Last year, I watched the pilot to Bates Motel and remember liking it enough to keep watching. Only I didn't keep watching and forgot about the show for some reason. When the show popped up on Netflix a couple weeks ago, it was the perfect opportunity to revisit this show. It is purely a coincidence that I just so happened to finish this season literally the day before the second season begins. [Note: I clearly meant to post this last night.]
Bates Motel is a goofy show. I'm inclined to compare it to American Horror Story lite, because it's not as insane and is a little more grounded in reality. A little. Seeing as I just changed my opinion on American Horror Story, this is pretty good timing for Bates Motel.
There's enough good elements on this show to pretty easily outweigh the not insubstantial amount of weaknesses. The acting's pretty great, the mood is appropriately spooky, it's beautifully shot, and of course I'm kind of fascinated by this fake backstory to Norman Bates.
However, Pyscho this is not. It's not really that scary, it's unintentionally hilarious at times (which is a good thing for some people), and the plot is kind of ridiculous. Ok, there's an Asian sex slave ring, an enormous weed business, people burned alive, insanely corrupt cops. Yeah, ok the plot is really ridiculous.
The star of this show is Vera Farmiga, who is operating on a different level than everybody else. She plays the mother so well that it's not at all hard to figure out how she helped create Norman Bates. Which is amazing if you think about it. She lives up to the mother of Pyscho that we had imagined in our heads.
Freddie Highmore is well cast, if at times a bit awkward in his delivery. Max Theriot plays the new, invented character of Norman's backstory as the brother. His role is integral in my mind as sort of lets the audience know this isn't a true origin story. If we were supposed to think this was a true origin story, this show would suck. Olivia Cooke plays Emma, the girl with cystic fibrosis, to utter perfection. She's kind of a hard character to sell on paper seeing as she's literally the perfect girl with no flaws (except the CF thing, which is kind of a cheap flaw in writing), but Cooke makes her into an actual human being instead of a caricature.
I can't mention the acting without giving proper compliments to Jere Burns, who just oozes evil from every scene he's in (this is not a complaint). Nestor Carbonell plays... well he plays the character he always plays, but he does it so well. And Nicola Peltz as Bradley could be a character you hate - well you really should hate her - but she makes her sympathetic enough.
One of the things I really like about this show is that it's not really clear when this show takes place. It's pretty clear it's in some sort of period that combines different aspects. It mostly takes place in modern day, but if you pay attention, there's a lot of things that would indicate it takes place well in the past.
With that said, I wouldn't exactly recommend this show to people. It's too inconsistent, it's too utterly ridiculous, and there's quite a few too many scenes where I just don't care what happens. To be honest, this is almost a show where you have to just completely ignore logic and sort of go along for the ride. There's a few too many "shocking" moments that failed completely at making any sort of sense and was clear it was just for the sake of being shocking.
The biggest thing keeping me with the show however is probably that it just seems like it could be better. There's potential in this show to be genuinely entertaining. Granted, this show will never be one of the great television shows, but it could be pretty fun to watch. It's not at that point and to be honest it probably never will, but that potential is enough to keep me watching as long as it's mildly entertaining.
I'm going to give this the same grade I gave American Horror Story season one as I pretty much have identical feelings towards this show as I did towards AHS (except for the potential - there wasn't really a sense that AHS was going to be anything more than what it is). Hopefully, Bates Motel makes a similar jump as AHS did in its second season in quality and enjoyment.
Grade - C+
Playlist
1. "Love is to Die" - Warpaint
2. "Gimme that Money" - Hopsin
3. "Let's Groove" - Earth, Wind & Fire
4. "What It's Like" - Everlast
5. "Halftime" - Nas
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