By Joann Lee, Staff Writer
On March 18, A&E released a new thriller show titled Bates Motel. A prequel to Alfred Hitchcock’s famous film Psycho, the show takes place in modern times in the seemingly sleepy town of White Pine Bay, Oregon. Bates Motel begins with an ominous scene in which Norman Bates (Freddie Highmore) finds his father bleeding on the garage floor. Shocked and distraught, Norman screams for his mother, who is in the shower. Emotionless at the sight of her husband’s corpse, Norma Bates (Vera Farmiga) makes the swift decision to move to White Pine Bay. Once they arrive, Norma reveals to her son that she has bought a foreclosed motel, and plans to renovate it and run it herself. The next twenty minutes of the show or so are all a set-up for the intense scenes ahead. Keith Summers (W. E. Brown), the owner of the motel before Norma and Norman moved to White Pines Bay, makes an appearance, which foreshadows an impending misfortune, while Norman meets a group of popular girls who immediately ‘befriend’ him, as well as Emma Decody (Olivia Cooke), a girl with a terminal illness. Norman is also encouraged to join the track team by his language arts teacher, leading to a heated discussion between Norma and her son when he asks his mother to sign the permission slip. Norma ends up signing the permission slip after a dramatic scene of self-pity, but it’s one of the first instances in which we see “Mother” Bates adopting the stifling parenting skills that became so infamous in Hitchcock’s original movie. The group of popular girls then shows up at the Bates’s door in the late evening, asking Norma if Norman could go to the library with them to ‘study.’ Norman peeks over his mother’s shoulder, obviously eager to go, but Norma quickly and rather abrasively declines, shutting the door on the girls in an icily polite manner. The two have an argument in which Norman calls out his mother’s smothering, and ends up sneaking out of the house to go with the girls. But surprise, surprise, it’s actually a party. Norma is oblivious to her son’s disappearance, and washes dishes in the eerie silence. But then, a shattering of glass sends all the viewers’ hearts dropping to their stomachs as someone (watch the pilot to discover who) breaks into the kitchen violently. The scene that follows isn’t very pretty, and mother and son are left to clean up the mess he makes.
Bates Motel’s pilot was a frightening experience, with every scene nauseatingly suspenseful. Even though I personally hadn’t seen Hitchcock’s Psycho prior to watching the Bates Motel pilot, it still is a thriller in its own right. The characters are well-portrayed, especially Norman Bates and his mother. Norman is given a primarily likeable character: a sweet and sensitive nature that begins to mutate slightly during just the first episode. Bates Motel does an excellent job of showing just how Norman comes to be the mentally unstable man starring in Psycho, displaying Norman’s innocuous and introverted character first and then his inner emotional turmoil at the end of the first episode. Norma is the catalyst to the destruction of Norman’s psyche, constantly smothering him with her affection and needs. There is even a hint of a disturbingly incestuous relationship between Norma and her son, which will likely be further explored in the episodes to come. Even the background characters that make up Norman’s high school are well-presented, as the show forgoes any high school bully clichés, making Norman’s high school peers either indifferent or accommodating, highlighting the message that it is not his peers who will drive adult Norman to murder, but his mother.
Bates Motel airs Mondays at 10 PM on A&E.
Courtesy of www.yellmagazine.com