is worried that the woman he loves is outside a scary town where bad things happen, and some creep is dicking around in her empty property, and his job as the man who loves her is to find that person and save her from him.
He isn't a monster that keeps sex slaves in various kinds of bondage, exactly: He's a loving man with a dead mother of his own, who found a family he could slip into, readymade, and be the person he was always supposed to be. It's just that also, he keeps girls in basements and murder evidence in secret places because he has a certain kind of crazy that knows cages are harder to bust out of when they're invisible.
Nothing Norma hasn't seen before -- always a new twist on the old story, for her -- but in this case a rare combination of protection/invasion she's never seen before. Zach Shelby is a mutant, dark and light, just like her sons and just like herself. Is he the perfect man? Yes. Is he milk that curdled? Also yes. Does he need to be put down? Immediately. Will that be sad? Not to anybody on this show, rightfully, but I think so. Broken people without the chance of being healed are sad to me. Right under using manhood or sex as a weapon, in the list of sad things about sex, is when you end up shooting yourself with it.
Zach isn't just Dylan's double, he's Dylan without Norma. By which I mean, we'll never know how sick Dylan had the opportunity to become because the journey out of and away from Norma is what saved him. The things she gave him and the things he escaped, through the act of escaping them. Dylan doesn't try to hold onto people, like Norma does, like Norman will, like Zach pathologically does: He holds them gently, or not at all. And that's not a beautiful aspect of him because it's a lifetime of disappointment and bitterness that got him there, but it is an aspect of him that works, and makes him operate better than anybody else out of the four, in the real world.
Anyway, while I was writing a love letter to psychotic rapist Zach Shelby, he discovered Jiao -- much to Norma's unhelpful and suddenly crappy-at-lying surprise -- sent her screaming into the woods, bounced Norma off a couple walls, and ran off to murder his erstwhile property. So I guess their date is over. Frankly, I gotta say I'm relieved. It was not going well, tbh.
AFTER A YEAR OR SO
The Boys drive up, and because she's been acting so fucked up all day they don't really notice that she is for lack of a better word propped against the building, staring into space and feeling possibly more out of her mind than she has ever felt.
Dylan: "Belt's gone, you're safe, no thanks necessary but if you wanted to blink at some point in the near future I wouldn't mind that..."
Norman: "Are you back to being out of your mind again? We gotta check your blood sugar."
Norma: "Actually, I have some late-breaking..."
Dylan: "Hold that thought, Norma. Now that you're safe, I have something to discuss with you. No, not really discuss, more like... Okay, since you're just sitting there like a ghost, I guess I should just inform you without prelude that I'm kidnapping your child."
You can actually watch as Norma feels herself burying the lede. Like, mentally there's a cracking sound in her mind and she just puts a pin in her last half-hour of life: We are going to circle back around to the other main thing going on, for sure, but this is now the priority.
Norma: "The fuck you say?"
Norman: "I mean, nothing is definite..."
Dylan: "Come on, man! We rehearsed this!"
Norma: "Well, that's not fucking happening and I will fucking pull out every stop right here and now, because as I mentioned, that is not happening. I will take all you motherfuckers down with me first. But I do want to mention, just as a side note, that Zach Shelby showed up and pretty much just raped me by accident, beat me up a little bit in a brutal rage, and is now currently chasing an Asian sex slave through the woods to murder her. So now back to this whole bungalow situation..."
Seriously, I am not joking around. That's actually how she plays it. And the Boys immediately point out that -- belt aside, which is a good start -- they all three need to get the fuck on out of there because Shelby is coming back and he has a gun and a headstart, so unless Jiao does something truly remarkable -- which honestly I don't know the girl that well but she is operating at some disadvantage tonight -- like some kind of Julie Of The Wolves/Home Alone-type shit, he is about to...
Oh, hey Shelby.
UP THE HILL
After a nervous few minutes of what would have been a standoff if Shelby weren't totally aware of Dylan's whole deal and his job and his Remo and Ethan and everything, and thus demands his piece first thing, he marches them up the hill so things can get really awkward and scary in the formal dining room. (Not related, but have you ever seen the remake or the original of Mother's Day? I love both so much, but there's an especial lot of awesome shit going on in the 2010 one: Rebecca De Mornay, Jaime King, Patrick Flueger, Deborah Ann Woll, Shawn Ashmore, Kandyse McClure. It's like, ideal.)
Anyway, ol' Shelby's breakin' down in a big old way, just at sixes at sevens the poor guy, pacing and sweating and yelling and half-formed sentences and the whole nine. I mean, legitimately that is tough. He doesn't even know they trashed his boat! So he goes into hostage freakout mode for a while, and then suddenly -- and totes correctly -- realizes that Norman is to blame for every single part of what has gone wrong tonight, so he shoves the gun in his face, which I did not care for one bit, and Dylan and Norma distract him, and he wheels around on Norma and that's when Norman starts getting a little... Um, a little redrum, Mrs. Torrance. Namron. (Mother.)
But only when he hits her. She's swearing, absurdly, that nothing between them has to change, and no less absurdly is he swearing that he was not using his Asian sex-slave for Asian sex-slavery, and the punching starts, and then Norman flips the fuck out, barreling him into a tchotchke hutch and whatever, and while it would have been fun to see him go fully Long Kiss Goodnight ninja, like flip a knife in Shelby's eye or something, that is not the show we're watching, so: Brute strength, blunt objects. Just like with Dylan that first night, just like with Sam that first day.
Of course, having gone ham for the necessarily amount of time, Norman quickly blacks out, which means the firefight that immediately ensues between a bruised and bleeding Zach, and a swiftly shot-up Dylan, takes place alongside and around Norma's attempts to rouse Norman from his usual coma and then -- eventually -- dragging him to the front door in a visually relevant way, all the way out to the porch.
On the subject of Zach and Dylan's fight, which ranges all over the house and is nasty and scary and bad -- and most of all is bringing into heaven, into the only safe place left on earth, guns, and what they represent -- we will say little because a gunfight on paper is no gunfight at all.
But Norma calls 911 while she's waiting for Norman to wake up, and when he eventually comes around enough to limp down the hill with her, they make it to the car. She realizes she's forgotten her keys, and goes into meltdown about that -- without a functioning Norman to get her in line, it spirals quickly -- and then some fight-ending shots ring out. They sound different because they are different, so we'll know the fight is conclusively over, and the last thing we saw up the hill was Dylan fumbling for more bullets and bleeding out.
So that when the person comes down the hill, backlit by the blazing lights of their house, it could be one or the other. For the second time in seventeen years, Norma finds herself hoping that shadowy figure stalking toward them down the steps, slowly, will be Dylan and not his double. Bad news: It is Shelby. Good news: He drops dead on his face right before taking her out where she sits, behind the wheel. And then there's Dylan. She's never been so happy to see his face.
She throws herself on him, like she just learned this new thing called "hugs" from Emma Dekody, and he is for a moment more her son than ever before: You can see him wanting to relax into it, just like this morning, and not knowing how. But we know their bodies, we know how they cry out for this and how much they can't stand to be apart and can't stand to be together, and so we feel their relief and repulsion right alongside them, and it is excellent.
And when Dylan tells her "We're safe," all she can do is cry. The "we" sounds right, this time.
6+ MOS AGO
Dylan jokes around to calm her down, and she notices her son is bleeding, and remembers she called the cops. Without a Norman handy, she immediately goes into hand-wringing about "what are we gonna do," but he quickly reminds her who she's dealing with. It's like a slap to the face.
Dylan: "We? We are going to tell the entire truth. Your world is lies right now and it's making Norman crazy, and between you and me I kind of care what happens to you, and that means it's making us both crazy too. And half the time you're just spinning stories and you don't even know what's going on. So I'm going to tell what I know."
Norma: "Like you know anything. You know what? You wanna help steer this shit? Because you are not prepared for the facts. You think you're in charge of the story now, you're going to protect and you're going to invade? Then by God, here's the whole story. It's going to set you on fire."
And it does. It's nothing we don't know, but it's 60 percent of the first season to get there, so we run through the pilot's opening few minutes again, explaining how Sam was a little bit angry one day six months or so ago. Feeling man pains about how they didn't have any money, and what money they did have she was spending, and what she was spending it on made him feel like crap too, things like curtains for their deteriorating house, and everything was going -- I'd imagine -- pretty close to the way it usually went, so Norman turned on the blender and tried to wait it out, but the slapping became punching and hair-pulling and bending her over, bending her in half, so he went redrum and dumped out his smoothie and clubbed Sam with it, and the blood was going everywhere, and Norma mourned her dead husband before noticing that Norman was gone, to a place he might not come back from, so she put him in bed and moved the body to the garage in a visually important way and pulled a shelf down on top of her dead husband, awkwardly, and got in the shower.
And when Norman woke up, he found his father, dead of an accident, and at first she couldn't understand why he was so upset -- perhaps, as he bashed on the door, she thought she'd be , and she wouldn't have been wrong -- and then when she saw him, this beautiful sweet boy, terrified and mourning for his bloody father, she realized just how much she'd be carrying, from now on. And so she has. And any pain for Sam went away, and was replaced with sadness for her son, who was never going to be okay.
Dylan: "So like, what is wrong with him?"
What's wrong with him is right there, down the hill, smiling blankly and wondering what all the commotion is about, still not quite with us, as Norma and Dylan sit on the steps like old friends, as the sirens come closer and closer, talking only of him: This boy, the sweetest boy in the world. This beautiful lake in a world of concrete.
Norma: "Could be an isolated incident, who knows. But he's innocent of it. Not in theory, but in practice. It wasn't his fault, in any way. He didn't know what he was doing, and he doesn't know it now. And he must be protected. And that's all you want too."
"So you can either get out of my way, or you can help me."
WEEK
Whole new show, I guess. I'm guessin' Dylan does a little of both. First motel guest, lingering question marks with the cops -- who probably have noticed a pattern, at this point, here at the Bates Motel -- and fallout from the relationships that have come to define the show. Four episodes left, full of Remo and Romero and what happens when things fall apart and come back together. I guess it's possible that Jiao is out there somewhere in the Vancouver wilderness, living off berries and slowly coming off heroin, but I don't know that that's the better option. See you then.
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.