I dug the first episode of the Bates Motel TV series on A&E, but after two episodes I’m starting to have a few reservations with this show about the birth of Psycho movie serial killer Norman Bates. The idea of a teen Norman Bates, the wonderful Freddie Highmore, being slowly molded into a murderer by his mother Norma, the superb Vera Farmiga, is a great idea for a show. But it sure seemed with the second episode that the producers of Bates Motel were worried that a show JUST about Norman and Norma would be to limiting, so they decided to add a lot of little mysteries to the plot to shake things up.
These include:
- A car driven by a guy suffering from massive burns.
- The mean (evil?) town sheriff looking for his missing friend.
- The addition of Norman’s older brother Dylan.
- Dylan getting a job where he needs to know how to “use a gun.”
- Norman and his (girl)friend Emma finding a diary in one of the motel rooms that seems to chronicle some very bad things that went on in that motel.
- Norman and Emma searching for evidence that the diary is true, stumbling across a gigantic marijuana farm and being chased off by men with AK-47s.
- A deputy sheriff telling Norma that the town isn’t what it seems.
- A guy hanging upside down in the town square on fire.
And I thought Bates Motel was going to be about Norman and Norma, not a weird Eerie Indiana/Eureka type town! 😉
The first episode of Bates Motel was wonderful, but this second episode and its million and one Lost-ish mystery storylines was a let down. Honestly, if this is where Bates Motel is going I probably won’t stick around with it for that long.
