Bates Motel — “Forever” — Cate Cameron/A&E Networks — © 2016 A&E Networks, LLC. All Rights Reserved
Can’t Wait For Bates Motel Season 5
Bates Motel has been a pleasant surprise, better than I had expected it would be when it debuted on A&E in 2013. The Psycho prequel delivers a deliciously disturbing performance by Freddie Highmore (Norman Bates), especially as we see the peak of his mental deterioration in Season 4, which concluded earlier this week.
If you read the Robert Bloch’s 1959 novel Psycho or watch the iconic Hitchcock film adaptation, you get a distant sense of the Norma Bates character. However, Bates Motel brings Norma to life and uncovers the big question how Norman came to be. Norma not only sabotages herself, but encourages Norman’s psychosis by living in denial and covering up for her son’s insanity. We know that Norman takes on his mother’s persona in the movie, but we never truly know the seedy details of how he came to be, and all the other people he killed, which Bates Motel does an excellent job of exploiting.
The explosive conclusion of Season 4 leaves Bates Motel fans contemplating what will happen to Sheriff Alex Romero (Nestor Carbonell) after his desperate pleas to wife Norma (Vera Farming), to send Norman back to the mental hospital, fall on deaf ears. What mother wouldn’t protect her own child? She’ll defend him at all costs, even ignore all the warning signs.
It was too good to be true for Norma to finally be happy marrying Alex while her son was “vacationing” at Pineview, only for Norman to smooth talk his way out of the joint despite what his mother, brother, Alex and his doctors felt in their gut. Everyone new Norman was better off locked away, stabilized by psychotropic drugs and under the careful watch of mental health professionals. However, we wouldn’t have Psycho or the gripping Season 4 finale, and a thrilling Season 5 to anticipate, if Norman received the help he so desperately needs.
With the unfortunate, yet expected death of Norma by the hands of her own son, Norman’s life is spared despite his best efforts to pass away next to her in bed. This only heightens his insanity and delusions that his mother is still with him, as he remembers over and over again her telling him as a child that she’ll never leave him. The physical death of Norma puts to rest the woman who lived her life torn between her own happiness, without her dependent son, and a desire to keep him sheltered and safe from those who “misunderstand” him. But in death, Norma enables the twisted psychopathy inside her son to truly live, thrive even, and she allows Norman to finally realize the version of his mother he could control, the one whose love and attention is solely his.
Season 5 of Bates Motel promises to be better than ever with the rumored appearance of a Psycho character—could it be Marion Crane from the famous shower scene? Remaking any iconic film is a big feet, but the Bates Motel prequel does a spectacular job of creating a new perspective on the classic. According to Executive Producer Carlton Cuse, a remake of the original Psycho is not in the works for Season 5, but instead a new interpretation.