The 2012-2013 TV Season's Most Surprising New Shows7 of 8
"Bates Motel (2013)"
"It's not like my mother is a maniac or a raving thing. She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven't you?" - Norman Bates, Psycho (1960)
A&E's "Bates Motel (2013)" is inspired by Hitchcock's most celebrated thriller, not a direct prequel (which explains, for example, why Norman Bates owns a iPod), but even as an homage, it does ample justice to its source material. Much of that is owed to the performances of Vera Farmiga and Freddie Highmore as Norma and Norman Bates -- newcomers to White Pine Bay, Oregon, a town that makes Banshee County look like the happiest place on Earth. As a community, the townspeople enact their own kind of justice, which should have worked perfectly for the fiercely protective Norma, a woman who played the part of judge, jury and executioner in the case of a man to commits a crime against her in the pilot. (Not that anyone would quibble.)
But unforeseen difficulties arise in the dark story of Norma and Norman's relationship, which only becomes more complex and codependent as the series wears on -- to the point that her other biological child, Norman's half-brother Dylan, becomes more of an interloper than an ally. Sinister events over the course of the first season grant us a glimpse of the man we know troubled young Norman will soon become, but with season two ordered and on the verge of beginning production, one gets the sense that we've only begun to explore the basement level of the Bates family's psychosis.
"It's not like my mother is a maniac or a raving thing. She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven't you?" - Norman Bates, Psycho (1960)
A&E's "Bates Motel (2013)" is inspired by Hitchcock's most celebrated thriller, not a direct prequel (which explains, for example, why Norman Bates owns a iPod), but even as an homage, it does ample justice to its source material. Much of that is owed to the performances of Vera Farmiga and Freddie Highmore as Norma and Norman Bates -- newcomers to White Pine Bay, Oregon, a town that makes Banshee County look like the happiest place on Earth. As a community, the townspeople enact their own kind of justice, which should have worked perfectly for the fiercely protective Norma, a woman who played the part of judge, jury and executioner in the case of a man to commits a crime against her in the pilot. (Not that anyone would quibble.)
But unforeseen difficulties arise in the dark story of Norma and Norman's relationship, which only becomes more complex and codependent as the series wears on -- to the point that her other biological child, Norman's half-brother Dylan, becomes more of an interloper than an ally. Sinister events over the course of the first season grant us a glimpse of the man we know troubled young Norman will soon become, but with season two ordered and on the verge of beginning production, one gets the sense that we've only begun to explore the basement level of the Bates family's psychosis.
PeopleVera Farmiga, Freddie Highmore