Is anyone watching the BATES MOTEL series?
The movie of a young man's descent into insanity doesn't appeal to me
--or so I thought, but they showed all 4 episodes thus far on Sat.
night and I thought --"well, I'll just watch a little," and Jon and I
were drawn in by compelling characters, actors, directing. It's quite a
compelling drama! Fifth episode is tonight. I'm hoping this has a
different ending than the later Hitchcock movies. I want artistic
license to be redemptive! with triumph of good over evil! I like happy
endings! Never was one for soap operas!
It appears that
there are not any GOOD persons in the show except Norman's 2
girlfriends and Norman himself. Even his brother who has come home
for lack of other options --and taken a turn for the better toward
Norman and is befriending/protecting him (at last)-- told him to "go
be a normal teen --go get laid at 17 with a pretty teen girl!" And the
worldly audience probably found themselves agreeing that that's just
what Norman needed! as he went off to visit the girlfriend --who invited
him at night --a girl whose beloved father was mysteriously murdered by
fire in his warehouse. Next we'll have a teen love triangle with the
other girl who has cystic fibrosis --who also has a crush on him. Then
maybe there'll be a pregnancy or an abortion--and goodness knows what
from such lousy brotherly advice.
The story is contemporized
--with teens texting on their phones and a sex-trafficking mystery
involving Asian girls and a journal of drawings about their plight
found by Norman under the carpets --after they removed the carpets for
blood --because his likable mother murdered her rapist, a gross fellow
who formerly owned the property and lost it in foreclosure. Norman
caught him in the act, bonked him on the head, they handcuffed him to a
table leg --and his mother went into a rage and stabbed the guy to
death. We suspect mother caused an accidental death to her husband,
too, Norman's father, for insurance money. That's another mystery.
The estranged son, Norman's brother --was born to the mother when she
was 17 to a man who left her --and that son never respected her (calls
her Norma) --so she favored Norman. Her facial expressions are
terrific --with a mix of kindly motherly affection for Norman and
vulnerability to the disrespectful son. She seems neither crazy nor
particularly inappropriate with her sons --so far.
The
older brother gets a job, starts helping out at home. His job is
guarding a big secret marijuana field --near which there is a cabin in
the woods --featured in the Asian girl's drawings in her journal.
The police suspected Norma in the disappearance of her rapist -- she
and Norman dumped him in the lake --and carpet fibers found on his
recovered hand from his body matched the motel's carpet which they
removed because of blood residue as the police arrived. They had
stored him in a bathtub of one of the motel rooms --after murdering him
in the kitchen. She chose not to report his rape of her and her
understandable rage leading to his murder --it wasn't self-defense since
they had him handcuffed and helpless. He had once claimed the police
were his fishing buddies when she threatened to call the police on him
for his threatening ways --so she figured the police would discount the
rape, and she figured no one would want to visit a motel where there
had been a murder. She already found out that a freeway was being put
in on the other side of town which would hurt her business.
Another twist --the sheriffy's deputy has become Norman's mother's lover
--as he found the dead man's belt under Norman's bed and promised to
keep it and not tell on them. Norman had kept the belt as a memento of
the event --and wonders why and what's wrong with him for doing so.
Norman's mother apparently told him to get the belt back --so he goes to
the deputy's house --and he finds, not the belt, but an Asian girl in
the basement --apparently a sex slave. He tells his mother --and she
looks in the basement when she is with the deputy at his place and he
falls asleep --and there doesn't appear to be a girl there anymore.
So what's going on? Norman had a trance and black-out in the
classroom thinking about the drawings in the journal. There is a scene
in which the mother tells him to reclaim the dead man's belt from the
deputy's house because he could use it as blackmail to get whatever he
wanted from her --to make HER his sex slave. Yet, the deputy claims
to love the mother --took Norman fishing --says he will protect them.
Everyone knows the dead man was a brute and had it in for his mother.
Nevertheless, when they find the dead-man's fish-severed hand with
watch and carpet fibers in the lake, they arrest Norman's mother.
That's where the story takes up tonight.
Mystery: Norman's
mother says she did NOT tell him to get that belt from the deputy's
house, tells him he has been having delusions like this all his life,
tells him there IS no Asian girl in the deputy's basement because she
went down and looked. But the deputy could have moved her --because
when deputy got home he found his vicious dog locked up in his bedroom
--(by norman) and basement window was left open, too, from which Norman
fled. So the deputy may have known someone had been in the house --and
thus moved the girl. Or is Norman imagining the girl from the journal
drawings? There is something fishy going on here --his CF girlfriend
found Chinese writing under a bathroom sink in the motel --the figures
spelled "Beautiful." But why would you write that word under a sink?
Perhaps it is her name! And she was leaving evidence of her presence in
that room.
Wow! Lot's of mystery --and no one to trust!
"God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance and have eternal life."--the Bible
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