'Bates Motel' Went for It: 'I May Be Sexually Attracted to You'
Bates Motel is hurtling toward its third-season finale, and Monday night’s episode, titled “The Pit,” demonstrated again how much fun, how crazily powerful, it can be.
Freddie Highmore’s Norman Bates was still in a haze of fear and rage after that creepy psychology professor suggested, in the pervious episode, that the lad is unnaturally close to his mother, Vera Farmiga’s Norma. (Given that he drove away from Norma like a bat fleeing hell, it looked as though excellent actor Joshua Leonard wrapped up a fine arc of episodes as Prof. James Finnigan.) This week’s hour wasted no time in exploring the mommy-son dynamic as only Bates Motel can.
“He said I might be attracted to you sexually,” said Norman tremulously. Norma reacted to this as she always does — with apoplectic denial: “It’s frickin’ normal!” she squawked. “Sex is confusing!” she told her teen son. “Don’t ever let anyone’s words come between us,” said Norma, pulling Norman into a smothering hug. “This is the only thing that’s real, you and me.”
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At this point, the abrupt cut to a commercial made it seem as though the show had taken on a life of its own, and Bates had come to the conclusion that perhaps things were getting a wee bit too uncomfortable, and took a voluntary time-out.
Truly, every week I marvel anew at how Farmiga can invest any chunk of emotional dialogue with about three layers of subtle nuttiness: She makes Norma at once insanely angry, angrily insane, and serenely logical — according to a logic that exists only in the mind of Norma Bates. Highmore is equally extraordinary, consistently allowing Norman to run all the red lights right up to the outskirts of Breakdown-ville, only to pull a U-turn and roar down the street toward Denial City.
At one point this week, Norma bellowed, “You’re gonna kill me, Norman!” From any other exasperated mom, this would be a normal turn of phrase. But since we know this little relationship ends in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, you have to admire how close Bates Motel is coming to making mother-death a distinct possibility.
Only two more episodes left, Norma. Hang in there, honey.
Bates Motel airs Mondays at 9 p.m. on A&E.
