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Emma "breaks" the "news" about Bradley's "suicide" to Norman, who does a very bad job faking surprise or grief; later, she decides to throw a memorial bonfire that becomes a predictable beer-bash, which bums her out since she's forced to confront the fact that she never liked Bradley in the first place. But she runs into that cute Cupcake Boy that gave us our best Emma scenes of last season, drinks a bunch of beer, and -- assuming Cupcake's immune to the White Pine Bay curse -- lives through the night without being murdered or assaulted.
Less so, but only slightly, is Norman: He's given up his role in the chorus for a place on the tech team, the better to be friends with Cody the register girl. She joins him at the bonfire, along with her buddy Phillip, and the two launch into a sort of ad hoc attempt at a threesome because they think Norman's gay, all of which is about thirty steps above the poor kid's pay grade, so he bounces and ends up walking Cody home (to what would seem to be another abusive house of horrors, as per).
Norma's distraught when she loses the lead in South Pacific to cronyism, but the director Christine (always-wonderful Rebecca Creskoff) quits in solidarity, and decides to take on Norma as a new social project. It's rushed -- three-martini lunch minutes later, garden party the afternoon, immediate matchmaking for her brother George (Michael Vartan) -- but that could just feel that way because of where the story's actually going... Or it could be because the lady is crazy and obsessed with Norma Bates. Probably both. After sweetly turning down Vartan, for now, Norma makes another new friend: Nick Ford, Miss Watson's father and the other drug lord in town. Those are all the nice things that happen to Norma Bates this week. Rather a long list, comparatively.
The not-so-nice things have to do with her brother Caleb showing up, looking for an investor-partner in a hotel down in Costa Rica. Dylan is wary of him at first, and Norma goes ham on his ass in a beautifully violent sequence the second she sees him, but Dylan's yearning for family and home is so intense that eventually he takes pity on the guy, setting him up with several grand and eventually pleading for a reconciliation on his behalf.
Well, Norma is not having that, and -- after an episode of slamming doors in Dylan's face for even asking what the deal is -- eventually tells Dylan about the constant raping back when they were kids, but by that point he's so involved with Caleb he doesn't believe her. Which is the fight that Norman walks into, shifting into ass-beat mode and taking a good chunk out of Dylan's poor face before Norma screeches her rational explanation that Dylan would of course have every reason to love this man beyond all sense, as he's not only his uncle but also his father. Yep.
What's neat about that ("neat") is how the episode keeps flirting with this idea throughout their interactions, like that creeping feeling you get in the hours before the flu hits, so by the time she actually says it aloud you're so achy and off-center that it's just like...
All right. Deal with that, Dylan. Apparently the body count in your drug war, your chaotic, labile relationship with your family, and the murder you just covered up are not enough stress. So now here's something new -- arguably the worst thing that has ever happened on this show that is entirely about terrible things happening -- see how that works out for ya.
Week: Dylan has some questions about some things, clearly. Romero is no fan of Zane, because who could ever be, or drug wars, because what an ass-ache. Christine continues to be fascinated by Norma, who is legit fascinating. And Emma finds Dylan injured after what's probably another Ford attack. Mainly I am curious to see how old Norman processes Dylan's provenance, after all that. How do you even have that conversation?
"It's so weird because you're my absent big brother, and you kind of want to be my father, and she treats me like her sister, and you kind of do too, and sometimes she treats you like her brother and sometimes like her boyfriend, but then it turns out your father is her brother, I mean, I'm still only in Pre-Cal but this sounds a lot like Calculus. Are you my cousin? Are you your own cousin? Do we just go crazy now? Do we all just lose our shit now? Because if so, I got this."
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
With very little information to go on, really, Bradley Martin killed the head of one of the two main drug crews in White Pine Bay, and Norman got Dylan's help to fake her death and send her off to Boston. A few months earlier, basically because she was unraveling but also to ruin a date that was already going to be ruined anyway, Norma told Norman -- because who could be better prepared to handle this information -- about her brother Caleb, who sexually abused her for her entire childhood, until he left home. Later that night, he almost got molested and possibly killed a drug lord's daughter. Four months later, that brother has arrived in town. But to what end?
KITCHEN
Emma lets herself in, and Norman offers her some breakfast cereal because he is a sweet kid who is enjoying his breakfast cereal, but she's got seriousness on her brain: Specifically, the discovery of missing teenager Bradley Martin's clothes and suicide note, on the front page.
Emma: "I'm so, so sorry!"
Norman: "It's no big deal. She was kind of DOA ever since her last suicide attempt, if I'm being totally honest."
Emma: "You don't want to break down crying in my arms?"
Norman: "Nah, I'm good."
Emma: "Because I am weirdly distraught. I hated her, but then after the last time I was sad for her, and then when she was missing I was worried and now she's really dead."
Norman: "Yeah, but what does that have to do with you?"
Emma: "Remember how obsessed I was with the dead Chinese sex slave? Because I have cystic fibrosis and every day is a fight to stay alive? Bradley Martin didn't have cystic fibrosis, or a heroin addiction, or any problems whatsoever. Besides that time her nearly dead father tried to run her over while he was on fire, I mean."
Norman: "Yeah but you weren't friends. In my version of reality, you were bitter romantic rivals."
Emma: "Right? That's why I came running up here, clunking my oxygen tank against every step, to see if you were okay. Now… about those hugs."
Norman: "I will let you know if I have any pretend feelings about this, I promise."
He asks Emma to leave the paper, for his growing pile of mementos, and she does. He's not acting entirely right, but he's not happy about it either. She is gone. And that's sad, even though it's empowering because he was the one that did it. He saved her -- this report is the official confirmation that he saved her. But she's still gone.
THEATRE
Norma is loose on the streets, which is never slash always good. She's very excited to see whether or not she got the lead in the town play, because she knows that she earned it, by singing her very sad song about her very real emotions. But as luck would have it, no. She did not make it into the play. She thinks about having a Norma wobbler right there on the sidewalk, but before she can make up her mind, tall red Christine Heldens comes running out of the theatre with a black marker in her hand and rage in her eyes.
Christine: "Norma Bates! I was gonna call you, I'm so sorry. These jerkoffs wouldn't let me give you the lead, so I fucking quit. Being the director is the point of being a director, and without you it's just a stupid lame-ass community musical. Middle-class politics are bullshit. I want to start a riot! Apparently Jocelyn Kirby is in charge of casting, not the director, and Jocelyn wants her friend Libby Porter over you, because she is an idiot, so fuck 'em. Here is a huge hug."
Norma: "This hug feels almost impossibly good. And nigh impossibly too long."
Christine: "Let me buy you a drink so we can start being best friends immediately."
Norma: "Um, it is eleven in the morning. And I'm kind of agoraphobic because it is 2014 out here and not 1958 like at my house."
Christine: "Fine, I will carry you bodily."
Norma: "I consent to being carried bodily to a bar! Having friends is overwhelming!"
What are we thinking? Vera Farmiga is a knockout and Norma clearly has the drama of ten normal people going on inside her, which are obviously charismatic qualities. And Christine Heldens is a bored housewife, in the strictest and least pejorative sense of that term, so maybe she's just moving onto a new project.
Or maybe -- and Norma knows this, on some level, because she screams it at the end of the episode -- blood calls to blood. Whatever is broken in Norma, maybe it is already having a conversation with what is broken in Christine, and neither of them hear it yet. Maybe it sang.
We rejoin them on their second martinis; Norma's face is beginning to remember what being a face is like. Making friends is like going on dates, but a whole lot harder.
Norma: "I mean, it's a lovely town. Small business-wise, I'm screwed. I'm starting to think that dating a deputy sheriff who ran sex slaves out of my motel and kept one in his own home, and who was later murdered on my front porch by my son, might be affecting me in social and economic ways I hadn't considered."
Christine: "Yeah, that was a huge fucking mess. I mean, I'm showing respect by not pretending I don't know all about that."
Norma: "Then you must be able to give me a read on how I'm perceived?"
Christine: "I am fabulously wealthy and bored all day, I have no idea why that would be important to you. I say fuck 'em. It's not like you were the one that kept sex slaves, or committed multiple homicides..."
Norma: "It is certainly not like that."
Christine: "So fuck 'em. Your main value is being interesting -- don't let them cow you out of that. I mean, without your macabre nightmare experiences why would I be showing you off? Oh, PS, I am going to show you off. Besties!"
Norma: "Cool, until I inevitably attack you this is going to be really fun."
The music is like, "Isn't that sweet? Or terrifying? Oh, look how happy Norma is! Definitely you should be worried about her."
MOTEL
Dylan is overseeing the gardeners when Caleb finally comes around looking for Norma. Norma doesn't have a great track record with men -- moreso, vice versa -- and Dylan realizes this, and also that White Pine Bay is an unholy mess and when the man comes around, you should bark louder than you might feel like barking, because the Bates Motel is the second-softest place in town, after the house on the hill.
Dylan: "She ain't here. When she is here, I'm also here. There is no point at which you don't go through me. And I'm the nice son."
Caleb: "I don't really feel like discussing it with you. You look younger than you've ever looked on this show, though, so I will say that I am her brother."
Dylan: "Norma doesn't have a brother."
Caleb: "...Wait, because she said she didn't? Or because she didn't say she did? Either way that is so Norma."
And because it is, either way, so Norma, Dylan takes the man up to the house on the hill. He's too old to say what he's really feeling, Molly Grue thoughts: How this boy waited forever and ever for a man, to teach him how to be a man. How finally he had to grow up without one.
But also how he keeps throwing himself again and again at the rocks of Norma's ambivalence, and approaching Norman from every angle he can think of, even his emotional negotiations with Remo and Remo's predecessor: That (for reasons we're only beginning to understand) this is a boy who was born without a home, who will die without a home, and who consequently can't see anything past the person in front of him, this person who says he is family, the one thing nobody would ever let Dylan have.
From the mid-1950s on, Dr. Harry Harlow performed hundreds of different sociological and psychological experiments on infant rhesus and macaque monkeys. He created inanimate mother-surrogates built of wire and wood, and the babies attached: The wire-and-wood face of each baby's mother was preferable to other mothers, more beautiful. And then he switched it up, to see what texture would do: The wire mother holds a bottle and the cloth mother none, or the cloth mother holds the food and the wire mother holds none. Even when the wire mother held the food, the macaques would use them only for it and then go back to the cloth mother.
She fed them in ways the wire mothers could not; they did not want to separate their young skin from her softness. She gave them a home base to explore from, to venture out and return if frightened, or tired, to soothe and to comfort. She was an illusion but one that worked. And without the cloth mother, they would shiver, paralyzed: In one set of tests they were confronted with robot bears, making horrible noises guaranteed to terrify them. But with the cloth mother present, they could do battle, draw strength from her and go out to explore and to defeat. As long as they had somewhere to come back to.
But the babies raised only by the mothers of wire and wood, they grew up so sick inside they could barely digest their food.
KITCHEN
Returning from the grocery store, still a little giddy from her noontime treat with Christine, Norma is confronted first by the back and then the standing, arching, giant body of Caleb, grinning delightedly at her, while Dylan watches with a silent grin. After a few shakes, she hurls the groceries against the wall and physically, violently shoves Caleb all the way through the house: Out of the kitchen, through the parlor, down the hall to the foyer. Roaring -- not screaming, not shrieking; not hysterical -- at the top of her lungs. Scaring the men into complacency, into silence.
It's not wobbler mode, it's a Norma we haven't seen much. The kind who could kill the crap out of a man. The one that dreams of men invading the house on the hill.
Dylan: "Norma. What was that?"
Norma: "Don't ever let him back in here. Ever."
PARLOR
Norma is vacuuming the floors when Norman finds her, later. She'll pass over that path a million times, until it feels clean; maybe now it never will. Maybe it's broken.
She realizes he's been talking to her, and asks him to repeat himself. He's asking about the play and she realizes she didn't tell him what happened with the play.
Norman: "Did we not get parts?"
Norma: "I didn't, no. You did, you're in the chorus. Do you want to be in chorus?"
Norman: "I didn't even want to do it in the first place, so..."
Norma: "And you were right."
She starts vacuuming again, more distracted than she has been all summer and he summons up the courage to ask her what's wrong. When she says his name, it's a punch to his gut. They'll take everything from you, if you let them, so you have to fight.
Norma: "Just out of nowhere, he just showed up. I threw him out."
Norman: "How did he find us?"
Those goddamn computers, probably. She notices him, shivering, paralyzed, and realizes she shouldn't have told him. Any of it. Now it's just another burden, which invalidates the entire plan. He should have a safe place to return to, a home base from which to explore. As long as he always comes back.
"It's nothing. It's not important. He's gone, so forget about it. I'm fine."
But she almost slaps him when he tries to touch her, nonetheless.
THE FIELDS
Remo and Dylan are discussing Zane's latest douche move -- killing Johnny B, of the Ford family -- when Dylan sees the vultures overhead, circling the guard tent. Paco and Tony have been lying there, dead, for a while. Zane never really had anybody to explain it to him either. And now he's running things.
BACKSTAGE
Norman heads over to report that he's dropping out of the chorus, so nobody will worry or suffer for it, and runs into Cody from the grocery store.
Cody: "How'd the hair dye turn out? How'd that work, anyway? Your mom's a blonde."
Norman: "Fine. I mean, I got the wrong color."
Cody: "Chorus, huh?"
Norman: "Actually I'm dropping out."
Cody: "How come you're quitting, Quitter? Because your Mom didn't get in? Because she totally should have."
Norman: "Just not into it."
Cody: "Can't do it without her? Or... I mean, yeah. Lame. Musicals are ass. You should be on Tech -- it's fun as shit. Painting, lifting, practical things. You get ripped. You should do it."
Norman: "Why?"
Cody: "I mean, I just told you why. Plus it's WPB in the summer. Options limited."
He's used to people coming on this strong, of course; it's a defining characteristic. But only certain kinds of broken people -- Emma, Bradley, Miss Watson -- speak to what's broken in him. This girl Cody, she sings.
MAIN ST
Dylan runs into Caleb again, picking up stuff (lime?) for Paco and Tony's dead corpse bodies, and it's awkward because of Norma going ham.
Caleb: "Okay to be fair I kind of figured it would be something like that."
Dylan: "Because that's her response to basically everything? Or because she has beef with you of a legitimate nature?"
Caleb: "I mean, that's the rub, isn't it. When you come home or into family's orbit, it doesn't really matter what happened or didn't happen. Just that you feel exactly like you are back there, in the nightmare."
Dylan: "So you're just not going to tell me what it was about either. Got it."
Caleb: "I am just about as pathetic and desperate as possible, if you would like to go fishing with me like some kind of perfect uncle (or Deputy) fantasy you never knew you had? I'm stuck here until Tuesday or until you love me."
Dylan: "I have to go bury some drug dealers right now, but maybe we could get dinner?"
MOTEL OFC
Norma: "Stop asking me if I'm all right. Every time you do that I am pulled back up there, when what I want is to be down here, in my thriving small business that I own."
Norman: "Okay. But you should probably yell at me again when you want me to start caring. I wish that you had gotten cast in the play, because you deserved to be. It was originally about us working together on something..."
Norma: "You wouldn't fucking dare. You're telling me you suddenly yearn to be a chorus boy? Outrageous."
Norman: "No, Tech. Painting, lifting, practical things. Physical fitness, learn a skill..."
Norma: "Overdetermined, stop there. You suddenly like building things?"
Norman: "Sure. Taxidermy is just rebuilding things you take apart first."
Norma: "Fine, yeah. This all started because I wouldn't get off your back about this exact thing you are now doing, so okay. Never let it be said that I let my own interests and passions overshadow yours, except in the frequent cases where I do."
Emma: "Hey guys. I brought flowers for this casual memorial thing I want to have at the beach. Bonfire, flowers. People saying nice things about her, if they can think of any."
Norma: "Emma, I think that's lovely. Very meaningful."
For some reason that wording cracked me up. Also, is it? Norma thinks about having a moment about this, but then the phone rings.
Christine: "Norma Bates, get pretty. I'm having a garden party. It's your coming out."
Norma: "I am working. Also I am very afraid of the world."
Christine: "Good thing I don't care. You're coming."
Norma, delighted: "Am I?"
Christine: "Three o'clock. Your life begins today."
ZANE
Drives up in his stupid car with his stupid music to say some stupid things.
Zane: "What is the meaning of this? Paco and Tony. Am I to presume this is payback for me kidnapping one of their youngest workers at random and killing him for no reason?"
Dylan: "That would be my guess, yeah."
Zane: "Then what shall we do?"
Dylan: "Verona again. You started a war and now they are continuing the war and you are going to escalate it for what? Bradley Martin is dead so she can't even tell you to stop. This is a zero-sum game with no winners, and you're doing it for no reason, and I can't tell you that, and I can't think fast enough to stop you some other way. Maybe we should just forget it and concentrate on being the best drug dealers we can be."
Zane: "Maybe! But also I have a confused idea about what that means, among other things. So I am going to slaughter lots of them. Okay bye!"
That went well. It's sick because Dylan knows more than Zane, but we know more than Dylan: He thinks he's covering for Bradley and for himself for pointing her at Gil, but really he's obscuring the facts of Miss Watson's murder, too, which won't be solved because Romero's used it to get an unrelated bad guy. It's pointless because everybody's on the same side, but I guess that's true of every war. It's a zero-sum game on such a scale not even wise Dylan can see all the players or the angles, which means the tragedy redounds to a much higher level of complexity than just Zane being gross. (Unless Zane killed Miss Watson, in which case the entire thing actually is his fault.)
Dylan and Remo head back to the fields to bury the bodies of Paco and Tony.
Dylan: "It's like when a chick asks you which dress and you pick the blue one and then they put on the green one. Like, why did you even ask? I can't figure out what that guy wants from me like at all."
Remo: "He's been our boss for less than a week and we're burying a couple of..."
Dylan: "Now I don't know what you want from me. You are telling me to be alarmed about this idiot being our boss and getting us killed, and trust me I'm alarmed all right, but that's not a conversation, that's a complaint. What am I supposed to do about it?"
Remo: "I don't know. I guess I am just flipping out."
Dylan: "Do it more quietly, then."
Remo: "Fine. God."
UPSTAIRS
Dylan finds Norma trying on dresses in front of the mirror for her garden party: A gorgeous red number that unfortunately rides up a little high, exposing the scar on her thigh from before he was born. Maybe in winter you could cover it with tights, but this is the summer, so it's a no-go. It's been itching all day.
Norma: "You look filthy. Take off your clothes and leave them by the door, I'll wash them first thing tomorrow."
Dylan: "That's oddly kind of you. Oddly buoyant, overall. It gives me courage to say..."
Norma: "Oh God, what? My life starts today. Don't drag me back to..."
Dylan: "I just feel bad. I'm sorry I brought him here. And I didn't get the chance to circle back and say that, as part of my ongoing due diligence to have a place in this family..."
Norma: "I just offered to do your laundry. Take what you're given."
Dylan: "You too. Let me help. I want to understand what happened. I was there and I feel responsible but I don't know anything about it except that it was awful."
Norma: "I barely remember what you're talking about."
Dylan: "That's so Norma Bates. You always pretend you don't understand anything I'm saying. It used to drive me nuts, like suddenly I was jealous of Norman getting something I never wanted in the first place. But now it just freaks me out, Norma."
Norma: "Well, don't trouble yourself."
Dylan: "What the fuck happened?"
Norma: "I have a party to attend. You wanna worry about somebody's brother, worry about your own. He needs a ride to the beach."
Dylan slams the door on the way out, but really she already did that. On first view she's being exactly the cagey beast he says she's being: We knew bringing Dylan -- already a sort of prisoner of war in the house, already half a traitor by being a man -- into the Caleb stuff was going to rip her to pieces. We knew she would avoid his questions; feel them pressing in on her unto claustrophobia and inevitable meltdowns. What we didn't, arguably couldn't know -- although it's on its way, coming up like vomit, even now -- is that it is less about pushing Norma's buttons this time, and a whole lot more about asking questions she would rather die -- or kill -- than answer.
HELDENS
Norma's gone with a pretty black-and-white sun dress and a beautiful pink shawl, ever so slightly askew. She looks like a million bucks. Mrs. Helden's gigantic place is hardcore International Style, almost too far for me but with that van der Rohe travertine everywhere that I love, with a glass water wall inside and several stories, and a private dock and a giant sculpture out back. Very Christine, altogether. Piano in the living space.
Christine runs over and basically picks Norma up, romping around and getting peach martinis down her neck, gentling her like a horse: "I'm only gonna introduce you to people that I would really want to talk to. You look very pretty. Let's do this thing."
Back balcony, she introduces Norma -- "Excuse me, everyone! I'm barging in!" -- to a total of five people: Two women, a couple and a guy named George.
Christine: "This is Norma Bates! She just moved here! Make her feel welcome!"
Mr. Heldens: (Whispers cutely in his wife's ear.)
Christine: "This is my husband Peter, we're out of tonic water, be back in a sec."
They diligently try to make conversation as instructed, and Norma flounders for a bit before remembering that she is a hilarious train wreck, and before you know it she's informing the other guests -- dramatically, charmingly -- that most Grand Canyon deaths are the result of people pretending to fall into the Grand Canyon and then actually falling into the Grand Canyon.
Norma Bates's impression of someone falling brutally toward death, I mean to say, cracks everybody up.
BONFIRE
As usual, he looks about ten years younger and a foot smaller than everybody else, no matter how tall he is.
Norman: "This just seems like a beer bust. Did I miss the memorial part?"
Emma: "Not really, Norman. It turns out what I have done is throw a party. An excuse to pound beers. But hey, look at this bonfire and all these sweet notes and pictures and things."
Norman: "You really tried, Emma. I'm sorry it didn't..."
Emma: "Meh. I was being an asshole. I thought maybe if I did this I would like her more. But she's dead, and I still don't."
Norman's impressed; Emma stomps away with her tank and Cody appears, in a red leather jacket. Her makeup is kind of a night look but that's fine. It'll be nighttime soon.
Cody: "Hey. You're here."
Norman: "Did you know Bradley?"
Cody: "Who? I'm just here for beer."
She figures out Norman did know the dead girl, and throws her arms around him, spontaneously comforting. It's nice. It feels nice. Her friend Philip approaches, a good-looking cocky type, who vibes at Norman in a way he is never going to understand without somebody explaining it to him -- and which he's not even looking for, because all he sees is that Bradley is gone and apparently Cody has a boyfriend -- and she tows the boys away to find the beer.
A VERY DARK WATERFRONT BAR
Caleb is explaining their family, in fits and starts: The alcoholic grandfather, on disability from the tire factory. The grandmother, depressive or bipolar Frannie, who didn't work and wasn't altogether "present" very much. Dylan tastes them.
Dylan: "Frannie. Ray and Frannie."
Caleb: "She never even told you their names?"
Dylan: "She told me things. Not a lot. And you don't know if it's true, or just..."
Caleb: "Norma Louise. She pulls you in so close you're as close as two people can be, and then suddenly you're out."
Dylan: "Something like that. Where did you go? Where have you been?"
Caleb: "Costa Rica. I have these friends, a married couple, who own this funky hotel resort. They're getting a divorce and want to sell, for like 60% of what it's worth, but only to somebody they know. I felt like it was a gift from God. Something I could give Norma, if I could just pull it together. Like a reward I could bring her, for ... everything."
Dylan: "Yeah, about that. What is that?"
Caleb: "I kept waiting to grow up, to get bigger than him, but it just... never happened. For all I knew, every family was like ours. I'm a man now, so I get how worthless he must have felt. But I wasn't a man then, and Norma sure wasn't and he just took it out on us."
Dylan: "Norman just straight murdered his, but I see your point."
Caleb: "Such a pretty little kid. Such a trusting girl, and I couldn't protect her. She wants to forget what happened and that means forgetting me, blaming me. I get it, I blame me too. I always have. But when I heard she was in the hotel business now too, I don't know. It seemed like fate. I thought maybe enough time had passed she'd give me a minute. I guess a lot of things seem like fate, and then they're not."
Dylan means to help; he means it in a happy way when he says that maybe some things are fate, after all. He's not wrong.
HELDENS DOCK
George is sent out to the water, to find Norma, who's nursing a drink and looking out.
George: "Christine's stuck talking to some investors, so I was... I brought you an array of desserts, in case you missed the rush. I didn't want you screwed out of it by those people."
Norma: "What an astonishingly kind thing. You're an oddly nice man. What's your game."
George: "I recommend this raspberry thing, or this... nutty chocolate blob."
Norma: "How long have you known Christine? Long enough to vet you?"
George: "I'm her brother, so. A while. I should tell you everything up front. She sent me to check up on you, yes, but also to be thoughtful and charming and not talk about my divorce."
Norma: "Oh, I remember your human rituals now. I get it. Does she set you up a lot?"
George: "Never before today. Which says something about one of us. Hopefully you."
Norma: "This is a nice fantasy, Michael Vartan, but honestly I think I am about to lose it."
George: "You haven't even been a widow a year..."
Norma: "That is the least of our concerns right now, sir."
George: "Well, have another cookie and don't worry about it."
She puts a berry in her mouth and smiles at him, still sort of tracing her fingers along this idea that a man could be nice and not make demands, not try to trick you. With both hands out in front of him, how could he be hiding anything?
BONFIRE
Emma's had a few by the time she spots that cute boy that gave her the weed cupcake that time, and flails herself in his direction, feeling brave and adorable.
Emma: "You're selling weed, Cupcake Boy!"
Cupcake: "Yeah, it's a beach party."
Emma: "Actually it's a wake."
Cupcake: "Then I'm an even better public servant than I knew."
Emma: "You're lucky I don't actually give a shit about this girl. Sit down over here."
He does; they are very young and very adorable.
"We're not dead, okay? We're alive. So we should live, but we're gonna die, you know. Maybe soon. So let's do something... let's just... go completely crazy. Make bad choices with me."
Bad choices are made; we reconvene a bit later, sun finally gone down. Emma has continued to make her choices, stomping around with a bottle of beer, complaining about the boys pissing in the bonfire before describing Cupcake's hair in a bizarre way. He's indulgent, listening to her babble; when he offers to take her home she's willing, and when he offers to stop for food first, she boots.
Over at the bonfire, Cody's in Philip's lap, grinding, while Norman sits nervously to them, feeling as out of place as the first time, that neon kitchen with Bradley. Impatient, without stopping, Philip puts his hand on Norman's knee, and when it's thrown off he replaces it a good several inches further up. Norman has had enough! He stumbles up, explaining that he is done for the night and Cody asks him to walk her home. Norman hasn't got much of a goodbye for Philip at this time, but all in all I would say he made a pretty good show for himself.
NICK FORD
While Norma waits for the valet, Nick Ford steps up, out of the shadows, to congratulate her on her meltdown at the last City Council meeting. He wasn't there, but word gets around.
Nick: "Not many people would have the guts to do that."
Norma: "That's one word for it. Are you yourself in favor? Of the highway bypass?"
Nick: "No, but I can't really talk about that at City Council, for multiple reasons. WPB is like, you have to get along with everybody on the playground, you know?"
Norma: "So my drug-dealer son keeps trying to explain. Good night, sir."
Nick gets in his car, and she chases him down the driveway, suddenly friendly again.
Norma: "I just haven't met anyone else against the bypass that also seems to know how things work in this town. Maybe I could buy you a coffee sometime?"
Nick: "Whatever complicates your life as much as possible, Mrs. Bates. As per usual."
BAR
Sometime between sundown and now, Dylan left his uncle at the bar for a second so he could grab a dufflebag and stuff it with $11.5k, his cash savings at this time: "I can probably make it 15 in the couple months..." Caleb throws his arms around the kid without a second thought, giving thanks; proud of Dylan, almost, but mostly just relieved and excited and impressed.
Caleb: "Where did you come from, kid? Damn, you're too much."
Dylan: "I'm going to try again with Norma. To at least give you time to explain why you're here. I think it would be good for her and for, um, everybody."
Caleb: "I'm not going to say no to that. Just tell me when you're coming to Costa Rica!"
Dylan: "How about right now?"
Caleb: "You're laughing, I'm laughing!"
Dylan: "Because the truth is too awful to take seriously! Which is that I am probably going to die in a drug war I accidentally started!"
CODY
Norman: "Cody, I'm sorry but I need to blow your mind. I think your boyfriend might be, um, gay."
Cody: "Ha! Uh, yeah. Also he's not my boyfriend."
Norman: "Why were you making out with him, then? Theatre people are the worst."
Cody: "Essentially that's the answer. Parties are for making out, it doesn't mean anything. He got nervous. Anyway, aren't you gay?"
Norman: "What I am there is not a word for. I mean, probably, but we'll never know. And Mother is... I guess whatever is the opposite of heterosexual."
Cody: "So, gay?"
Norman: "No, just like... very bad news."
Cody: "Like how every Satanist is already also a Christian because that's the framework they're trapped working against?"
Norman: "Exactly. Is this your house?"
Cody: "Yeah. I have to shinny up a drainpipe because my dad is nonspecifically scary. Philip is going to be so disappointed."
Norman: "He's probably better off, frankly. See you tomorrow."
KITCHEN
Norma: "Hey, I was just doing some dishes and having a lovely evening. You?"
Dylan: "I am here to start shit with you about your brother Caleb. I had dinner with him and I love him and I want you to be nice to him and we can all move away to Costa Rica. He told me everything."
Norma: "I'm sure."
Dylan: "Like your Dad was... Norma, I knew you were strong, but I don't know how you survived it."
Norma: "Uh huh. Yeah, I'm doin' great."
Dylan: "...You must be so angry. He says you're right to blame him, but I just think..."
Norma: "Oh for fuck's sake, Dylan. He raped me. Over and over, every day, for years."
Dylan: "Don't be an asshole!"
Things get kind of messy at this point, because -- unlike Norman -- Dylan has noticed how Norma's freakouts tend to coincide with getting her way: That she might not even know how effectively she changes the temperature in the room to extract various effects. But he's not aware -- unlike Norman -- that she's telling the truth: All he knows is she has never treated him like a person, like family, or talked about who he is or where he came from and this man Caleb made up for that whole life of silence in one night.
Norma: "My own way? I have never gotten my own way, ever! And that includes being your damn mother!"
Dylan: "So you don't like him, so none of us can like him, the end. I'm so sure he raped you."
Norma: "Uh, he totally did? Why is this a discussion, you weren't there."
Dylan: "I don't need to be! I know what you are, I know how you roll."
Norma: "He raped me, and I had no one to protect me..."
Which is what Norman walks into, right after it starts threatening to get physical. He goes into ass-beat mode and, after a brief tussle, gets the upper hand, and eventually just starts tearing Dylan's whole face up. Norman's point is less that Dylan is threatening their mother physically and more that he is continuing to bring danger into the home, which gives him something to fight which he's needed since he found out Caleb was in town.
Dylan's point is that once again Norman is just doing his Norman thing, and Norma's doing her Norma thing, and that their closed ranks are -- as usual -- preventing him from becoming a self-actualized individual with both roots and wings. Forcing on him this wood-and-wire life, with soft warmth always just out of reach.
Norma's point is that she treats Dylan like shit because mostly he pulls crap like this --pushing in, always forcing, always too demanding and too hard -- but moreso that in this one particular case she feels compassion for it, and wants Norman to stop beating up on him just this one time, because enough is enough.
"Norman, stop it! Stop it, he can't help it! It's his dad!"
Dylan comes apart in Norman's hands, and both her sons go still. And then all she can do is apologize.
Nobody's sure about exactly what.
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps The Good Wife, Bates Motel, The Blacklist, The 100, 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.