Bates Motel (TV Series) What's Wrong with Norman (2013) User Reviews

Absolutely riveting!

[callanvass · 9/10 · 29 November 2013]

Norman's new friend Emma is becoming a bit of a nuisance for Norman. After escaping a precarious chase in the marijuana fields in the previous episode that was too close for comfort, Emma begins to obsess over their accidental discovery over the marijuana field. She is convinced a sketch in the journal that Norman found is legitimate. They discover a Chinese symbol drawn under the sink. Dylan commences his 300$ a day job, for essentially doing nothing but guard the marijuana. Norman collapses at school, and heads to the hospital for tests, but the results come back negative. Bradley continues to hang out with Norman, visits him at the hospital, and sends him texts. Norma gets a visit from Sheriff Romero, with a search warrant in hand. Norma forces Norman out of the hospital, without the hospital's authority. Norma then turns to Deputy Shelby for help. Norman begins to lose it, and has an imaginary conversation with his Mother, and decides to go look for the belt Deputy Shelby took from under Norman's bed at Shelby's house, but nothing can prepare Norman for what he uncovers

I loved this episode even more the second time around. I realize it wasn't anywhere near this chaotic in the Psycho movies. My advice for you in this series is to just go with it, and ignore things that don't add up with the movies. Almost everyone is mentally messed up in this show. You get succinct glimpses of what is to come with Norman in the future. The imaginary visions, the conversation with his Mother, the blackouts, the obsession over kinky things, it's all a prelude for Psycho. That's essentially what this series is, a prequel to Psycho, focusing on Norman's teenage years. Norman is entering into the loony zone, and it was fascinating to watch. His relationship with both Emma & Bradley is focused on here. His relationship with Bradley is fun, but to me it's Norman & Emma. Bradley just seems like the hot chick everyone wants to be with in High School, where as Emma is the outcast. I can see why Norman gets irritated by her, but he kind of treats her like dirt. It's pretty easy to see why Norman went bonkers. His Mother is far more concerned over the reputation of herself & the hotel, in lieu of Norman's well being. She is perfectly OK with dragging Norman out of the hospital, when Norman needs to spend time at the hospital over night, just so her reputation isn't damaged further. Let me get this straight. Norma isn't exactly a sympathetic person. She's quite deranged and incredibly neurotic & selfish, but she's such a charming person. She is played with bravado by Vera Farmiga, and it's been a treat to watch Freddie Highmore & Vera Faramiga together. Norma's relationship with Deputy Shelby heats up here. A steamy romance commences. I quite liked the Shelby character. His character has a huge twist going forward that you won't see coming. I also loved the transformation of Dylan's character. You start to see that maybe he's not such a bad guy after all. His work storyline with Ethan (Terry Chen) was actually fun. The best thing for me though, was the bonding session Norman & Dylan had near the end of the episode. You can tell right away that they play off one another very well. You see even more of it in future episodes. The ending is a bit of a cliffhanger. I did not expect it when I first watched it. You're not sure if it's more imaginary visions from Norman, or if he really is seeing what he is. That's what made the ending so great. I love that this show is willing to push boundaries. It's not afraid to have a different agenda. In my opinion it's working very well.

Final Thoughts: I love this show. Revisiting these episodes makes me love them even more. If you enjoyed the first two, you'll love this one. It's constantly throwing surprises your way. Character development is top notch, and the acting is amazing.

9.7/10

Bates Motel Is A Modern Retelling/Have An Open Mind!

[alton_tyre · 8/10 · 30 March 2013]

I wish all the people who came up here to criticize Bates Motel, had done a little research about the show before flashing their ignorance for the masses. Bates Motel is both a prequel and reboot of the Psycho franchise. It is pretty much the same treatment that has recently been given to movies like Oz: The Great & Powerful. So far the show seems to be more of a drama with elements of mystery and horror comparable to shows like Dexter, The Walking Dead, and American Horror Story.

Bates Motel starts with a 17 year old Norman who is a bright mama's boy who has been shuffled from one home to another in a series of life changing moves spurred by his impulsive mother Norma. The two end up buying an old foreclosed home and adjoining hotel from life insurance money left by his father who has recently died. The town which was once booming has fallen upon hard times as the economy has shifted and faces even more hardships if a proposed bypass is approved. But mysteriously most of the town's inhabitants still seem to be prospering.

Norman Bates is at once respectful to his mother and yearning to break away from her grip to experience life as a normal teen. Norman is at times frail, strong willed, curious, rebellious, and mature beyond his years. The actor who plays him juggles these opposing natures deftly. The same can be said of Norma. The actress who plays her does a seamless job of shifting between loving protecting mother, smothering mother, and just plain crazy as hell mother. The casting of this show is perfect. The acting is very good in my opinion by all characters.

I have a feeling that this show was set in modern times and started before the original Psycho because that material was done to death. By starting from the beginning you get to see the complex relationship that exist between Norma and Norman that leads to his eventual psychosis. By setting this Bates Motel in modern times you also get a more layered story that features a town mired in modern day secrets and problems. I think the show is outstanding and it grabbed me from the first few minutes of the pilot. After watching the second episode I was left wanting more and eagerly anticipating the third. I like that the producers also respected the time and feel of the original movie by keeping the house and it's interior dated and also using some retro wardrobe chooses for both Norma and Norman. I can't wait to see how this show unfolds.

So if you are a die hard Psycho fan expecting a direct and faithful retelling of the book or original movie by Alfred Hitchcock, skip this. But if you have an open mind and can envision the Bates House looming over a modern landscape in all it's creepy glory then this show might just be for you. Make up your own mind and don't let some of the negative comments on this site deter you.

Bates Motel--What's Wrong with Norman

[Scarecrow-88 · 8/10 · 3 April 2013]

Norman's inner demons are starting to rise to the surface. He's starting to imagine those sketches of bondage and chained women, and it has gotten so bad that Norman has substituted the Chinese immigrants from the book with his language arts teacher. He was so transfixed with those mental images (fantasies?) that Norman passes out in class while a test was being conducted, cradled in his teacher's lap. Tests in the hospital are run to see why he passed out, but when they return negative, Norma takes him out, not willing to listen to his doctor and allow Norman to stay overnight. The sheriff and his deputies have a search warrant and intrude upon her home while the carpet guys are there. Norman freaks out about this because he actually kept Summers' belt (!), under his bed for whatever reason he can't explain. Dylan has "a new job" guarding a large, illegal marijuana crop, alongside a young man who introduced him to one of the town's major drug distributors. Emma cannot shake the experience of the shed, the knowledge that the sketch book could be an accurate depiction of events that actually transpired, and wants Norman to help her find the buried body so she can be identified. A Chinese symbol, painted on a sink in Room 4, indicates that the sketchbook is legit. Emma wants to go forward to the police with the book, but this sends Norman into a near rage, just wanting her to leave well enough alone. It is soon discovered that the belt was recovered by Deputy Zach Shelby , who kept it himself so that Norma wouldn't be caught. Zach has a romantic interest in Norma (and it seems she might have an interest in him as well) and promises to protect her. After dinner, the two have sex, with Norma returning home late, Norman concerned that the belt will be used as blackmail. Norman cannot explain why he kept the belt, mentioning that it was a "memento". In a conversation with Dylan, Norman is reminded of nearly killing him with the meat tenderizer yet he has no recollection of doing that. To cap it all off, Norman imagines Norma telling him he needs to rectify the situation by going to Zach's home and retrieving the belt. The episode also further advances a possible teen romance between the burdened Bradley and Norman. Bradley needs a friend, but Emma seems to be the monkey wrench. Well, Emma and probably Norma. Norman breaks into Zach's home, fends off his mutt, finds the keys to the cellar and realizes that the deputy has a pleasure den with a rotating disco ball, cameras, and a bed signaling that disturbing events have perhaps taken place there. Another room has a bruised, malnourished, and drugged Chinese girl with a heavy chain shackled to her leg.

The question is whether or not all of this is real or imagined in Norman's warped mind. The episode leaves with the cliffhanger of Zach returning home while Norman was in the cellar. Obviously, the decision to show clips from next week's episode (I'm not a fan of this at all) deters from the suspenseful impact of that cliffhanger, but I am intrigued as to how Norman will escape from this predicament. I think this third episode really defines going forward Norman's psychotic tendencies and how they come and go, most without his remembering anything. This comments on how Norman will often succumb to that dark half that will take hold, leading him to act out in unsettling/unnerving ways. This is the episode, to me, that will perhaps define the longevity of the series because it addresses the fact that Norman is truly not mentally healthy and prone to fall away from his normal frame of mind when swept into the darkness that exists within him.

What's Wrong with Norman

[Michael_Elliott · 1 April 2013]

Bates Motel: 'What's Wrong with Norman' (2013)

Rating: B+

A&E's "Bates Motel" mini-series is basically going to be re-working PSYCHO IV. If you've seen that film then you know it shows what was going on with Mrs. Bates and Norman before the events in the original Alfred Hitchcock film. While that prequel wasn't perfect, it at least put a nice wrap-around story to the original film.

The third episode finds Norma (Vera Farmiga) and Norman (Freddie Highmore) once again being stalked by the local sheriff who is still trying to prove that they are behind a local man's disappearance. As all of this is going on Norman continues to try and build a relationship with two different girls with both of them needing something different. This episode also finds Dylan Bates (Max Thieriot) learning what his new job is going to be.

Thankfully this third episode is a major step up from the previous one and this one here contains probably the best writing of anything up to this point. I think there were a lot of very strong points here including the terrific scenes where we see some relationships building stronger. There's a very good sequence between Norman and Dylan that actually works perfectly well for both characters. We also get a sequence where we see that Norman is slowly losing his mind and the way this is handled was perfectly done. I also thought the tension in the relationship between mother and son is growing more weird by the moment. The film takes a few new twists in regards to the disappearance, which I won't ruin but it's certainly interesting. With that said, the search for the missing girl just doesn't seem to be working and this too leads to something rather silly. Still, the ending is quite good and it certainly makes you want to see what's going to happen next.

Something Is Wrong with Norman!

[gab-14712 · 9/10 · 9 February 2019]

What is wrong with Norman, indeed? A mighty fine question in an episode so aptly titled and one that features Freddie Highmore's Norman Bates showing his psycho tendencies even more. I enjoyed this episode very much, even if not everything makes a whole lot of sense. Freddie Highmore's portrayal as Norman Bates has been growing on me and I think he finally makes his break in this episode. The whole mystery of the Chinese sex slaves got an added twist here and it results in one heck of a cliffhanger. The show does well depicting the mental breakdown of Norman's, but the sexual overtones of the show continues. As you might remember, the premiere showed a very gruesome rape scene to Norma and here, we have Norman fantasizing his English teacher in various forms of bondage. Yeah, Norman is messed up. The relationship between Norma and Norman continues to get weirder and the relationship between Norman and Dylan actually gets a little tender when Norman tells Dylan that he cannot recall almost killing him with a meat cleaver.

In this episode, "What's Wrong with Norman," Norman is taken to the hospital after he faints during his English test after thinking about all these fantasies about his teacher. The tests come back negative, but Norma refuses to allow Norman to stay the night. Sheriff Romero and his deputies issues a warrant to search the premises, but apparently Norman kept Summer's belt. Dylan has a new job guarding a marijuana field, the same field that Norman and Emma discovered previously. Emma is obsessed with the marijuana field and Chinese sex slave mystery. She claims the sketch book they found showing what was going on is actually real thanks to a Chinese symbol they discovered in one of the rooms of the motel. Finally, we learn that Deputy Shelby may not be the person he seems as he may be holding on to a horrifying secret.

I really liked this episode. This episode is where we see for the first time that Norman is not in the right state of mind as we can clearly see the darkness that is within him. The one scene that pops into my mind is when he rages at Emma after she suggest they go to the police after they discover the sketch book and the symbol. It was really scary, and it all works thanks to Highmore's great performance. I did not buy his performance much at first, but this episode proves he might have the chops to pull this off. That cliffhanger the episode leaves us on is a dandy and it makes us wonder what will happen next.

My Grade: A-

No idea how

[shefchenko · 1/10 · 28 February 2022]

If someone's got an explanation to how did Norman know where is the house where he was supposed to look for the belt, I'd give it a 10....... This was so so lame.

Believe me, the missing question mark in the title of this episode is the least of this programme's flaws

[stillworkingfortheknife · 13 September 2014]

»What's wrong with Norman?« would definitely be something I'd ask if Norman Bates was an orthodox TV character that had been introduced only two episodes ago. But since I'm referring to the Norman Bates that regards murdering residents of his motel in the shower and subsequently dumping them into a swamp as the essential constituents of a pleasant Saturday evening, making an unheralded tour through some bloke's house to recover a belt and then chancing onto what looks to be a sex slave is hardly worth a mention. Although, it actually kind of is, as Bates Motel uses it to demonstrate that it has remained the partially brainless programme we all remember not quite so dearly from its first two acts. I'll return to this subject matter in a twinkling, yet not to the question posed in the title of this episode because, believe it or not, there's this little flick called Psycho that explains it rather neatly.

Its prequel, Bates Motel, sensibly dedicates this instalment to character development in lieu of superfluous violence, which is especially exciting with regard to Norman, who is experiencing hallucinations of Norma conversing with him for what appears to be the first time. Blackouts, however, are evidently something that the young Mr Bates is familiar with, as is manifested through him being unable to recollect anything about making an effort to bump off his half- brother in the previous episode. In view of that, I can very well picture the programme revealing at some point that Norman is in fact behind the death of his father. That would elucidate his being so frantic when awaking at the beginning of the pilot before having actually discovered his old man in the garage, but would also change the concept of Bates Motel, which I took to be an explanation for Norman's descent into insanity, into simply showing a disturbed mind at work.

Until my hypothesising is proved veracious or fallacious, I'll limit myself to commending Freddie Highmore's acting, which noticeably improves with every new episode. Nevertheless, there is an unmissable qualitative disparity between the scenes set in the Bates household, for instance Dylan and Norman's tête-à-tête in the sitting room, and any other moment of "What's Wrong With Norman". I'm not dramatising; there is clumsiness to be found in either writing, acting, or directing at truly every other point of the episode, from Norman talking to his lady friends, Norma necking with Bad Pun Cop, to Dylan shooting pheasants with the guy crying at strip clubs.

Unsurprisingly, I'm not a devotee of clumsiness, but, and this is doubtful to cause significant fluctuations in the surprise department, I wholeheartedly prefer it over whatever it was that this programme was doing at the closing stages of "What's Wrong With Norman". This, let it be noted, excludes Norman's imagination ordering him to implement Operation Belt, and includes everything that takes place from that point on. Firstly, if Shelby cracking jokes as dreadful as "the air in Arizona" hadn't made him dubious enough already, there's the Detective Story 101 rule that the person about whom every feature seems to be wonderful is hiding a skeleton in their cupboard – or their hidden rape room in the basement, in this case. While this is also something I could've lived with (to be clear: I'm speaking of the lazy plot device, not the rape room), the pseudo-suspenseful manner, in which director Paul Edwards sets this really not very stately twist up eventually stopped me from granting the episode a positive grade.

"What's Wrong With Norman" then ends with a cliffhanger about as thrilling as the ones from Planet Earth, owing to the terribly restricted potential outcomes for Norman. The audience being able to rely upon characters retaining the degree of bodily soundness and aliveness that is displayed in the source material is just an unpreventable drawback of doing a prequel. But I shan't lose faith in Bates Motel that easily – after all, this episode did reveal a glimpse of how good it could still become.

Twelve cabins, eight notations: • I'll go out on a limb here and assume that Dylan doesn't tuck a napkin into his collar when eating. • If Bates Motel would ever want to get phenomenally self- referential, how about having Norman watch a film starring Anthony Perkins? • Norma has a blue case for her mobile phone – how old is she? 15? • Furthermore, how did she not see Bradley walking right next to her? Does she have tunnel vision? • »You can't just walk into my house.« - »Actually we can.« - If nothing else, Sheriff Romero is made a bit less bland in this episode before it inevitably transpires that he is the 'good cop' in White Pine Bay. • Unless you're ministered to in Pandora, blue-labial doctors are decidedly terrifying. • »Mother?« - »Nope, it's just Chuck Testa.« • In keeping with the mother subject, Dylan has become a hundred times more likable by being the first character on this programme to tell Norman how ridiculous he sounds when calling his mother that way.

Bates Motel What's Wrong with Norman

[dalydj-918-255175 · 2 April 2013]

The show continues to decrease in quality with a mix of bad acting and writing to set up a story that at times does not work as it goes from real life to imaginary life. Freedie Highmore is such a problem to this show even when I do not compare him to Anthony Perkins (I really try to not), he overacts scenes and is laughable. Vera Farmiga is good in the role but her problem is the writing they give her to do where she seems to flustered. The Dylan character is just boring and has no chemistry with anyone. The Chinese sex slaves is meant to be more dramatic then it comes off but I do just not care. Horror on TV can be well done (look at FX's American Horror Story) but this show is not good at it. The end of the episode leaving Norman break into a house is funny in not a good way as the cop comes in and is not a good cliffhanger.

EPISODE GRADE: C (MVP: Vera Farmiga)