(Contains spoilers for the first two seasons of Bates Motel)
(Also technically contains spoilers for Psycho, but seriously if you don't know Psycho by now, what is wrong with you?)
A couple of weeks ago I finally rewatched the movie Psycho for the first time in ten years. As we reached the final scene in the police station, the one where the psychiatrist describes in agonizing detail Exactly What Is Wrong With Norman*, I realized there were a couple of very important things I'd forgotten.
(*I understand that this was a necessity of the times; audiences in the 1960s had really never seen a movie twist like this before and weren't as familiar with the basic tenets of psychiatry, or at least Hollywood's version of it, as we are now. But seriously, watching this five-minute chunk of exposition as a modern viewer is painful. You see, Norman had a bad mother, and then he got extremely jealous of her boyfriend, and then he killed them. and then he felt guilty, and then he created a split personality to compensate for the guilt, and then the split personality would get angry whenever he felt attracted to a woman, and then HOLY CRAP MAN WE GET IT, WILL YOU JUST MOVE IT ALONG?...Ahem. Sorry.)
I had forgotten the haste with which Norma Bates' character is explained and promptly set aside. Considering the major role she plays in the story (even if she is dead and stuffed for all of it), not to mention the force with which her name and figure have entered pop culture as a shorthand for 'bad mother', the exploration of her history and personality is limited to two lines in the psychiatrist's long-winded treatise on Norman.
"His mother was a clinging, demanding woman, and for years the two of them lived as if there was no one else in the world. Then she met a man, and it seemed to Norman as if she threw him over for this man."
That's it. That's all you get. Norma Bates was a clingy mother who dumped her son for some dude and got killed for it. Oh, well. Bitches be crazy, amirite?
Secondly, I'd forgotten that the death of Norman Bates' father, which seems to be a pretty damn important event in his life, is given no explanation whatsoever. Having not seen the film in a long time, I'd gotten the idea in my head that there was an implication that Norma had killed him, but I was incorrect. He just died. No explanation warranted.*
(*Okay, if we want to get really technical here, Wikipedia tells me that the made for TV sequel Psycho IV explains that he was stung to death by bees, but you'll excuse me if I really can't be bothered to sit through Psycho IV to confirm this for myself)
These two issues got me thinking about Bates Motel, whose third season will be premiering on A&E one week from today. I love Bates Motel, but honestly until now I could never really tell you why I love it so much. As far as the horror-based series that I watch, I still place it at a distant third behind Hannibal (which has the most beautifully cinematic ambition I've ever seen on a network show) and American Horror Story (which survives solely on the sheer strength of its "okay, what kind of crazy shit can we pull this week?!" mentality). Because honestly, it's got a lot of issues. It spends entirely too much time setting up love triangles for Norman, it's mired in subplots that never really seem to go anywhere or do anything, and Freddie Highmore took about one full season to really figure out what he was doing with his performance as Norman (and to get his British accent to stop leaking out all over the place). And yet, I still find the show addictive enough that I keep coming back with bated breath week after week. I could never adequately explain why, until I rewatched Psycho, and then it hit me:
Bates Motel is enthralling because it realizes, unlike the original novel and movie, that in order for Norman Bates' story to work to its full potential, Norma needs to be as much of a protagonist as he is.
It of course goes without saying that in a weekly series, Norma's character gets to be much more fleshed out than she was in the film. We learn about her abusive home life with her brother, and her neglected older son, and her unhappy home life with Norman's father. All of this goes a long way towards making her more sympathetic and relatable. But what ultimately makes the whole story gel is one key change that the writers made to Norman's past.
We see in the pilot episode that Norman's father has been killed, and the show practically hits us over the head with the implication that Norma has killed him. Coming into the show fresh with what we know of her from Psycho, it's easy to accept this implication, because hey, Norma's already a crazy bitch who screwed up her own son so badly that he became a murderer, so why wouldn't she kill a guy? For about the first half of season one, the show strung us along with the idea that it would be about Norman's gradual descent into madness at the hands of his mother, before finally dropping a bombshell on the audience: Norman has already gone crazy, having killed his father during a blackout state where his split personality took over. Furthermore, Norma is already aware of Norman's blackouts, and in her desperate need to protect her son is determined to keep the truth hidden from everyone, including Norman himself.
With this one simple change, the entire mythos of Psycho as we know it is turned on its head. It's no longer a story about a smothered son being driven to madness at the hands of his selfish mother; it's the story of a painfully misguided mother who's realized that her son has descended into insanity, and is determined to protect him at any cost.
The real brilliance is that Norma still acts much like we'd expect Norma Bates to act. She clings to Norman incessantly, she insists on spending time with him above all else, she is mistrustful and paranoid of any new people who attempt to come into their lives, and fills his head with the notion that no one can ever be there for him like she will. But instead of being a manifestation of her own selfishness, it's instead the result of her misguided belief that she can fix whatever is wrong with her son. Norman, being completely unaware of his own dark side, interprets her actions as the sort of simple clinging and selfishness that Psycho had presented, and rather than helping him, her behavior only serves to exacerbate his mental illness and causes the "Mother" personality to start forming inside his head.
The new third-season promos for Bates Motel have been steeped in Psycho-related imagery, which only serves to heighten the tragedy of Norma Bates' predicament. Because it reminds us that no matter how hard she tries to save Norman, no matter how much she loves him and how much she sacrifices for his safety, ultimately she will wind up stuffed and preserved in that rocking chair.
And honestly, for a basic cable show based on a fifty year old movie, that is some serious depth.
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