“A boy’s best friend is his mother.” For Norman Bates, that statement took on a little more weight than maybe it should have. One of the most iconic characters in American cinema is Alfred Hitchcock’s murderous man with mommy issues, as brought to life by Anthony Perkins in Psycho. (And again, to diminishing returns, in Psycho II, III, and Psycho IV: The Beginning.) A film lauded for numerous reasons, most of which have to do with the masterful direction of this pulpy little tale, it also helped solidify a new trope of movies: The split-personality villain, who has popped up time and again since that early incarnation, most recently in M. Night Shyamalan’s delightfully wicked Split.
But the original Norman is still the most potent of these monsters, and for the past four seasons, A&E’s Bates Motel has delved into his history, tracing the development of the young Norman Bates from troubled teenager to fully-formed killer, all under the obsessively watchful eye of his tragic mother, Norma. Fans have savored the operatic tenor of this little-seen show, and finally saw it rewarded with a probably-meaningless-but-still-justly-deserved triptych of People’s Choice Awards this past year. But as it gets ready to air its fifth and final season, an ironic twist is in store for those who have never treated themselves to this demented delight (certainly more of a twist than the news that Norman’s mother’s body—spoiler alert for a 57-year-old movie—ends up slowly decomposing in the basement): The last season is actually a perfect opportunity for new viewers to begin watching.
When Bates Motel was first announced, attitudes toward the show were decidedly skeptical, including our own. The origin story of a man who splits his time between his own personality and the construct of his dead mother looked like a dire and creatively bankrupt proposition, something more likely to wind up in the graveyard of bad serial-killer prequels, alongside Hannibal Rising and Exorcist: The Beginning. Instead, it took what began as a fatal weakness—lurid and over-the-top camp—and turned it into the biggest strength of the show. Make no mistake: A large portion of the credit here should go to Vera Farmiga, whose scenery-chewing, otherworldly role as Norma Bates is perhaps the single most purely enjoyable and fascinating performance from the past half-decade of television.
It’s rare to see a single actor burn so brightly, and on such a different register, that she literally forces every other actor, and the entire creative team behind the camera, to rise to the occasion of meeting her on a wholly different artistic plane than was perhaps originally envisioned. The show’s uneven first season often threatened to turn into a turgid soap opera, marred by characters who weren’t working and dour narrative gambits that led into dead ends. But Farmiga’s combination of arch camp and character-actor intensity pulled everything around it into her orbit, and by season two, the show had clearly been rejiggered to take into account the tone and style she was setting for it. Showrunner Kerry Ehrin smartly cast off everything that didn’t work and homed in on playing to the gonzo nature of the material, while still making sure to craft stories with heart and emotional resonance. Not everything worked, but the series gradually evolved into a sharp and idiosyncratic wonder, not to mention turning Freddie Highmore into a soulful actor actually capable of going toe-to-toe with heavy hitters like Farmiga and Nestor Carbonell.