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Last night was Bradley's beach memorial: Emma went home drunk with Cupcake Boy and Norman narrowly escaped kissing a dude, only to walk into what he thought was domestic violence but was actually an existential crisis in the offing as Norma revealed that the boys' uncle Caleb is also Dylan's, um, father.
morning, Emma wakes up in Cupcake's motel room -- minutes from work! -- and discovers on her very short walk of shame that Dylan's gone on quite the bender, passing out hardcore in his truck and covered in puke. The team rallies, getting him into bed and trying to defend the gruesome truth from Emma's unerring nose for nonsense, but presently Dylan has rewritten his entire history fairly accurately, explaining his outsider status in the family, Norma's pushmi-pullyu parenting style, and even the weirdness of Norma and Norman's little army of two.
Norman's characteristic sweetness in the face of this breakdown leads Dylan to suggest vaguely but shittily that Norman has secrets of his own he doesn't know about, but at this point Norman is almost used to hearing about the shit he gets up to when he's in a fugue state; and besides, Norma says it's nothing. They curl up in bed together, creepy as ever, and Norman decides he should do something dreadful. (Between all the physicality crossfire going on with Norma's body this week -- and the shocking Norman scene at the end of the episode -- it's interesting how much they lean on that weird, satiated, polymorphous-perverse smile he gets whenever Norma's in his arms.)
Anyway, before Norman can commit to doing anything more violent than neverending hugs and snuggles, Christine forces another group date with George on Norma, railroading her into a lovely dinner that puts George on Norman's radar in a hilariously terrifying way. While Christine's husband is pretty blasé about Norma's soon-to-fail business, George is sweet about it and, in some ways, it seems to stiffen her resolve about protecting her stake.
After a series of spats between Dylan and Norma officially cements her sexual assault narrative into Norman's graphic imagination, Dylan's still pretty ambiguous about which version of history he's going to end up believing -- especially as Caleb immediately gives back the money he borrowed and offers to leave town because of how weird things are getting -- but he moves out nonetheless, the better to spiral into darkness all alone.
The most interesting part of this probably is the insightful way Dylan rewrites his biography, in light of all the vagueness and sudden horror that's come his way: Given the timing, Norma used his infant existence to lock down her high school boyfriend, meaning that whether or not he's the abomination he thinks he is, she still used him as exactly the pawn he's always felt like, to escape her awful home. She swears that's not how it went down, but honestly that sounds like a very Norma plan. I mean as long as you're pregnant anyway, you might as well get a ticket out of hell for it.
Sheriff Romero visits Zane, the new head of Dylan's drug crew, to remind him that nobody likes a tall poppy and maybe he should just be happy to be a part of the status quo. Zane responds by burning his fucking house down, so now we have three fronts in this drug war -- and thanks to Christine's husband and this highway bypass, Norma seems poised to ally with precisely the wrong one: Nick Ford, Zane's opposing general and the father of poor slutty dead Miss Watson.
After Norma's first try at threatening Caleb falls apart in panic attacks before it starts, Norman and Cody decide to visit and scare him out instead. (That would be Norman and Cody, the pair of pale teenagers who probably top out at a buck ninety combined.) Norman freaks out before they do anything -- giving Cody a nice preview of his violence in the process -- but by nightfall, after one recitation of the rape story too many, Mother heads over there under her own steam.
What follows is super effed! You know Norman is in some kind of altered state but it's only after a few weird lines of dialogue that you realize he is well and truly in Mother mode at this time -- talking this shit like how he's Caleb's little sister and loved him and needed protecting, all the Norma stuff verbatim -- before the giant knife comes out. All of this proves way too much for Uncle Caleb, who beats the kid soundly and leaves him bleeding in the moodily lit motel room to be saved later, still catatonic, by Cody Brennan.
So everybody continues to make new friends, which is nice. Cody's probably not a great bet, Dylan's headed for a major disaster, even George seems to think there's something off about Christine's obsession with Norma, and Romero's probably going to have to set some people on fire sometime soon, but at least Emma's gonna lose her virginity to Cupcake Boy before she dies. So we got that going on.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Christine Heldens wants to make Norma a permanent fixture via her brother George, regardless of what Norman thinks about all that. Norman and Emma made new friends at Bradley's memorial service. Dylan made a new friend who turned out to be his uncle, who turned out to also be his dad -- which Norma only admitted so Norman would stop beating up his brother like some kind of psycho -- and which has now obviously sent all three of the Massett/Bateses into total meltdown.
RM 420
Emma wakes up looking even more beautiful than she always does, in a room of the motel where she works, to a tuckered-out Cupcake Boy. Fearing the worst, she gets hers shit together and drags her O2 tank outside, where a curious child and a worried mom draw near.
Emma: "This is just my tank, I am fine, don't pester me about my congenital situation."
Mom: "Okay but like is there a manager here? I wasn't actually concerned about you."
Emma: "I am basically the manager. Which makes it all the more convenient that I woke up on the premises."
Mom: "Okay because there is a very sympathetic boy passed out in that truck over there, covered in puke. Seems like something you should be aware of."
Emma is worried immediately to see Dylan's dire state, can't rouse him, and is immediately faced with a thickness and a pukiness when she opens the truck door and -- "Oops, whup, nope, back in, back in" -- he comes spilling out on top of her, still out of it. She always makes the best faces!
UP THE HILL
She has to poke Norman about five times before he wakes up, wild-eyed, and the relief that Dylan's nearby and not wrapped around a telephone pole, or worse, doesn't quite get in the way of covering for Norma: "She had a tough night," he says. "I can help."
After an awkward "I'm in my boxers" moment, he's dressed and downstairs. Those two kids are becoming old hands at carrying half-dead people around that motel! They get him into a bed and start tugging at his shoes; Emma is, of course, curious.
Emma: "What on Earth is this? Do you think he has alcohol poisoning? Did he get fired from being a drug mercenary? Did he get into a fight with somebody?"
Norman: "I don't know, Emma. Stop asking me questions, Emma. It is too weird to talk about so stop talking."
They used to be really good friends. Maybe they still can be. Norma shows up, looking pretty ratchet in her own right, and just kind of stares around at everybody.
Norma: "What happened here?"
Norman: "Emma found him. He is broken."
Norma: "Mmkay, you guys go mind the office and I'll hover awkwardly over his body trying to figure out my entire life."
Emma: "Shouldn't somebody stay with..."
Norma: "Why are you here at seven AM?"
Emma: "Work ethic?"
Norma: "Sure, I'll take it."
She floats over him, like magnets repelling; she wants to touch him and she wants nothing less in this world than to touch him. He is beautiful, this person that should not exist. He's not the one with the broken genes, or the broken mind; he's not the one that's tainted. So why can't she touch him? She awkwardly pulls the duvet up around him and, saddest and sweetest of all, tucks the covers around his body, swaddling him tight.
Norman: "Mother? Mother? Mother? Should we do something?"
Norma: "Like what, Norman? Build a time machine to before my awful life?"
Norman: "I was thinking hugs? Hugs usually do it."
Norma: "I know what I need to do. I need to drive across town to the Kings' motel where your uncle is staying, and I need to have a good old-fashioned Norma Bates freakout. If I turn it up to eleven he might skip town on foot."
Norman: "Mother? Mother? Mother? I am worried for your safety, emotionally. Also how does any of this help Dylan get over being a secret incest baby?"
Norma: "That's either going to happen or it's not, Norman. This is about me, feeling weird. Stay with your brother-cousin."
She makes it all the way across town and to the parking lot before she breaks the hell down, full-on panic attack, and then swings her old whip back onto the road with some of that erratic Norma Bates driving magic we've missed so much.
I don't really know what happened. I wonder if we'll ever know what happened. Caleb has a capacity for darkness and for violence; he has a capability to forget matched only by his sister's, and her son's. But I do know there is only so much freaking out inside of Norma Bates to go around. It's a near-infinite amount I will grant you, but without anybody looking you can see on her face that this isn't about anger: This really is about fear.
I didn't think about it last week, but that scene when she walks into the kitchen and sees Caleb there, and throws down, it isn't just about wanting Caleb gone, it's about wanting Caleb out of the same room as Dylan. Not protecting him, necessarily or entirely, just keeping the whole story from all being true at the same time. She doesn't want Caleb in Dylan's life because she doesn't want Caleb in her life, and having both of them at the same time is like...
One of my favorite, most horrible things in all of music is this feedback whine that happens for about a minute and ten seconds in the very scary song "Possum Kingdom" by the Toadies, starting around 3:12. It moves around a little bit at the start, but then settles in, right into that mosquito place, until you forget it's there. Lead guitar's doing stuff, bass is doing stuff, but he's still in the back of the room, standing in the shadows. And just when you're sort of calmed by this creepy lullaby chant happening for several bars, it swoops down on you, roaring like a chainsaw: It was there the whole time. Looking at you. It's a sickening moment, it's art because of how it relates to the song itself -- when it happens and why -- but it's mostly vertiginous, and it makes you very glad the song is not real life.
Or sometimes you can hear the refrigerator running, right, and then that's all you hear. You can't think about not thinking about it, so the more you try not to hear it, the more you hear it. And that's Dylan. That's the scar on her leg and that's Caleb too, true, but those are just parts of this Dylan symphony, just below the conscious level, ever since he was born.
And so I would imagine having them both in the same area -- specifically her home, at the top of the hill; specifically the kitchen where she was raped on day one -- is kind of like that refrigerator whine getting louder and louder and louder and LOUDER AND LOUDER, UNTIL IT'S SCREAMING.
So, good for her for getting that close, before she ran again.
MOTEL OFC
Emma is catching hell from a Mr. Woodbury on the phone, who would like to check out later than 11 despite the room being promised to somebody else, when she spots Cupcake getting in his car, and of course she ducks behind the desk, stuttering and rolling her eyes: "You know what, whenever's fine, just check out whenever, okay bye." When she hears the engine turn over, she pulls herself slowly up, to watch him drive away.
DYLAN
Norman has brought him breakfast, and a clean shirt; he's up and moving around enough to be shirtless, still staring into space.
Dylan: "How long have you known?"
Norman: "About what? The big thing? I didn't know the big thing until last night. We don't really have to talk about it. We don't really have to do anything. How can I fix you?"
Dylan pisses with the door open, still processing: It all makes sense.
"I find that hard to believe. Because now I understand why I've always been on the outside of this family. It shakes a lot of things into place. It must have been pretty funny to you two..."
Norman: "I don't know if you've met Mother, but she is not really forthcoming with the..."
Dylan: "Yeah, she treats herself pretty well. Nothing too painful."
Norman: "Look, it's just a piece of information. Nothing actually changes with us. We're all the same people as we were yesterday."
Dylan: "Total bullshit. What if somebody told you something?"
Norman wobbles on his feet and Dylan steps forward, cruel.
Dylan: "Some 'piece of information' that changes everything you thought about yourself? For the rest of your life?"
Norman: "You're right. I can't imagine anything like that."
Dylan: "Maybe you should talk to 'Mother,' then. Just in case."
Norman gets scared, as Dylan presses -- "Maybe we don't all know who we are. Maybe someone's been lying to you about an important event that happened in your life that you have no consciousness of..." -- until he finally hears himself, and backs off. Irrevocable things. He throws Norman out, so Norman heads to the office to get bitchy on Emma.
OFC
Norman: "Nope. Can't tell you, can't talk about it, don't ask."
Emma: "Are you forgetting what we've been through in the last six months? Your Mom, the Deputy, the Chinese sex slave? Have I still not been jumped in? I'm not an outsider."
Norman: "That is all we are. It's a family matter, that's all I can say."
DOCKS
When Caleb approaches Dylan -- overjoyed, chuckling; wanting to take him fishing -- you can practically hear that feedback starting. He freezes up, bruised eyes, confused and somehow even hoping this is some weird misunderstanding or new flavor of Norma's madness, but finished too with trusting him.
Dylan: "We can't ... talk anymore. Due to you raping your sister, my mother."
Caleb: "Whoa, it wasn't like that. It was a long time ago and it wasn't exactly like that."
Dylan: "So she's lying?"
Caleb: "I'm not saying that either."
Dylan: "Okay. Did you know I'm your son? Is that why you came here, to work some angle?"
Caleb: "This is like some dysfunctional game of Telephone. She married a guy in high school, she got knocked up, that's your dad."
Still not denying it, any single part of it, exactly. Mr. Massett was Dylan's dad, but was he his father? Caleb hands over the cash from last night, and backs away: "Whatever is going on here, I clearly should not have come to White Pine Bay."
Town motto.
UP THE HILL
Norman quietly, not to say stealthily, watches Norma make a sandwich with a seriously huge knife. When the phone rings, he answers it immediately; she waves the knife around like she does, protesting, but finally takes the call. She shakes the fear and rage and nausea off like a dog, and smiles into the receiver.
Christine: "You were the hit of the party, my brother couldn't stop talking about you, he tried to do your Grand Canyon imitation and almost fell into the pool..."
Norma: "I am going down in flames."
Christine: "Peter called in a favor and got us a table at the Greene Tavern, aka probably the best restaurant in Oregon, multiple courses, wine pairings, the whole thing..."
Norma: "For real, I can't do it. No matter how much I love the obsessive attention you provide, I am not up to living life today. I managed to take a thing that was irretrievably broken, and break it. The walls are closing in. There's this weird mosquito sound..."
Later, Norman sits on the bed, where she is strewn like driftwood, staring into the mirror.
"You know, you could have told me. I get why you didn't tell Dylan, because look what happened, but you could have told me. You can always tell me everything. You have to tell me everything."
They lie side by side in the bed, looking up at the ceiling like two halves of something.
Norma: "Well, now you know everything I guess."
Norman: "There's nothing else? No interesting information about me losing time and killing various people, for instance?"
Norma: "Not to change the subject -- and I'm not -- but I went over there to make him leave, and tell him I remember everything, and that I wasn't scared anymore... But I couldn't."
Norman: "A thing you couldn't do, Mother? What a terrible thought!"
Norma: "Yeah, like it could bring the whole sky down."
He wraps himself around her, laying his cheek alongside hers. Their arms and hands make pretzels, octopods. He smiles sleepily, like a baby at the breast.
Norman: "You don't need to. You don't ever have to see him again."
Norma: "I'll run into him in town, in this place where we live, at the market or the gas station..."
Norman: "I feel like you're trying to tell me something but all I can hear is wanting you to be quiet, stop shivering, stop worrying."
Norma: "He wanted our money and he got Dylan's money and..."
Norman: "So now he'll leave, then. Just don't worry. I will take care of you."
It's a lover's murmur; he is greedy. The term is polymorphously perverse, but I don't know what connotations you bring to that; it's not pruriently sexual, any more than a fetus masturbating in the womb is prurient. Every part of their body that is not touching, should be touching; they are halves of something. Before they ate of the fruit, they didn't know they were naked: Eden's first crime was the invention of crimes. He hasn't been this available, this much hers, all summer.
Perhaps it is because she is falling apart, and he needs to put her back together. Perhaps it's the idea of Dylan being her child, and not just some man from the outside world, having some claim upon this body.
Perhaps it is Caleb. Whining in the symphony, waiting to drill down.
CHRISTINE
"I know something about you, Norma Bates."
As happy as she is, involuntarily, even just to see her friend, Norma's wary; at this, her face drops entirely.
Christine: "You're afraid to put yourself out there! But I'm not gonna take no for an answer. Come on, let's find you some clothes."
She drags Norma, giggling, up the stairs and into a solid LBD, correctly guessing that it will look amazing on her, and then chooses the perfect shoes. Norma demurs, finally, looking at herself in the mirror, and Christine steps up to the plate, standing in Norman's space, looking over Norma's shoulder like he does.
"Norma Bates. Stop resisting. You are a beautiful, young woman, living alone with your teenage son. But he's not gonna be here forever, you know."
Yes, he is.
"People aren't meant to live alone."
No. They're not.
Norma: "I don't know how to. So many bad things have happened."
Christine: "One step at a time, in these shoes I've picked out. George will be here at seven, and we'll meet at the restaurant."
If anybody else told Norma Bates to stop resisting, she would smash her head through the window and start screaming bloody murder. It is really something, to be loved.
ZANE
Remo can't even manage more than an eyebrow woggle, when Zane stomps through the place, issuing orders. Telling "Massett" to meet a man, and bring back loads of gun and ammo. Fair Verona has them, and there is no stopping it: Zane Morgan is a man without an exit strategy. If the number one issue facing Bateses today is poisoned masculinity, the ugly concrete world, then Zane Morgan is a blister, a carbuncle, a pimple: Masculinity performing itself without an instruction manual, without forebears or precedents, in a hall of mirrors. A feedback loop; a whine in the symphony, tuning up.
Dylan was never so beautiful as the moment he got his first gun, pulling on himself in the mirror like a tiny sheriff, like an angelic Clint Eastwood. How is it that watching Zane do the same thing, over and over and over, feels less even like a tragedy waiting -- impatiently slavering -- to happen, and more just like watching someone embarrass himself so thoroughly that you can't even pity him? Zane thinks life is the movies, and maybe he's right. But his taste in movies is for shit.
OFC
In the back office, Emma ducking Cupcake as he returns from his day selling weed, Norman's got pop radio pumped. Drowning it out, while he mapquests Caleb's motel. Burning bright:
"I've got the eye of the tiger," she sings. "Dancing through the fire..."
He's researching, he lies; looking into the competition. What he's doing is hunting.
"I am a champion..."
Emma shrugs. It would be easier if he just shut her down, instead of lying.
"And you're gonna hear me roar."
When he asks her about Cupcake, why she keeps hiding from a guest, she shrugs again: "There's a difference between hiding and not wanting to be seen."
You hear my voice? You hear that sound?
Like thunder gonna shake the ground
You held me down, but I got up
Cody shoves past Emma into the back room, shouting at Norman for leaving her hanging this morning at the play set. They were supposed to paint all those happy trees today, and he flaked. He can't tell her why, so she writes her number on his arm and storms out again: "time, call me," she says. "When you say you're gonna do something, do it."
Emma sniffs. Cody Brennan dropped out. Mother won't like that. What Emma means is, our definition of outsider is changing too fast for comfort. Bradley's gone and she's feeling independent but that doesn't mean it doesn't smart. Cody Brennan is six miles of bad road visible from space, and she writes on Norman's body; Norman hasn't talked to Emma about anything all summer. He hasn't been available, hasn't been hers.
When you say you're going to do something, you have to do it. You are a champion.
UPSTAIRS
He watches with one eye, hidden by the door, as his mother dresses.
Norma: "Zip me? Christine invited me, some get-together with her and her brother, I'd rather shoot myself."
He puts his arms around her shoulders like the man of the house, like Christine, and offers counsel: That taking her mind off these things for a few hours, dinner with a sensible gal-pal, could be just the ticket. Get those knots out. He'd maybe get stuck on the George part, too, if she hadn't so skillfully mentioned how suicidally repulsive he is, as a concept.
Dylan's up the stairs before they catch him out: Standing in the exact same place he held his mother's hands up over her head, that terrible night, and forced her to be still.
Norma: "Dylan? We should talk?"
Dylan: "About what, Norma."
Norma: "Don't make this harder on me than it already..."
Dylan: "Yeah. I'm such a dick."
They recoil as a team; as a team they peer at him, owlishly.
"What do you both want from me? A time machine, a magic wand? That works in Norma world, that works in the house on the hill, but not anywhere real. Those of us in the concrete world abide by consequence. You are looking at one, Norma. I am a consequence."
Norma: "You're not just a consequence. You need to be strong, you need to put this behind you..."
Dylan: "I can't... It's me. We're talking about me. How can I put me behind me?"
Norma: "I do it all the time. He's just a piece of information. He's a bad person, here to do bad things. To steal your precious money and work an angle."
Dylan: "Really? Because he handed this right over the second I told him your story."
Norma: "You saw him? What else did he say?"
Dylan: "Don't be gross, Norma. Just forget it, I can't talk to you about him. You can't both exist in the same story at the same time. It makes me feel like a Picasso, ripping in half."
When the doorbell rings, Norman answers it. His face drops just as coldly as his mother's.
Norman: "Hello there."
George: "You must be Norman."
Norman: "And what the fuck is actually going on here?"
George: "Norma, you look fantastic! Wow!"
She prances down the stairs toward his regard, like Baby Jane Hudson doing Scarlett O'Hara, for one tiny millisecond; Norman nearly fucking boots.
Norman: "Mother? Mother? Mother? What time do you think you'll be back?"
George: "I'll make sure she doesn't get into trouble!"
Norman: "Who do you think you are, gonna come in here, fuckin' talk to me like some kind of goddamn Eddie Haskell motherfucker? This ain't a joke."
THEATRE
Cody: "Norman you do realize that the point is to hammer the nails into the wood, not through it, right? There should be wood left when you are done instead of just splinters?"
Norman: "I am freaking out, Cody. Sorry."
Cody: "Is it because that girl died? Or because we thought you were gay?"
Norman: "Neither of those things actually bother me, Cody. It is because of my mother. Specifically for thirty-seven different reasons."
Cody: "Single parent families mean the parent sucks twice as much, or more."
Norman: "I get that you're from a broken, abusive home, yadda yadda, but my mom's not like that. Her abuse is subtle and apocalyptic and entirely unconscious."
Cody: "What makes your mom so special, huh?"
Norman: "She would do literally anything for me. And vice versa. Do you know anybody that would do literally anything for you? Because I do. We are each other's champions."
Cody: "That sounds excellent, actually."
Norman: "She tries so fucking hard. And the terrible shit is neverending, and..."
Cody: "Whoa, you are flipping out. Tell me what is going on."
Norman: "Short version is, her brother showed up out of nowhere. Bad dude."
Cody: "How bad? Because I know bad."
Norman: "Very bad. Whatever you are thinking."
Cody: "...Gotcha. Let's go beat the shit out of him, then. Say no more."
Cupcake Boy: "Cupcake Girl. Hi."
Emma: "You are so beautiful, all the time. Listen, I hate to bother you..."
Cupcake: "You're not. Trust me."
Emma: "Can I ask you a very simple, yes-or-no question?"
Cupcake: "We didn't sleep together. I just didn't know what to do with you. I mean, I would. I would like to. But I have this weird thing where I don't rape girls. I'd like to think you would remember it, if we did."
Emma: "That is such a relief!"
Cupcake: "Oh is it?"
Emma: "Yeah. Anyway, you're all checked in and everything?"
Cupcake: "Yeah, you did it last night. Right before barfing. It was adorable."
Emma: "Sorry!"
Cupcake: "I'm going to be around, though. Selling pot for the summer."
Emma: "Cool, well, you have fun with that, and thanks for looking out for me."
Cupcake: "I don't know how else to impress upon you that it is not a problem."
GREENE TAVERN
Peter likes being the alpha, at the head of the table, going on and on about his wife's spending habits before settling on the new Costco opening up.
Christine: "He's obsessed. Costco appeals to his hunter-gatherer instincts."
Peter: "Right out by the new bypass road! A retail corridor is just what this town needs."
Norma: "Not what I need, though. It's going to ruin my life, ha ha!"
Christine: "Honey, you have boutique appeal. Plenty of tourists will want to come into town the old way..."
Peter: "Liar! Condescender! Remember Route 66?"
Christine: "Seriously shut the hell up. This chick is 98% ready to unravel on a good day."
Peter: "Face the day bravely, that's what I say!"
Norma: "Can't blame a guy for getting exciting about buying in bulk. If you'll excuse me for a moment, I have to have about sixty seconds of a mental breakdown in the powder room."
George: "So now you know our dirty little secret. Peter is fucking awful."
Norma: "It's totally fine! Being forced into society by your sister means biting my tongue. A thing I literally just learned I can do."
George: "If somebody was making jokes about my precarious small-business life dreams, I would scream into a hand towel in the bathroom too. Let's go get some crème brûlée down your neck, what do you say?"
CODY
"You gotta show 'em you're serious. My family is trash, just complete garbage, so I have tons of experience. My aunt's ex was a prick, wouldn't pay alimony, so my grandma hit 'im with a baseball bat and guess what? Paid right up."
She hands Norman a tire iron -- scooped out from under the seats as she weaves down the road, startling him into mania -- and explains that it is now his superpower.
KINGS
In the parking lot, as Cody is wheedling Caleb's room number out of the clerk, another power kicks in: "Norman, can I tell you something that I've never told anyone?" Last year's finale conversation, from his disjointed perspective, as he imagines those memories so vividly they become his own. Like Jiao, beautiful girls on paper who became real in his mind; forced themselves into the real world. But this time, it's Mother.
They get up the stairs and halfway down before he gets scared, reverts, hangs back. But when you say you are going to do something, you do it. Cody has been waiting for who knows how long for an opportunity like this: To beat the shit out of somebody who deserves it. To scare evil out of town, and away forever. She forces the issue, and he raises the tire iron above his head, to swat her away. It scares them both enough that they leave; they don't talk on the ride back across town.
Cupcake: "Can I ask you something? When you said you were relieved we didn't hook up... What was that? I know you're not not interested."
Emma: "Oh, I do want to have sex with you. For sure."
(They are collectively and separately amazed and delighted that she just said this.)
Cupcake: "What are you doing tonight? Heh."
Emma: "HA! HA! No, I'm, uh. It would have been my first time..."
Cupcake: "Hang on, processing that. Okay, continue."
Emma: "You couldn't see it all over me? That's interesting."
"Just... Think how much pressure people put on their first time. Knowing that they're going to have like a million more. Mine could be my only time, so I just... Wanted to make it count. Or at least be something I can actually remember."
Cupcake: "You're right. You deserve that."
Emma: "...!"
Cupcake: "See you tomorrow?"
Emma: "Oh, I'll be here."
Cupcake: "Yeah. Me too."
He's back into his room before she breaks out the big smile, at least. Burning bright.
GEORGE
Norma: "I really shouldn't have gone, I'm so sorry."
George: "The food was good. The company was mostly good. I wouldn't stress."
Norma: "Christine just really..."
George: "Oh, I know how she is. Growing up with her... She was a force of nature."
Norma: "Yeah, so. Like that. She's been nothing but nice to me..."
George: "She's ... taken with you."
When they arrive, she sits for a moment, nervously. She has forgotten how to date. Is this remembering? He asks her out again, and promises to leave Peter home. She doesn't say yes. More loudly, she doesn't say no.
DOCKS
Romero: "So you're Zane Morgan, right? I thought we should meet."
Zane: "Alex Romero. The guy with the God complex."
Romero: "Put out that cigarette and walk your ass over here and say that."
He does, cracking a beer. He's a Sweathog, dirtbag, back of the class wastoid on the day you have a substitute. Lord of a possum kingdom, scavenging garbage in the darkness. It's so gross, and Romero is so ready to put him down, just from looking at him. It's all over his face.
Romero: "You were away a long time, Zane. Maybe you forgot exactly how it works in WPB?"
Zane: "Didn't end so well for Gil, so I figured there might be a better way..."
Romero: "I assure you there is not."
Zane: "Who you lookin' at, ya mook?"
Romero: "Ugh. Look. A guy like you, maybe you take things personally, maybe make some mistakes, because you have something to prove. Make the most noise, do the most damage. Take the most scalps, so people will -- finally -- take you seriously."
Zane: "You want a beer?"
"Okay, cool. I'm gonna take that as confirmation that you actually heard me? Because Zane, I am trying to help you out here. This is a warning. I am a really nice guy. Until I break you."
He's Romero, he's great. But I don't get how you could get such a perfect read on him -- or the fact that he is singlehandedly responsible for this gang war -- and not understand that the cop's got the biggest target on his back, for somebody like that. Dirtbags hate cops, that's the number one thing they have in common, and he is looking to be king of dirtbags, ruler of the possum kingdom, and you just turned the amp up a little louder. I guess he is interested in seeing what Zane would do with a faceful of unadulterated authority figure? But the answer is clearly, "Burn down your house."
KITCHEN
Norma is still in her hot black dress with her red lipstick, leaning way back at the kitchen table, drinking bullet-cold vodka straight, when Dylan arrives with the first boxes.
Norma: "And what is this, exactly."
Dylan: "I am moving out, Norma. And not even you could be so Norma Bates as to ask me why..."
Norma: "-- Why? Why on Earth? Why do you have to move? What's that gonna prove?"
Dylan: "You made the mess, live with it. I am the wreckage."
Norma: "Blame the victim, why don't ya. What the hell did he tell you?"
Dylan: "Well, he says it wasn't like you said it was -- whatever that means -- and that Mr. Massett was really my father anyway."
Norma: "Do you think I would tell him that he got me pregnant? Why would he need to know any of that story? What makes you think I'd ever tell anyone?"
Then comes the real question: Why do I exist? Why did you have me? That one, she can't answer.
Cody checks in again with Norman when she drops him off -- he's a skittish, sensitive, confusing boy; she maybe fucked the whole thing up, pushing -- and while he says he's fine, he slams the door and doesn't look back.
On the threshold of the foyer, Norman hangs back, listening to the story once again. The story of a mother made from wire and wood.
Norma: "What do you mean? What's your theory, about why I kept you?"
Dylan: "Fine. You used me, to get out. You get knocked up by your brother, and use me to get your boyfriend to marry you. You made my dad think he was my dad. You brought me into this world, an abomination that should not exist, because it was useful to you. I am the consequence."
Norma: "Dylan, better men than you have tried to explain what a narcissist I am, there will be no effect going that route. Just listen. I was a little girl, with nobody to protect me. My father scared the crap out of me, my mother was sedated all the time -- those parts were true -- and my brother would not leave me alone. I had to get away."
"I had no voice, to tell him not to do it. I had no power to stop him."
Norma: "None of this is your fault. But it's not my fault either. I was a child, I was way younger than your brother is now!"
He's getting older all the time.
Dylan tries to flee, and she puts herself between him and the world; only raising his man's voice can move her. And then he's gone. And around the corner, Norman waits, and thinks, and then stops thinking. Norma runs out onto the porch in her bare feet, a Sirk vision in the middle of the night, sobbing. But she doesn't call him back.
KINGS
Caleb doesn't recognize his nephew, when he knocks on the motel door. Why would he? He was born to be the antidote, to all that. To give back the parts of the world she had lost. He is burning bright; like thunder, shaking the ground.
When Caleb tries to close the door, Norman kicks it open again; he is steady as an oak. He is a champion.
Caleb: "Ugh, the other one? I have nothing to say to any of you. Whatever I was thinking, coming here, I have rethought it. Please don't force this issue. You will not enjoy the result."
Norman: "I said we're gonna talk! I've been silenced long enough!"
Caleb catches that it's weird, but he doesn't know what it means. Who just showed up, who's been in the corner, watching from the shadows, all day long. Who's about to roar.
"I came here to tell you that I remember what you did to me, and to face you, and tell you I'm not scared of you anymore. And all those nights you came in my room, I was too young to know the difference. I was too young. I just needed someone to care about me! And all you did was use me, you son of a bitch!"
That's when she pulls the knife. That's when she swoops, roaring like a chainsaw.
Caleb throws the boy around the room, into chairs, onto the beds, to stop the hateful, mesmerizing, confusing, deep-bass truth: "Don't lie again. You raped me. Over and over. I was your little sister, I loved you. You should have protected me, because I had no one to protect me."
For a second he's sympathetic, to the boy. This tortured creature, who opens his mouth and somebody else's words come out. Who closes his eyes, and somebody else's dreams show up. This boy who was never raped, but has been raped all the same. For a second he wants to savethat boy; it's the woman that won't stop fighting. Won't stop resisting.
Caleb leaves his nephew in a pile on the floor, grabs his bags, and disappears.
LATER
The woman at the diner inspects the catatonic boy, and finds a number written hastily on his arm. Better to call a friend, or family, than the cops; there's something so sweet about him, even when he's six feet down below the water.
One of the cops runs up to Alex Romero on the docks, to tell him to go home. When he gets there, it's to a symphony of alarms and sirens, as his house is burning to the ground.
Mother's gone, but Norman isn't back yet, when Cody arrives to pick him up, and take him home. She walks him like a puppet, one foot in front of the other, all the way to the car. All the way home.
"...What the fuck happened to you, Norman Bates?"
Life.
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps The Good Wife, The Blacklist, Bates Motel, and The 100 for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, Twitter, and Facebook, and a regular column for Tor.com, Geek Love.