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Previously, let's see... Norma moved her son Norman to White Pine Bay, where they bought a hotel to renovate using her dead husband's life insurance money. A son from her first marriage, Dylan, showed up to ruin everything but ended up being the coolest person you have ever met in your life. Norman got into a love triangle with a Backbrace Girl and a Lisbon Girl, but ended up pissing them both off at a dance. After some fisticuffs, Norman was taken home by a teacher, who was in the middle of being about to molest him when she got murdered all to hell. But since Norman has these sex-related blackouts where Mother takes over, he doesn't know what happened .
That night, I think, Bradley Martin -- the popular, vague one -- finds out her dad was having an affair before somebody aimed his car, with his burning on-fire body in it, toward her bus stop. So she jumps off a bridge because she has had it, and is taken to an institution; Norman ruins Miss Watson's funeral by being super weird, because obviously that is what Norman is gonna do.
Four months later, things have settled down in White Pine Bay. Norma's hotel is doing hella business, Dylan's interested in paying rent, Emma's looking glamorous as hell, and Norma's got a kicky new 'do. Norman's about equally fixated on Miss Watson's death and his taxidermy hobby, even though it's the summertime, and likes to practice driving by driving to her cemetery and relax by staring blankly at the wall and fondling her pearls when he's not down in the basement, because that's also how Norman rolls.
What's neat about the Watson stuff is, you spend the episode thinking Norma and Norman are both in the same kind of weirded-out fugue about whether or not he killed her, but then at the end he opens up that the problem is actually his blackout preventing her from getting killed, because he loved her and would have protected her. That's really cool, and not at all expected, at least until Norman goes running to Romero's office with a picture of a strange man at her gravesite who probably is not the killer.
Stressing over Norman's total weirdness as usual, Norma also finds out that they're going through with those highway plans she keeps thinking -- and we know from the movie -- are going to wreck the business. This takes her to a memorable WPB City Council Meeting, where we hit all the classic Norma highlights: She feels entitled to be a part of the conversation, pissed off when she's left out of the conversation, flattered to be invited to the conversation, shocked that people are being dicks by only pretend-inviting her to the conversation, and even more shocked to learn that it's somehow unacceptable to yell into the microphone that the City Council are fucking dicks, even if they are factually being dicks. (Or that their town runs on illicit drug money, which is also true but will get your ass set on fire if you talk about it.)
Bradley, though, Bradley is an interesting case. I always loved her but I feel like this episode goes a long way explaining why: She gets out of the mental institution, now walking like a cowpoke who never blinks, and goes on a tour of the town trying to figure out who killed her dad just by staring them in the eye. Except for Norman, who she allows in her room (after returning all his letters) but then won't look him in the eye, because he Nice Guy'd her and let Mother talk to her, which is two dealbreakers. Ginger Gil, the head of the drug mob that Dylan works for, tries to brush her off but then tells Dylan at work that Miss Blair Watson was Jerry Martin's girlfriend, among others, and implies heavily that he is in fact responsible.
To his credit, of course, Dylan immediately tells Bradley all of this, since even Bradley knows better than to mess with the drug kingpins of WPB. Or at least, she did. Instead, she shows back up at Gil's house loaded for bear and ready to play the "daddy issues" card until she gets what she wants. One lapdance and an abortive blowjob later, Bradley Martin has blown the head clean off the top of WPB drug world food chain, which makes me wonder whether Dylan and Remo are going to get a promotion now. Later Gil, you were the worst and now you are a puddle sliding down a wall.
I mean you could see blood and brains everywhere! It was awesome. Bradley right now is just like that song from Frozen, but plus blowjobs and guns: What else could you possibly need. That's everything good. I am on the edge of my seat to find out what Bradley does , because she is my number one hero tonight. My biggest fear in this world -- that she will pull her shit together anytime soon -- is I think unfounded, considering she goes straight to Norman Bates to help hide her from the consequences.
Week: Romero now has to solve like three murders, all of which are at the heart of a gross love situation we don't even know about yet. Norma tries to get Norman to join the school play, but of course he's in over his head hiding another young woman in their house. (Here's hoping this one survives longer than Jiao, RIP.)
Want more? The full recap starts right below!If you find yourself getting stabbed to death in the shower out of nowhere, your first and last question is probably going to be something like, "What the fuck?"
If you find yourself watching somebody get stabbed to death out of nowhere, the horror lies somewhere else, less visceral: "What the fuck happened to Norman Bates?"
Psycho is indelible, like all good psychological horror, because you are left wondering what lead to the point where the stabbing starts, how the lady got mummified down in the basement, who the monster is, how we got here, if it could happen to you. It asks those questions and this odd little show answers them, in a complicated and surprisingly loving way:
What the fuck happened to Norman Bates? Life.
What the fuck did Norma Bates do to her son? Loved him.
Who's the monster? No such thing. Find a better word.
PREVIOUSLY
Norma took the lemons of her abusive husband's mysterious death, and made lemonade: Specifically, establishing a northwestern paradise where she could raise a man in perfect harmony with the world. The world did not approve, and found a million and one ways to punish her for even thinking such a thought. Sent wolves and monsters and demons and bears to her door, all with one intention: To keep her from saving him, to drag that boy out of her home and into the concrete world.
Her older son showed up, and basically beat himself bloody against the door until she grudgingly let him in. Lovers descended on her innocent son, tearing him into a million horny pieces. There were sex slaves and drug wars and pioneer justice and violation and tons of murders. But in the end, Norma and her boys made it to the other side. Nearly.
While Norma and Sheriff Romero were taking out the last of the sex slavers, freeing her up to do her best with the motel, Norman was at a school dance ditching one girl -- his best friend -- and getting the shit kicked out of him for loving another, whose own feelings had settled on his brother; whose own father died under mysterious circumstances. When his teacher Miss Watson offered him a ride home, every part of him was telling him it was dangerous, and that's when he blacked out and found himself running home in the rain.
THE MORNING
It's raining hard, still; the storm lights up Juno the Taxidermied Dog as Norman tosses and turns. Downstairs, Norma gets a recorded call from the phone tree: Miss Blaire Watson -- "B" is for "Blaire," as in Bradley's father's mysterious lover whose first name we're hearing for the first time -- was found with her throat slashed all to hell after the dance last night, so there's no school on Monday because of the funeral. (As we'll learn, Miss Watson was from an old White Pine Bay family, in some circles at least.)
Norman: "What's up? I could feel you getting weird down here."
Norma: "Can you go over the events of last night for me again? Just real quick."
Norman: "I had a shitty night, Miss Watson offered me a ride, cut to I was running home in the rain."
Norma: "It's that lacuna I'm interested in. Did you get in the car?"
Norman: "That's the opposite of running around in the rain, right? What's up?"
Norma, verbatim: "Apparently someone killed her."
FUNERAL
Emma stares, not entirely coldly, as Norman leans heavily on his mother, sobbing loudly enough that he breaks the minister's concentration. It's a very Bates moment, the kind of thing Norma does five times a day, but it throws her off a lot more when it's not her doing it. Staunch Dylan holds the umbrella over them -- trying to love Norman, as always, from the other side of Norma's body -- and when Norman finally collapses, he takes her purse, so she can wrap her arms around their boy.
BACK HOME
Norman stares out the window, utterly uninterested in food.
Norman: "She was so kind, why would anybody hurt her?"
Norma: "Perspective, honey. Nobody ever knows anybody. You knew the part that paid attention to you and believed in you and your weird short fiction, for sure. But we only ever see the tip of anybody's iceberg. You could be a good teacher, or a good cop, or a good boyfriend, but that doesn't rule out they might also have a Chinese sex slave chained up in their basement."
Norman: "For reasons that have to do with my psychology, I cannot be hearing that she wasn't an awesome person right now."
Norma: "I'm not saying she wasn't! I'm just saying we see what people want us to see. And vice versa. Everybody wears different faces -- that doesn't mean any of them are lies. Just that we're not usually capable of seeing the whole thing. Everybody's a Picasso."
Norman: "But what of justice?"
Norma: "Oh, honey. Not your problem. Take it from one who knows."
She leaves and Norman stands still at the window, in the rain. Fondling Miss Watson's pearls.
BRADLEY
I think this was last night, but maybe it's tonight when the sun goes down: Bradley drives her little two-seater very fast all over the place, mascara in a definite downward spiral, with the love letters between her father and the mysterious "B," having lost him twice: Once to immolation, and now again to the fact that she never really knew him. She is swigging straight from the bottle because -- as we'll see -- when Bradley Martin decides to go crazy, she means to go all the way crazy.
Brother, brother, brother / You need to learn a thing or two
...Lie, lie, lie / And you look me in the eye
Brother, brother, brother / Little boy, you've got some nerve
Brother, brother, brother / You're gonna...
After a great shot of her abandoned car, cattywampus on the bridge, we join her at the edge of it and just as the song is expressing her deepest thing, which is right that her dad can go fuck himself wherever he is, she drops straight down, and the music goes silent. Credits! I forgot how this show rolls, that was amazing.
Also, Bradley is my favorite and I would never forgive this show if they killed her off. What they are doing instead is taking the reason she is my favorite, which was always mostly implicit unless you were looking for it, and made it shine brighter than the sun. I tend to forget these recaps soon after I write them, so I might be repeating myself, but there is no iconic character I love more than the Serena van der Woodsen/Lisbon Girl except one: When the Lisbon Girl goes Dark Phoenix. Marnie Michaels on Girls is fully in the solution this season, just on fire with it. Serena, man, every time she'd edge up on full crazy I would get letters from readers telling me not to get my hopes up.
It's not about gender or gay stuff, at least not directly, and it's sure as hell not about camp: It's that I identify most with characters who are firmly treated as though their outsides are their insides, characters whose narratives are about how we moderate and mediate sexual objectification as a tool and a weapon, as prison and glory. It's not even always about being a commodity so much as being radioactive: You are always under surveillance, you are always a Thing -- you are always a mirror to pieces of whatever man is looking at you -- and while that's true for absolutely everybody, it's something only women and gay dudes have to be constantly and consistently aware of, for the purposes of survival. So when a Lisbon Girl says fuck it, that's about as satisfying as things get for me, televisually. "Tear off your own head, it's a doll revolution."
4 MOS LATER
Norma's got a kicky new haircut and she is just about as happy as anybody ever was. Butterflies in the grass, summertime boarders down filling up the motel, she's got it all. Haim singing about how it's gonna be okay no matter what, the whole nine. Down in the office, Emma's checking people in left and right. She looks gorgeous! The summer is doing her well.
Emma neither knows nor hugely cares where Norman is, which means they both know where he is: A shadow passes over Norma's face, and Emma jumps to go find him, but Norma shrugs and heads back up the hill, to the basement.
Have we been down here before? Nothing sticks out. Now, it's a whole new thing anyway: Classical music, near-darkness illuminated by cobwebbed lamps over tables. Taxidermied animals everywhere. He's doing a beaver today, bloody scalpel in his hand; the precision of doing things right. That growing sophistication in his art.
Norma: "Get your cute little butt upstairs, we have a business!"
Norman: "But Mother, I am busy. I must finish."
Norma: "Meaning five minutes? Five hours? I have no way of knowing how long it takes to take apart a woodchuck and put it back together again. We got a line out there."
Norman: "It is a beaver, not a woodchuck, and it is very important. The most sophisticated animal I've ever gotten to work on solo."
Norma: "My whole life is about keeping you away from those. Now get upstairs and do normal things! Swimmin' holes. Stealin' bowling shoes. Cramming yourself into telephone booths. It's summertime, you need some color! But also to help me run our sold-out motel!"
God's like, "Oh, is Norma Bates happy? How the fuck did I let that happen? Let me find my keys, I'll be right there."
OFFICE
Emma and Norman are passably chill with each other, but it's sad how they aren't best friends. She really did try to help him not fuck that up, if you recall. So world-wise about the ways of sex and everything and still so shocked when he pulled out his crazy like that. You'd think a girl with that much going on would be impervious to shame, but shame with malice behind it? Nobody can weather that. He was a real little prick at that dance. I'm sure they'll work it out, though. There is no better bro in all of WPB than Emma Dekody, except maybe Dylan Massett.
Emma: "I don't know how to say this where it's not weird, but here's a huge stack of letters you wrote to Bradley Martin in the mental institution after her suicide attempt. All marked Return to Sender."
Norman: "You did that in absolutely the classiest way possible, actually. Thanks. Um, I was concerned about her, is why there are hundreds of them. After the accident..."
Emma: "Suicide attempt."
Norman: "I know that, Daria! Don't make me flap my arms around this early in the morning. It was a euphemism."
Emma: "I know, kid. Sorry. She's getting out today, by the way. Jenna told me."
Norman: "Why would Jenna tell you about Bradley's comings and goings?"
Emma, awesomely: "It was weird, I was like, How's Bradley doing? and she was like, The answer to your question is she's coming home today."
Norman: "Cool, that doesn't turn my world upside down or anything. Thanks for the info. Glad she's better and absolutely not scheming on how to turn this to my advantage, like some kind of gross Nice Guy."
BRADLEY
Oh, Bradley's doing great. Zombie eyes, lank hair, yard-long stare. You can tell she's got plans, she's got shit to do, in the same way that gargoyles and Green Man sculptures always seem to have an agenda. But what is it? I hope it is doing more awesome things.
Do you remember that part in Fight Club where they say that if self-improvement is masturbation, self-destruction is _________? I think we all fill in that blank for ourselves, if we're lucky enough to get to that question at all. Whatever Bradley puts there, I can already tell you I'm gonna be in full support.
When Mrs. Martin arrives to get Bradley in her old dress and sandals that fit weird now and walking this new way that is like a cowpoke walks, Bradley is not having her mess. Barely says hello; slides through the hug like it's made of fog. Whatever her shit is that she has to do, it does not involve indulging her mother.
KITCHEN
Norma's hair! I still can't get over it. She's cooking when Dylan appears, and she actually smiles at him without even thinking about it.
Dylan: "I want to give you money. I keep saying I want to move out, or steal your son and move out, but neither of those things is happening, so here is money."
Norma: "That's so sweet! Wait, I forgot to be horrible to you, hang on... got it. I'm not taking your money, Dylan! I know where it comes from -- your highly successful drug industry job, among the gross men that control our every movement and set one another on fire from time to time."
Dylan: "Norma, be a doll and stop busting my balls. If you're not touching drug money, that rules out every business in town. No laundry, no car wash..."
Norma: "My motel doesn't run on the drug trade! Except when it does."
Dylan: "I am enough of an adult to find all of this hilarious and loveable. I'm gonna leave this money on the counter, and you can have this fight with yourself. Due diligence. But I am going to need you to at least acknowledge how hard I am -- and have been, for a while now -- trying."
She does, not that she wants him to see it. There's something in the twirl, in the set of her hips as she swings back toward the sink that is just chilling. It's like she sees him with one eye as her son (her lesser son, but still her child) and with the other, as a man. With all the danger that implies, but access to none of the tricks she automatically flips into when she's dealing with a man. It's like one eighth of her body wants to flirt with him, just to get some kind of control over the situation and the rest of her body is like, "Bitch, we've been through this. Come on."
And you're saying, What about Norman? That's a completely different thing: He would have to exist separately, to be Other, before her body would act that way. She drapes herself around him because they are separated by a single meaningless letter: That's not flirtation, that's manifest destiny. Everybody's a Picasso.
DRIVING
For instance, how much does Norma hate being in the passenger seat while Norman's driving that sweet-ass old Mercedes? A million. He can feel her, too; shifty eyes looking into every mirror at once, just like hers. At one point he actually slaps her hand away, but it's somehow adorable. The fields go by, and the distracting rattles, and all the time this monologue:
"Are you gonna pass this guy? Then why did you look in the side mirror and edge out like that? Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! You're too far off the road on this side! Get back towards the middle. Excuse me if I don't want you to suddenly find your wheel off the road in the dirt, and then suddenly we veer off into a tree... if you are going to pass this guy, which you should, make sure it's totally clear and then use your blinker... Okay. Go, go, go, go, go! Floor it, floor it! Get around this guy. Hurry!"
This is Norma, helping. It's everything you need to know about Norma right there.
Norman: "Like I need your counsel to avoid driving into a tree."
Norma: "You got around that guy pretty awesome. That was a thrill."
Norman: "Was that a compliment? Did you pry your white knuckles off the dashboard long enough to hand me an actual compliment?"
Norma: "Oh, for God's sake. Do you not want to learn? I'm trying to help."
Norman: "It's kind of like I'm not driving at all."
No, that's not what he says. What he says is, "I'm not sure that I am driving."
He's not wrong. Maybe he never will be.
CEMETERY
Norma: "Oh, Norman. Not here, again. She died four months ago already!"
Norman: "Specifically, she was murdered. I never got the chance to say goodbye. One way or the other, I was not there at the time."
Norma: "I am absurdly jealous! You worship this dead woman, I mean, it was horrible. Yes. And it was sad. But she wasn't your friend, or your girlfriend, or your... um, relative..."
Norman: "You keep acting like mourning the death of someone special, and doing my favorite hobby, are things that are abnormal."
Norma: "They are both incredibly morbid, is that coincidence? Days spent mooning over some dead teacher, nights spent taking apart dead animals..."
Norman: "At this point is usually when it becomes about you..."
Norma: "It makes me feel like a bad mother!"
Norman: "There it is. Look, you're not a bad mother. You're being weird about being weird, that's what's weird. You know what, you fuckin' drive. I'm done."
He gets out and she shifts over, which cracked me up because in the Gus Van Sant version of Psycho -- which I always forget to compare this with the Hitchcock but was of course famously and hollowly shot-for-shot -- the weirdest part is how everybody kept sliding sideways out of the car. You're in the driver's seat, you park, you unbuckle and slide out the passenger door. So fucking weird and funny. And even funnier here, because her knees are all crankled up at the wheel as she arranges herself.
Although in the annals of this particular thing they do, nothing will probably ever be funnier than that time she got out of the car and went around the car and jerked him out of the passenger door. That was high mirth. Sad, and scary and funny… like this:
"Oh. Whew, whoa, you're going 42! I saw the speed limit was 35. And you hit two of those bump thingies in the middle of the road. I'm afraid you might just suddenly veer off into an oncoming truck, or..."
Her words, coming out of his mouth. Again.
She swerves to attack a highway crew, driving right into their business, but to be fair she pulls herself together immediately. She's getting better at the concrete world. I would imagine the motel's success has a lot to do with that: The safer you feel, the less crazy you act. One more paradox.
Norma: "Excuse me, what is the meaning of this?"
Builder: "Bypass road, connecting to the main highway across town? It's been on the books for about a million years?"
Norma: "Yeah, I kind of thought I'd killed that through sheer force of will?"
Builder: "Sorry, we break ground Monday."
God's like, "There we go. Whew." Although as my friend Paul pointed out, it's something of a touchstone with the movie itself that I never picked up on: Norman explains at one point that the reason his motel is so creepy and weird and surrounded by quicksand -- selling points, for the embezzling lady on the go -- is because of this thing that is currently happening, which explains why the highway's been such a motif this whole time. That, and the whole idea of Norma getting screwed no matter what she does, by the (literally) concrete world.
Norma: "They're actually building it. I thought I had time to fight it."
Norman: "What did he say, Mother?"
Norma: "This is the road that's going to ruin our lives."
I am no fan of the person Stephen King is now, but I am a selective devotee of lots of his work. My favorites are the Richard Bachman ones, I reread those like they're Cormier. One of the best, for understanding this headspace, is called Roadwork actually, and it's about this: A person whose life is going to be destroyed by a similar construction project, and how nuts he is prepared to go about that fact. Great story, with this same Orwellian feeling of the world crushing down on you that is so typical of the Bachman books, and of Norma's everyday existence. I feel a "You gotta fight the power" speech coming on.
THAT NIGHT
Norman drops by her bedroom to say he's just going into the village -- by which obviously he means scam on Bradley, because he is a dog with a bone -- and she's on her tummy, ankles crossed in Dear Diary mode, manically tapping away.
Norma: "No problem, I'm just putting myself on the agenda for the White Pine Bay City Council meeting. I am going to rouse the rabble, speak about the bypass, make a stand."
Norman: "Do you have a clear plan on what you're going to say? You should be prepared."
Norma: "I have until tomorrow."
Norman: "No, this is one of those things where you think being right is going to help you. You are going to wing it and it's going to be a disaster, because you're such a narcissist you think screaming IT'S NOT FAIR will bring mighty forces to your aid, if you only scream it the precise right amount of times. But that only works in here. Out there in the concrete world, people are persuaded by facts, arguments, rational logic. You're already a woman, you are already punching up. You need to come correct, Mother."
Norma: "I am prepared! With righteousness!"
Norman: "No see that's exactly what I..."
Norma: "Norman, we have to fight this! You've got to stand up for yourself in life! You can't let the world run over you!"
Norman: "That's exactly what I'm talking about. You cannot stop a city from building a road by will alone. No amount of abuse from any number of dead husbands will earn you that."
Not getting through. She pulls him over to the window and wraps herself around him, like a starfish, pointing out toward that beautiful neon blue. He closes his eyes, enraptured and they breathe with pride.
"We did that. All those cars, all those people out there in our motel, all of them -- every single one -- found us driving along the main road. Remember that first night we got to turn on the No Vacancy sign? You remember what that felt like? We started over. We came here to do it, and we did it, and I'm not letting anyone take that away from us. I will figure it out."
He knows when he's beat and takes off. She kicks her heels back up, and continues planning not what she will say, but how it will feel. A kiss on the cheek and a smile that fades as soon as he hits the landing, her voice echoing down: "You'll see, Norman. We're gonna do this. It's all gonna be good!"
BRADLEY
Bradley pulls up into Gil's driveway, in a woody this time. She stalks about like a zombie in the night, never breaking eye contact. You remember redhead Gil – a.k.a. CPO Laird from the Battlestar Pegasus -- he's the top of the drug trade food chain as we currently understand it: Jimmy Bradley's formerly unseen boss that partnered Dylan with first Ethan and then Remo, the guy who believes in him.
Gil: "Bradley Martin, what do you want?"
Bradley: "What I want is, the information of who killed my dad. Don't bullshit a bullshitter, you worked with him every day. Help me solve this case."
Gil: "That is not how we do it in this town. How old are you, even?"
Bradley: "Old enough. If we're going down that route."
Gil: "You do not want to hear anything I have to say about your dad, besides I'm sorry for you."
Bradley: "I'm a big girl with a big crazy inside me. Try it."
Gil: "Fine. Your father was a disloyal shitheel who was out only for himself. Honor among thieves is a real thing and that's why he is dead. If you want to come inside, I can tell you more."
Bradley: "That is the rapiest thing I've heard all day. No thank you, sir."
Gil: "Wuss."
She fades back into the night, fully aware of the implications of everything that dude just said, but pretty much stymied.
Back home she goes through all the stuff again -- she has a dressform in her bedroom, I feel like I've noticed that before, it's interesting -- and there's the letters from B, and a pocket watch, and then suddenly a gun in the box. You would think that would be notable, or... where did this box come from? They were like, "Oh, let's not be nosy with the suicide girl's stuff. Just put it on her bed with a gun in it."
Her gun safety behavior is, to my untrained eye, very professional: She checks the clip, pops it back in, loads the chamber, aims at nowhere. Interesting girl, that Bradley Martin. I guess in retrospect it's good that we know she can handle a gun. She fingers the hole for a second, and then kind of abruptly brings the muzzle around to her face. As hard to watch as it is -- as deeply serious as this is, even under these heightened WPB circumstances -- I kind of enjoyed imagining that this is the kind of thing Bradley was always into, like, this is what she was doing up in her room this whole time, even before he died. It would make her magnetic attraction to Norman both more understandable and completely new, for starters.
Anyway, whether this Lynchian tableau is new or old Bradley Martin, it's interrupted by Mrs. M, who has let Norman into the house. Bradley's body wavers; nearly shuts the door the second it hears his name.
She sits at her desk, refusing to look at him after the Mother incident but not sending him away either. She scratch-scratches at something, drawing or writing something, while he talks. It's sad but a different kind of sad, how they aren't friends right now. What he is doing is very, very brave. It's also kind of gross, but he's such an earnest kid that you can't call him out for that part of it. He's not being disingenuous: He's being the thing that everybody loves in him or wants from him. He's being an innocent monster.
Norman: "I wrote you nearly every day..."
Bradley: "Yeah, but that would've invalidated me going ghost, which was the point."
Norman: "And now I am here to express feelings. Concern? Interest. How are you..."
Bradley: "Awesome. Human relationships are glorious, aren't they, Norman?"
Norman: "You say that almost like I'm the one doing an experiment. Maybe you're right. Listen, I am here to say one specific, cringe-worthy, kind of awful thing and then I will go."
"I heard that you tried to kill yourself and I tried to imagine what that would feel like, wanting to do that. It must have been terribly isolating, feeling that you had nowhere to turn, no one to talk to, no way out."
There's a way in which I don't even think he knows how cunning he's being. On the surface it's pretty standard stuff, but remember too that mirroring back her feelings about her father's death was how he got her in the first place: Not only You are so real to me, Lisbon Girl, that I tried to empathize with you but also the kicker, which is And I did pretty well. And the secret bonus neither of them know, which is: Because we are the same.
"But, uh, you never need to feel that way. You need to know that you can always talk to me and that I will always be there for you, if you need me. As a friend. I just wanted to tell you that."
She doesn't move, doesn't breathe, doesn't wake from her spell until the door closes. Then it's back to the gargoyle task at hand.
At this time I'd imagine she thought something like, "That is a very nice thing to say, boy I don't care about one way or the other. But if this was Flatland you would be a circle and I would be a sphere. You don't comprehend one tiny bit of what I'm dealing with, so this is just a very nice sentiment. Boys think putting enough Kindness Coins in the Girl Machine results in Sex Prizes, nothing new there. I thought you were better than that, but nobody ever is."
But it doesn't mean he doesn't mean it, and she knows that too. In a way, by doing the most obvious move he is actually moving the goalposts entirely: They already slept together, he (well, Mother) already called her a slut and scared her, and now he's saying there's a whole new story where we go back to basics and I am just your Emma again. Which is fine, because Dylan is still her Bradley.
CEMETERY
After some perfervid Miss Watson memories and guilt images and general feverishness -- obit in one hand, pearls in the other -- Norman sets out once again to the cemetery, dressed nicely with a bouquet. He comes upon a man we don't know yet, standing at her grave and goes into predator mode: Flanks the guy, starts taking pictures. The fake camera-sound of a phone camera alerts the visitor immediately, and eventually Norman is chased off a small cliff and rolls down onto the road, taking his pictures with him.
The effect onscreen is not the same as on paper, so I will tell you that Norman's mindset in this episode is not what we might think. Probably Norma has a question mark in her head about whether Norman murdered Miss Watson, and nothing he says is particularly comforting in that respect, but I had a genuine moment of surprise late in the episode when Norman said what's really going on this whole time, and I think it makes more sense on paper to talk about it here:
He is tremendously guilty about Miss Watson's death, and blacking out at her apartment, but not because he thinks he did it: That's the one thing Norma, and now Dylan, are tasked with keeping off his radar entirely if you recall. He's guilty because he loved her, and if he hadn't blacked out and vanished, he could have saved her. Never forget the man Norman Bates could be. And what that particular kind of guilt means is that he has to solve her murder, not let them sweep it under the WPB rug like everything else, because that's what a good man does.
So then the question becomes, how do we protect Norman from uncovering the murderer if we think -- even a little bit -- that he might be the one that did it? Not even a Picasso has enough dimensions that it can see itself. It'll rip right in half.
DRUGS PLACE
Hippies sorting pot, Dylan stacking giant bags of pot. All kinds of drug things.
Gil: "By the by, if you see Jerry Martin's kid poking around, send her away. Nobody talks. Snitches get stitches in ditches."
Dylan: "What's going on?"
Gil: "She came to my gorgeous house last night asking shit like who killed her dad. I don't need that shit, I already solved my Jerry Martin problem."
Dylan: "I don't even know who that is or what you are talking about, but okay."
Gil: "She got locked up! Which is a shame, because she's smoking hot."
Dylan: "...It's barely okay for me to think that, you fucking monster."
Remo: "I am still on this show and thank God because I'm great. How's it going?"
Dylan: "Why does Gil hate Jerry Martin so much?"
Remo: "Here's a bunch of helpful information all at once. Jerry Martin was sleeping with his girlfriend, Blaire Watson, who not only was murdered four months ago but was also -- get this -- the daughter of the other big weed family in White Pine Bay."
Dylan: "Wow, my baby brother almost got molested by and possibly then murdered royalty? Impressively horrible. I can't imagine this won't have a thousand hideous consequences that affect every major storyline and character."
I didn't even hear that line about the weed dynasties last night, but it does change a heck of a lot. So you've got Jerry, Gil and this abusive telephone guy "Eric" all thinking Miss Watson is their girlfriend. Gil, Jerry and now Dylan are part of one crew; Miss Watson is blood-related to the other crew but apparently did not have a problem hooking up with multiple people in Gil's crew, which seems calculated to spark off a drug war. (That's exactly how Speedy died in Love and Rockets, Esther Chascarillo pulling the same crap. Human relationships are glorious.)
So… questions: I guess that means that Eric is on the Watson side? I wonder if he'll ever come back in. Or if he was even an actual person. Or if Miss Watson even had prurient designs on Norman, although I do kind of think that's a given at this point. Even if she didn't know it, there was a yuckiness there that said she was looking for oblivion of one kind or another. Seeing how fast Bradley went Dark Phoenix makes me wonder if anybody that loves Norman does it in spite of, and not in some way because of, the darkness. It even fits Emma, who is bros with Death and whose dad is even more bros with Death.
All I know is, nothing better happen to Gil! The whole thing would destabilize. Verona, after Tybalt.
WPBPD
Norman leans down to talk into the circle of the receptionist's window, same as his mother. (He does not smash his nose up against it like an animal, but I can't imagine it would be half as adorable if he did.) When Romero brings him back, he sits on our side of the desk, two cups of coffee, like we are just old friends having a chat and he's barely even really a Sherriff today. Such a Romero move.
Norman: "Okay so today I was at the graveyard on Shepherd's Hill, where Miss Watson's buried, and I saw this strange man standing at her grave. I took some photos... um, I remember one time she was in a screaming fight with somebody named Eric, and I was kind of assuming that's who killed her."
The music recognizes the man, whoever he is; Romero doesn't have a tell one way or the other about this.
Romero: "You go to her grave a lot? Of course you do. How come?"
Norman: "Because it's terrible? Because I had three friends and now I am back to zero friends, not counting Norma? Because murder?"
Romero: "I haven't felt this piercing pain in my temples since the last time I talked to a Bates. Must be going on four months now. Hey, have you ever been to her house?"
Norman: "Miss Watson's house? Ha! Ha! What a funny question. It has a funny answer, ha! Ha!"
Romero: "What is this that you are doing?"
Norman: "Just being super weird, ha! Sorry! Um, I went there one time or whatever. She was into my fiction, she wanted to help me publish it and so we met there... you know, she was a really good teacher. Always very appropriate in her behavior and..."
Romero: "I mean, it's not like we would know your prints from her house, you've never been fingerprinted before because you've never done like a hundred crimes, right?"
Norman: "Ha! I mean, all kids are fingerprinted so that's a weird thing to say, but ha! I bet lots of students went to her house. Not because she was a whore or a child molester or anything, just because of how community-oriented..."
Romero: "Okay kid I can't handle you anymore. I'll take care of it, okay?"
Norman: "Can I email you these photos of this random man? For the investigation?"
Romero: "You do whatever you want with them, kid. Man, you're tragic."
WPB CITY COUNCIL
This lady of the PTA does not wanting young adults reading Crime and Punishment, because of a prostitute named Sonya who helps redeem the main character, a hatchet murderer of an old lady. It's dumb. This woman Marcy has put together a list of better books instead, which everybody pretends is very interesting and then they call to end the meeting. What happens is a flameout in many steps.
First, Norma stands up on her two feet and asks why she wasn't on the agenda. The dick heading up the council asks backwards questions so she makes less and less sense, until finally she gets to say why she is actually there, which is to register her problem with the bypass road.
Dick: "And you are?"
Norma: "I'm Norma Bates, I own the sold-out Bates Motel!"
Dick: "Yeah, and?"
Norma: "Annnnnnd this new bypass is gonna screw me, so."
Dick: "By all means, come up to the microphone."
Norma: "Because I finally have a voice in the concrete world?"
Dick: "No, so I can torture you. Have you not seen this show before?"
The whole thing with the bad man who thought he should own the motel, remember, that started because he pissed her off in exactly this way: The idea that the world could sustain a woman with her own business and her own life apart from the ways and cruelties of men was just so preposterous and vile to him that he ended up attacking her. And the whole time she just kept saying, "I'm pretty sure I'm allowed to exist whether or not you fucking signed off on it," and the world kept saying she was too proud, too naïve, too silly to think that was ever a possibility.
And now here it is happening again -- in public -- and she's walking right into it again, and it's the same piece of property and the same conspiracy against her, which is a real thing! Institutionalized pressures and self-reinforcing systems are everywhere, it's true. It's not crazy to perceive and acknowledge those lazy cages of privilege and tradition that keep certain interests on top forever and ever. The crazy part, the part where you're being crazy, is the part where you refuse to work with them, thinking that by simply being right you've earned a place untouched by them.
So she steps up to the mic, which is of course physically hilarious to watch; she's proud as hell to be invited to the conversation -- finally, after a year or however long, part of the real world, a successful business owner, they said it couldn't be done -- and he just starts ripping at her immediately.
Dick: "So what's your plan for stopping the bypass, 'Norma Bates'?"
Norma: "To express my views, to the City Council?"
Dick: "Which you have done. And?"
Norma: "To scream loudly that it is not fair? No, that won't fly. Okay, I will give a big dramatic speech. About how White Pine Bay is northwestern gorgeous, and quaint, and this is a deal with the devil that only means big box stores and..."
Dick: "Our town doesn't deserve the money that comes with a highway and big new stores?"
Anybody else on Earth, when they say "You did not just say that to me," they are employing a rhetorical device. When Norma makes this particular nutty face, what she is saying is, literally, "You did not just say that to me." That turtle thing she does, retracting her face into her neck -- she does this, at this point, at least twice. It is easily the craziest-looking thing she does and it gives me the willies every time, like she's literally insulted by reality. There's something of getting hit in it, too, but she only does it when she's enraged so that's not the first thing you notice.
Dick: "So you don't want business to succeed, unless it's your business. Got it. I think you're a little confused -- by which, yes, I mean female -- and frankly out of line -- which is also dog-whistle code for female -- and I'm not even going to bother finishing this sentence. All in favor of ending the meeting? Ayes have it."
Oh, Dick. Oh, you do not know Norma Bates. But you are about to. Because one thing she never is, is confused. And one thing she always is, is out of fucking line.
"YOU ARE A DICK. Do you not understand that I am stuck in your drugged-out rape town because of this stupid bypass? I'm underwater, I was sold this property under false circumstances by a boy I nearly knocked his block off. Maybe that's a topic, real estate fucking fraud. Or, I dunno, the fact that YOUR ENTIRE GODDAMN TOWN RUNS ON DRUG MONEY? Would that not be more helpful than some fucked-up crazy housewife bitching about Dostoyevsky? You're worried about imaginary axe murderers and whores and your town is literally LITTERED with both of those things. I have had at least three of each in my personal goddamn house since I moved here. That's not on me, bitches! That is solely and squarely on your asses. I didn't scum up this motherfucker. I tried to save it."
Dick: "Cool story. Meeting adjourned."
They all file out. But I'm assuming there's gonna be a Patty Chase somewhere during one of these speeches who is going to be like, "Norma Bates, right? You really told the City Council what for, I like your honesty. Let's be friends, until you totally skitz out on me and I remember that red flags are real, and in fact once you hit thirty you can totally read every book by its cover."
DYLAN
Bradley Martin only knows how to drive one particular way, which is: Crazy! She still walks like a cowpoke, I keep trying to find another way to say that which better embodies its awesomeness but nothing quite gets there. Bradley's got swag. The kind of swag you get from looking death right in the eye and being like, "I got some shit to do first, bitch."
Bradley: "Dylan, thanks for finally meeting me at this abandoned park, with graffiti everywhere like a satyr or a man with a raccoon's head. Why so sneaky?"
Dylan: "Obviously because you are starting shit with drug lords and you are a child."
Bradley: "I'll back off when that fucker tells me what I wanna know."
Dylan: "No, you will back off regardless, because you are going to die and he's not gonna tell you anyway."
Bradley: "You have no idea how far I'm willing to go."
Dylan: "I know, that's why I'm here. The truth is that your dad was sleeping with Miss Watson. Her never-uttered first name is Blaire, which apparently you didn't know. She was also Gil's girlfriend and the princess of the other weed kingdom."
Bradley: "So Gil just went around killing everybody? That's messed up."
Dylan: "Going as super crazy as your stillness and raccoon mascara suggest you're about to? I wouldn't recommend it."
Bradley: "Cool how you're all about my safety suddenly. After zero communication."
Dylan: "That was not about not caring about you that was because of Norman. My brother likes you, which is more important than you liking me or me liking you back."
Bradley: "You are being such a tool!"
Dylan: "You seem like you are a person on fire and I don't know how to help those, despite a lifetime of practice."
Bradley: "You've given me just enough to go full-on Black Swan, thanks. See you in hell!"
She rips on out of there and even cool Dylan is like, "Not all the ladies all of the time, but certainly some ladies some of the time, are a fucking brutal hassle. It makes me seethe."
JUST A NORMAL STREET IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAYTIME
Norma: "AH! You scared me!"
Romero: "Literally all I did was walk up to you. How come you're being nuts? I mean, so soon in our conversation."
Norma: "I am having a fucker of a day. What's going on with you?"
Romero: "Your son is once again meddling in our frontier justice. Are you aware he's morbidly obsessed with this teacher dying?"
Norma: "Tell me about it. Look, I know he seems weird but that's just because he is weird. This teacher meant something to him, what it is I have no idea, but he was very into it."
Romero: "I know he's 'sensitive' and somehow you've made that into bonus parenting points on your own behalf, but four months later is no time to be hanging around graves. He needs something else to do."
Norma: "Thanks for your advice! It is very much appreciated!"
They always have such a neat energy with each other, I forgot how it is. It's like they never look right at each other, they always talk past each other's faces. I guess because he's scared of how labile and skittish she is, and because she's scared of how labile and imposing men are. When you think about how much they owe each other, good and bad, it gets delirious real fast. I probably wouldn't talk directly into the eyes either.
HOME
Norman's watching a creature-feature on that old-timey TV. I think it is a giant squid maybe? I had that in my notes, but then later on Gil has a tripartite painting of a giant squid on his wall at his house and it made me think this is a thing. That under the water of WPB there are beasts, and under the water of Norman in the concrete world, there is a beast. That Norma is always just coasting on the surface of the water because of all the people in the world she knows what's down there. Our lives are spent at the tippy-top of these icebergs and if you ever think about what's down there, it'll get you immediately.
I just think -- and this is what is currently saving Bradley, and ultimately will doom Norma and Norman both -- it's your duty to dive down, in, before the squid shows up to drag you away. Norma conflates the problems of the world and the problems of Norma because that's what a narcissist does, so her squid is quite literally everything that is not Norma. Norman's squid is Mother, the cruel twist in his DNA that everybody can see but nobody can name. Their squids, you can't fight. You have to parley. But what makes the other characters sing -- Emma, Dylan, Bradley -- is that they know what their squids are, which is most of the trip. Then it just becomes how you fight it.
(My favorite part of the After Hours show, which was some amazing television to say the least, was when a viewer asked if a particular one of the named future guest stars was going to be a love interest for Norma and both Kerry Ehrin and Vera Farmiga coughed out this hideous giggle into the silence. I only caught the joke because I love the actor in question and already knew the role, and while I try to avoid spoilers this one in particular is a biggie, but still: Giant fucking Squid. Coming soon.)
Norma: "I am here to slap the TV off and make a big scene!"
Norman: "Oh my God, what now. They were just about to give the creature more slack."
Norma: "Romero grabbed me in broad daylight and told me all about how you were a good citizen and reported suspicious activity. What were you thinking?"
When she says this behavior is "not sane," his little face crumples in that horrible sad way, but quickly is replaced by seriously being confused what's going on. After she asks the right questions, he goes icy and discloses what he can.
Norma: "You are obsessed with that dead woman. Why? Why, Norman? Why are you obsessed with her death?"
Norman: "Fine. I went there. That night she died. I know, I said that she offered me a ride and then cut to I was running down the street. There was a part in the middle that was not my usual blackout. Or that too, I mean, but before the blackout we went to her house."
Norma: "Spill."
Norman: "I had a cut on my eye from getting beat up, and she cleaned it, and she was nice, she made me tea, she talked to me. It was normal. And then it wasn't. There was something going on, something unsafe and unlovely and weird, and I felt stranger danger feelings. Which is weird, because she was my friend. But not so weird, because she'd been attracted to me from minute one, which I couldn't and cannot process, which is why I kept having weird manga sex blackouts in her classroom. So one or both of us was heading into a bad area..."
Norma: "Oh my God, did you sleep with this one too?"
Norman: "It's not always going to be that, but good to know you've still got it locked and loaded. No, she offered to take me home but first she went into her room to change, and she left the door open and I could see her..."
How much of this is puberty, the inability to put into words what is happening, and how much of this is Mother? Because she was there, in the room, twisting his lips into a cruel smile. We saw her there. But the way he describes it now, it's more like some religious kid getting his first boner and thinking he has a disease. What a burden to be this boy.
Anyway, he describes it finally as he understands it, which is that the guilt and shame he's feeling have to do with Mother getting him the hell out the door and onto the road, in the rain, when he should have stuck around because then he could have saved her. On the off chance she wasn't a predator or even if she was: She was his friend and his wisest and most interested adult, and for whatever reason he fled and left her to her doom.
Norma: "Okay but listen. She tried to seduce you, a child, and that was not appropriate. Whatever blackouts you get, that carried you away from that danger. She was good in some ways maybe, but you had no business being there, certainly. Can you see the distinction? Because you are a good boy. You ran away because you're a good boy, and you're hurting now because you're a good boy. Got it?"
Oh, the other neatest thing on the After Hours show was when they asked what is actually happening when Mother shows up and Kerry Ehrin said another beautiful thing, which is that it appears to him in that form because he loves his mom so much. Like it's really that simple: When Norman can't do it, whatever it is she appears that way because that's his highest image of comfort. There is a stronger person living inside of him, and she handles what he can't.
I mean, I realize we're talking about things like reacting to sexual urges with intense violence and/or murdering dudes, but that's what we're dealing with: Even in that context, it's still such a compassionate way to look at the mechanism itself. We assemble the Gods we need from whatever parts we find lying around.
BRADLEY
Gil: "You look dressed up like a grown-up. Why are you back at my house?"
Bradley: "You have to invite me in."
Gil: "You drink yet?"
Bradley: "Give me a break."
Gil: "You think about our little talk? You realize it was a quid pro quo? And also I am scamming you?"
At this point she goes full-on incandescent; it's a joy to watch. She toddles around with her drink, planting kisses on him and laying down thick tracks of dog-whistle code-words -- "It's not easy being a girl without a daddy, you know? I just need someone to explain things to me" -- and he eats it up, of course. (Loaded for bear, my notes say at this point, without even a hint of irony.) She gets him on the couch, straddles him and tries to get a straight answer: Everybody's a Picasso. Even the dead ones.
"I heard my dad was sleeping with Blaire Watson, and I need to know more about my dad, because I don't think I ever really knew him..." He takes off her jacket, and they start unbuttoning his shirt. "Was Blaire Watson sleeping with anyone else? Someone who might have been jealous?"
Down to the buckle, she whips the belt off amazingly, and he's fully engaged in the blowjob that's about to happen (and obviously with zero plans on holding up his end of any of this) when she pulls out the gun, aims it at his forehead, and then -- surprising them both; surprising neither of them -- blows his fucking head off without another word. All the walls in Gil's beautiful house are glass, so it makes a real picture. Attagirl. Gil, you were awful. You weren't Zach Shelby complicated awful or even Jake Abernathy banal awful, but you were pretty bad. Rest in lots of pieces.
NORMAN
Is asleep as the camera goes chung chung chung closer and closer to him, and when he finally wakes up, he's just kind of happy to see her, standing there in the dark. Asking if he really meant it, that he'd be there for her no matter what.
WEEK
Norma decides that what Norman really needs is more personalities and voices in his head, so she sends him out for the school play. Bradley's on some kind of the lam. Romero is now solving -- or avoiding -- murders on every side of the WPB political situation. And Dylan? Well I certainly hope he just got a promotion.
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps The Good Wife, Bates Motel, The Blacklist, and Pretty Little Liars for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, Twitter, and Facebook, and a regular column for Tor.com, Geek Love.