Bates Motel on A&E - Anyone Watching? *

I still love the show, and the finale and the finale season were good enough. But this is another one of those shows that feels like "mapping out" the entire thing several seasons ago and having a set-in-stone fixed ending date, while sounding like a good idea, may have hindered it just a bit.

I kind of feel like Bates should have been either four or six seasons or something, like the way this last season played out, and how other shows' final pre-destined seasons often do, was kind of rushed a bit, with some things added in but then never addressed fully.

I have to wonder what the purpose of having Caleb back even was. I think he along with several other characters (Madeliene Loomis, Marion Crane, arguably even Chick) were sort of red herrings for this final season, a bunch of stuff thrown in so that you were never sure who was dead or who was the lynchpin.

I don't mind Romero dying; we knew he was either going to end up dead or in jail for the rest of his life. But I wish they would have done something a little less cliché, with Romero simply turning his back on Norman and then getting hit on the head and then shot. Something more of a plausible struggle with Romero ending up dead, rather than Romero just coming off kind of dumb (as he has for most of this season), would have been preferable.

I'm not sure I'm a big fan of Norman meeting Norma and hugging it out and being *immediately* happy. You kind of get the sense Norman got off pretty darn easy for having killed so many people. I'm not saying something as mundane as his case going to trial followed by an easy conviction and incarceration would have been best. Something more dramatic kind of needed to happen. But even Norman's final act was kind of selfish, saddling the already emotionally-spent Dylan with the added guilt of having to kill his brother.

Also thought Dylan and Emma living happily every after was a bit pat.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't want the bleakest of bleak endings either. I was concerned Norman would just end up murdering everybody and survive and laugh through the end of the show.

But something a little darker and sinister would have been interesting. Even the new couple apparently buying the motel at the end could have been imbued with a bit more creepiness. I was wondering if, at the end when Dylan was sitting on the steps, he was going to "see Mother" himself and you'd essentially have Dylan as the crazy one. But that sort of gets more into "possession" territory instead of mental illness.

I thought it was funny that the "after show" was all pre-recorded. They learned their lesson from those live shows a few years ago. The after show wasn't terribly substantive, but I didn't expect much. I frankly would have rather just watched another five or ten minutes of the bloopers.

 

I wasn't aware that was a widespread belief/assumption/guess. I always figured Dylan had a good shot as surviving because he had no "Psycho" counterpart to compare to.

 

I never bought into the idea that they would ever continue the show, whether Norman survived or not. They have already established this show as something of a "boutique" item, only doing 10 episodes per season and cutting it off at five seasons (not even doing "the other 70" of "Twin Peaks" that Carlton Cuse mentioned early on).

 

It seemed like a lot of message board consensus (not here but elsewhere) was that Dylan would've been killed off long before the events of Psycho took place as in the book/movie, you never heard mention of an older brother (remember until 4-5 episodes ago, people flat out assumed Psycho was going to be remade as we knew it, and not given a twist). I seem to remember people being scared to see how Dylan and Emma would both eventually be killed off (with Emma, before season 4, her cystic fibrosis was something people were afraid was going to claim her). I remember a lot of people who thought there was no way those two were ever going to make it out of the show alive.

 

Ah, I see. Yeah, I suppose if some fans had the idea that the show had to "match up" with the movie, then Dylan would have to disappear by the time the show hit the "movie" timeline. I always assumed they never meant it to tie in that strongly.

My theory early on (or I should say an idea I liked; I never thought it was actually going to happen) was that Norma and Norman would both survive to the end and Norma would kill Norman and that would be the epic twist/reversal, with Norma essentially becoming the "Norman" character from the film. That obviously didn't happen!

 

Yeah that was my other complaint about the episode... it was a weak way for Romero to go out, especially after we spent the whole season watching him make his way to Norman. And then he turns his back on him? I suppose he was overcome seeing Norma, but a cop would know better. He did serve the function of getting Norman out of jail though.

I don't know... he died, I wouldn't call that getting off easy. Maybe he should have suffered instead of his death being a relief to him but I don't think it would have been emotionally satisfying if he had just been killed while doing something crazy, or been locked up like Anthony Perkins.

I have admit though, in the heat of the moment I didn't get that Norman consciously forced Dylan to kill him... I just thought he was getting stabby again.

I think Dylan would have been able to cope with what he did eventually... he'd see it was better for Norman to be gone, and he had had to kill people before so that wasn't a new experience for him (granted none of them were related to him).

It really struck me at the end that they never really wanted a horror feel for the show at all, despite it being based on the most famous of horror movies. So it makes sense they didn't go for a more chilling ending.

 

It's not so much that I feel Norman needed to physically suffer more, or even be locked up. I just wish there would have been a bit more realization and true sympathy for all the people he killed. Several seasons back when Norman starts to realize what he's doing, they did a good job of showing how he was wracked with guilt and anguish and he even goes into the woods presumably to kill himself (at which point Norma stops him). But in more recent seasons, the emotional baggage Norman has carried has still been mostly about himself and his own turmoil. There haven't been many moments where he faces up to having taken numerous other lives (including potentially off-screen murders like Dr. Edwards, who I'm bummed we never found out about). Norman wants to "be with his mother" because that's what he has always wanted. There's no indication he needs a release from debilitating guilt. There have been a few moments where Norman did "keep himself" from potentially murdering more people (though not coincidentally the two people this happened with were both pretty young females that Normal was attracted to), but that's the only time this season a real moral/ethical quandary was at the fore for Norman.

Oh, for sure. I don't think killing Norman, especially under *these* circumstances, would have been irreparably debilitating for Dylan. But it's established that he easily feels guilt, and it's more just an objective observation that there's still some selfishness in Norman saddling Dylan with any extra potential guilt.

 

In a way I was surprised that Dylan ended up being so central to the resolution of the show... but in retrospect it makes sense that after they put so much time and focus into him he wouldn't just end up another of Norman's victims. Though the creators said they always knew the series would end with Norman's death, but only worked out that Dylan would kill him as they were writing the last season.

 

That's true... even their final confrontation was all about Norman denying Norma was dead. Never mind that he was also a serial killer!

I think it was implicit though, that the nightmare his life had become was part of why he wanted to die, and why he had tried to kill himself the night Norma died as well. (I don't know if Norman ever even really acknowledged that her death was his fault.)

 

As much as I like the Romero character, I consider it a weak link in this final season. I don't think it was ever very plausible that Romero loved Norma as much as all his actions in the last season suggested.

 

When you notice little things about how Max was directing episodes and still an integral part behind the scenes, it made sense that his character while absent most of the final season would be critical to the series finale.

 

I thought the real jump was in Season 4. Norman really transformed from teenager to serial killer almost too fast. That is where more episodes could have been beneficial.

 

And still Dylan never learned that Caleb was dead.... unless they found it in Chick's notes. (They never really did anything with that idea that he was writing a book.)

I kinda liked that the psychiatrist's death was a twist that they threw out there and never even revealed the details of... that Norman was doing so much bad stuff the show couldn't even keep up with it all.

 

tbh I'm happy it was Dylan and not Romero (who IMO crossed the line this season with his one track mind) for the deed.

Still will admit I was surprised they went the route they did, especially when Psycho IV eventually showed a much older rehabilitated Norman with a happy family life

 

Most of the time he knew her he thought she was nuts!

But then Norma had a way of making the people around her crazy too...

 

My problem with last night's finale was that it was too clean. All the bows were knotted, t's crossed, i's dotted. It was too easy of a way to end the Psycho franchise. I would have preferred if they had kept Norman alive. No cleaning up to have a happy ending. I'm sure most people like all the ends tied up, but I wasn't. I felt like the final scenes were resolved quickly. On to the next series.

 

And if they would have done what you wanted people would have complained about that. I'm fine with how it ended and it ended with nobody wondering well maybe it can come back.

 

Don't want to spoil anything, but here's the problem I had with the finale... now, this is coming from a pro wrestling fan so I have no problem with suspending disbelief, but with Romero, Norman and a hostage on the lam (and especially after the hostage returned to the sheriff's station), wouldn't you think they'd have at the very least a squad car stationed at the motel? Or at least giving it a regular drive by? I mean Norman was able to do quite a bit of stuff there without detection, must have been there for at least a day (went from sunshine to darkness).

 

I felt that as well but have no problem suspending disbelief as it served the story well. That kind of stuff is much easier to take for me than let's say a character acting in a really contrived way.

 

It occurs to me though that the cops probably thought Norman was being held captive or lying dead in the woods, since the last anyone saw of him was Romero taking him out there to kill him...

 

While a scenario where Romero still has Normal captive yet chooses to go back to Norman's house isn't the most likely scenario, it's likely enough that a few cops definitely should have and seemingly would have been there to keep an eye. Romero *had* lived there and watched Norma die there, too. If nothing else, if Norman was able to escape, he might make it back to his house.

I think the criticism of the show not having cops there is a legit criticism.

The only scenario where such a thing makes any sense is that, when Dylan talks to the Sheriff, he kind of implies her department is inept. So not having cops stationed there would be an extension of that ineptitude I guess.

I was never clear on whether we were supposed to feel that new Sheriff was like spot-on meticulous and smart, or kind of out of her depth and bumbling. It came across as more of the latter (e.g. dropping weird info about the pending investigations to Normal that she shouldn't have, etc.)

 

The more I think about it, the finale to the show to me is up there with the endings to Breaking Bad and Six Feet Under.

I will admit perhaps the gut-punch in the finale was Emma's callous "I don't care about Norman" comment, especially when in the prior episode, she had looked like she'd begun to have more of an understanding that he was seriously ill and not the boy she used to be friends with in the past and that she missed him.

 

I don't know... White Pine Bay doesn't have a huge police force, they had checked the house the night before, and needed every cop to search? The hostage had given them an area to search in that wasn't near the house....

I suppose they could have had Dylan encounter cops staking out the house and tell them, let me go in and talk to him, but it was more suspenseful if he was going in there totally alone.

 

#AlternateFacts

No spoilers but I nod towards a few developments -- vaguely enough, I think.

Starting in February, I binged this show in chunks (so to speak) and only watched the final TV season in real time. I found the first few seasons a bit of a slog. A sort of "anthology" approach to the motel and its guests could have been intriguing but I found the "high school"/"this crime-ridden town" years a real slog. Still, it was compelling enough to keep going with the promise of where it could go.

Glad I stuck with it. I breezed through season four. I've watched this season's episodes in pairs for "mini-binges" since I expected the weekly rhythm would feel like a let down even if the episodes were high quality (music doesn't have a monopoly on the mind's penchant for consistent rhythm, after all). Whatever my qualms, I think they pulled the season off well. How they subverted expectations in the show's clockwork universe was fun. The "soap" aspects were handled and parceled out well-enough. My only nagging gripe is how they dispatched a certain woolly writer. The internal Norma(n) psychodrama was increasingly engrossing and the last scenes with Dylan were solid (especially for a character I find flatly written and performed -- the glycerine budget to keep his eyes constantly watery must have been insane). I'm glad they didn't go as over-the-top Cain and Abel with the brothers as I feared. Cuse & co. stuck the landing pretty well -- and I loved the last shot.

Spoiler

I was okay with it except they kept the shot for such a long time and from such a low angle that, combined with his stillness it was painfully obvious to me (and nothing is obvious to me) where Norman was going to pop up in the shot. If Romero had moved a little more during the shot or if the shot were shorter then I wouldn't have been so distracted.

The only other visual quibble I had was when they showed the realtor in front of the BATES MOTEL sign, I thought it'd have been a better touch to remove the neon BATES. The discoloration where the letters were would still be visible but it may have been more striking. Also, in-universe, I'd imagine such a sensational story would be widespread enough that you'd want to do whatever you could to avoid the name.

I wonder if the motel came with a free supply of candy corn? SEQUEL!

The after-show's not bad. Typically fluffy pre-produced EPK fare. Not the disaster of, say, Sons of Anarchy's after-shows. I'm going to enjoy reading the many missed pages in this thread since I was such a late-comer.

 

I wouldn't exactly call it callous.... "I don't care about Norman I care about you" just means, "you being safe means more to me" .... Dylan is her husband, after all.

But I do think going to see him didn't make her sympathetic towards him, so much as make her feel like the real Norman was lost forever.

As far as I remember Emma wasn't privy to most of the crazy stuff going on in the house and motel over the years so I think the revelation that Norman was a multiple murderer would be much more shocking to her (even aside from her mother being one of the victims). I wouldn't judge her for rejecting him more than Dylan did. There's "mentally ill and needs help" and then there's "'mentally ill serial killer."