Bates Motel on A&E - Anyone Watching? *

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by rockclassics, Mar 18, 2013.

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  1. tonyc

    tonyc Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    She thought Norman was great at first, then Norman just wanted attention, then only at the last possible point she considered him as a suspect.

    Bumbling.
     
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  2. chacha

    chacha Forum Resident In Memoriam

    Location:
    mill valley CA USA
    I didn't get that impression. Seemed to me that the script/direction was pretty neutral on the sheriff.
     
  3. jon9091

    jon9091 Master Of Reality

    Location:
    Midwest
    Yeah....that didn't quite work for me either. Not only is he a cop, but the ground is covered with snow...there's no way Norman would be able to sneak up on him without the snow underfoot making all kinds of noise.

    And yeah...I also found it a bit unbelievable that Norman was able to drive this stolen car all the way back from the mountains...where the hostage knew the general vicinity, and not one cop spotted him, and not one cop drove by the hotel for an entire day.

    Other than that...I did enjoy it, and am glad it ended the way it did. It's been a hugely entertaining show for the last 5 years.
     
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  4. modrevolve

    modrevolve Forum Resident

    Its funny..I didn't realize till the wrap up show that Bates Motel's core audience were teens and twenty somethings. That must explain why we don't know anyone else who watches it.

    I enjoyed the finally and am glad that it gave us some closure to Norman.
     
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  5. balzac

    balzac Senior Member

    I'm not sure what the precise demographics are for the show, but I will say their focus on "hardcore fans" on that aftershow was pretty pathetic. I sense they've tried to push "Bates Motel" as a pop culture item on the level of "Walking Dead" and "Supernatural" and the like, but it just never happened. As I've mentioned in the past, they tried to put "Bates Motel" merchandise in Hot Topic for a little while, and nobody cared. It's just for whatever reason not that pop culture touchstone one would think it might be.

    I've been amazed there haven't been Funko Pop figures for the show; it seems right up that alley. They do "Orphan Black" Pop figures and "Silicon Valley" and many other cable shows. They're even doing Pop figures for the original "Psycho" sometime later this year.

    "Bates" certainly has a hardcore fan base as most any five-season show would have. But I think their fan base is something closer to "Falling Skies" than it is to "Walking Dead."
     
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  6. chacha

    chacha Forum Resident In Memoriam

    Location:
    mill valley CA USA
    Most people don't seem to even know about Bates Motel. It was still a pretty obscure show even after 5 years. Unfortunately.
     
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  7. rburly

    rburly Sitting comfortably with Item 9

    Location:
    Orlando
    After this series, it's better off to leave Norman Bates in the movie. I didn't like the ending, so hopefully people will catch the movie when it's on.
     
  8. tonyc

    tonyc Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    Yes, everyone should ignore 49 hours and 45 minutes of a great series because you did not like the ending.
     
  9. DreadPikathulhu

    DreadPikathulhu Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    I thought the ending wrapped it up the only way possible. There were a fair amount of dead ends in the series, but on the whole it was one of the most satisfying viewing experiences I've had since Breaking Bad.

    I questioned the existence of the show when it was in pre-production and the first season was the most difficult to get through, but every season since then has been excellent.
     
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  10. rburly

    rburly Sitting comfortably with Item 9

    Location:
    Orlando
    While I didn't like the ending and would never advise anyone to not watch it, I would explain that the series ends nothing like the movie. I would never tell anyone not to watch it. It just wasn't a satisfying ending to me. It was cookie-cutter to me. It fell flat at the end IMO. "And everyone lived happily ever after..."
     
  11. jon9091

    jon9091 Master Of Reality

    Location:
    Midwest
    Errr...I don't know if I'd say everyone lived happily ever after...or even lived, period.
    Telling people the series differs greatly from the movie is a huge spoiler IMO. A lot of the intrigue was seeing how and if they were going to work around the Hitchcock original.
     
  12. chacha

    chacha Forum Resident In Memoriam

    Location:
    mill valley CA USA
    Ha. That's some fairytale.
    o_O
     
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  13. rburly

    rburly Sitting comfortably with Item 9

    Location:
    Orlando
    But that's how they left it. Emma and Dylan and their baby. To me, it was a cheap way out. It's certainly been done before, but this was too safe and not in line at all with the movie. Let's just leave it as I didn't like the ending.
     
  14. Squealy

    Squealy Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    Vancouver
    I don't know if they live "happily ever after" but Marion's sister and boyfriend, the two "good" characters trying to get to the bottom of what happened, are alive and well at the end of Psycho. It's not like there's a bleak ending for everyone.
     
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  15. rockclassics

    rockclassics Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Mainline Florida
    It seems to me that anyone who crossed paths with Norman and lived should consider themselves lucky and try to live happily.....ever after.
     
  16. kwadguy

    kwadguy Senior Member

    Location:
    Cambridge, MA
    I thought the end was pretty good, and provided satisfying closure.

    I did NOT like what they did to the Romero character this entire season, though. For the first four seasons he'd been clever and measured. Suddenly, this season, he's an unhinged cartoon bent on a nonsensical showdown with Norman. It didn't ruin the show (or the finale), but I thought most of the screen time given to that character this season was a bit of a waste.
     
  17. balzac

    balzac Senior Member

    I don't think it's so much that everybody lived happily ever after, but they did give Dylan and Emma a pretty pat ending, and one could argue Norman got a "happier" ending than he should have considering he murdered numerous people.

    As for telling people the series differs from the movie, the showrunners have detailed this in numerous interviews going back to the first season. You learn in the pilot that there's no way the show is going to perfectly match the movie, but you also see that there are some tie-ins. It's pretty 50/50 throughout the series. Same house, same motel, but different town, a brother added, etc.

    I don't think it would be a spoiler to state the obvious that there's no way a 50-episode TV series is going to be a carbon copy of a two-hour movie. There's invariably going to be far more different than the same.
     
  18. rockclassics

    rockclassics Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Mainline Florida
    After watching the final episode a couple of times - I thought the ending was appropriate.

    To me the downfall of Romero was appropriate. As long as he was the sheriff and in control he was fine. But once Norma died and he was arrested and in prison he had a major downfall. He became obsessed with getting even by taking Norman out. As someone else mentioned I think Romero was overcome when he saw Norma in the snow and just lost it. I actually thought he would turn on Norman again at that point and do him in. But Norman got to him first.
     
  19. balzac

    balzac Senior Member

    I saw Norman taking out Romero coming from a million, trillion, kajillion miles away. There was no way, only half-way through the final episode, that Romero was going to kill Norman, the lead of the show/franchise. Not only that, but given how there was no way Romero was not going to likely spend the rest of his life in prison even if he let Norman go, that was all the more reason to expect his death.

    But I don't find Romero's death objectionable so much as the super clichéd way they played it out in that scene. Romero continually assaults Norman but then arbitrarily stops short of killing him. Then he turns his back. Norman is behind him. The show has often done a great job of defying assumptions/expectations, but that scene was not such a case.
     
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  20. rockclassics

    rockclassics Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Mainline Florida
    Another thing about the final episode - about halfway thru the show when Norman was half unconscious in the woods with Romero and flashing back - did anyone else think this whole thing could have been a dream in Normans head? I actually turned to my wife and said "This thing better not turn out to be a dream in Normans head."
     
  21. balzac

    balzac Senior Member

    I thought about it for a moment, but I didn't think they'd be that lame. They've done a good job running the show; I don't think the show has ever had that sort of style/vibe.

    Plus, Cuse did "Lost" and is well aware of what happens with a show's fanbase when you reduce an entire show's run or hunks of a show's run to a dream or purgatory or something *like* purgatory, and/or craft a finale that implies everything that happened during the course of the show, even if real, didn't really matter (to the point where you specifically have to make sure one of the characters in the final episode tells another character "it all mattered!").
     
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  22. chacha

    chacha Forum Resident In Memoriam

    Location:
    mill valley CA USA
    It didn't bother me me. I was caught up in his grieving in that moment. Implausibilities like this occur in every movie/TV show ever made. The drama to me is the most important thing rather than the mechanics unless it's something really contrived and stupid which this was not.
     
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  23. kwadguy

    kwadguy Senior Member

    Location:
    Cambridge, MA
    It would have been cool if they'd panned back and Emma was playing with a snow globe, and the whole show was her imagination.
     
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  24. kwadguy

    kwadguy Senior Member

    Location:
    Cambridge, MA
    It's true that Cuse seems to have learned a lesson from Lost and dropped plot elements.

    That said, they seemed overly intent on cleaning up all loose ends with trivial deaths: Dylan's dad, Chick, Romero. We know what happened to them, but none were particularly satisfying and in some cases, rendered the entire plotline somewhat pointless.
     
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  25. chacha

    chacha Forum Resident In Memoriam

    Location:
    mill valley CA USA
    Pointless? It's entertainment. I don't understand.
     
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