Bates Motel: What’s Wrong With Norman? Recap

All right, so, we all know Norman Bates is going off the deep end but it’s really getting started now.

But first it seems like it might be Emma who is going off the deep end. She’s having a hard time dealing with what happened last season. Not necessarily the marijuana field and the guys who chased them. More so the fact that the cabin from the bondage manga journal was real. Emma had really just asked Norman to go look for it with her because she wanted to spend time with him. Instead she got a lot more than she bargained for and she wants to take the book to the cops. Norman tells her not to and he even gets a bit angry and almost violent in his protest. Then they go to class where he passes out and has a minor fit. While sort of imagining torture raping his teacher with bondage and shit. It’s super weird. But he’s screwed up so it’s what we expect. He’s obsessed with the torture journal and it’s starting to really mess up his life.

Norma shows up and waits around with Norman while some tests are being run. But after a while she has to leave for a bit to go sign for a delivery at the motel. While she’s gone Bradley shows up with flowers for Norman. She thanks him for coming to see her after her dad was hurt and tells him that no one else did. She also tells him that her father is in a medically induced coma and he isn’t expected to survive. She crawls up on to his hospital bed and they watch TV together for a while.

Dylan was supposed to pick up the delivery but told Norma he couldn’t because he had a job. Which is sitting around doing pretty much nothing and guarding the pot fields that Emma and Norman had come across last episode. He is getting into the whole criminal underground in town and learns a bit more about what’s going on. The pot is all owned by a series of wealthy, influential families in town. They fund all of the criminal enterprises – including the sex trafficking. And it turns out that Bradley’s father was one of the main bosses. After this little bit of exposition Dylan and the guy who recruited him go hunt and cook peasants and have a good old time out camping in the pot fields.

Meanwhile back at the house Norma is signing for a carpet delivery when the cops burst in.

The sheriff got a warrant to search the house and though Norma is certain that they were able to conceal any evidence of Keith’s murder she’s still a bit on edge. She goes back to the hospital to get Norman and he’s sweating like crazy because he kept Keith’s belt that he had taken off when he raped Norma. He’s really emotional about it and Norma is worried about it. She goes to talk to Shelby who creepily invites her over to dinner to talk about things. It turns out that he has the belt. He found it and he’ll keep it in order to keep Norma safe. He’s got some creepy fetish or something for her and she returns his affections because she knows it’s the only way to keep her and Norman safe.

Emma, though, might get him into a bit more trouble. She comes to the house and they go down to the motel room where he found the journal. They start looking through things and then Emma looks underneath the sink and sees some Chinese characters scratched into the bottom porcelin. It looks like the girls were all coming through there after all. Though, if the motel was a front for the Chinese sex trafficking then why did the wealthy families ever let the house and property go into foreclosure and let Keith lose control of it all?

It just seems like something they would want to prevent.

Anyway.

Later, Dylan tries to have something of a heart to heart with Norman. They talk about how weird his relationship with Norma is and how Norman needs to learn to be normal. And then Dylan off handedly mentions Norman trying to kill him the episode before. Which Norman apparently doesn’t remember  At all. Dylan thinks it might be a joke at first and is like “Dude, you came at my head with a meat tenderizer.” But Norman very clearly does not remember doing this. Which I basically called. I’m telling you all. He killed his father in a murderous rage that he doesn’t remember and that’s why Norma and Norman are always on the run. He does it on occasion.

In keeping with the theme of ‘keep Norman safe,’ Norma decides that she can’t let Shelby have this much power over them. So she sends Norman to Shelby’s house to try and find the belt. But instead of the belt Norman goes down to the basement and finds a Chinese girl locked up in a very creepy sex torture dungeon.

My question is what is he going to do about it? Is Norman so far gone that he’s not going to tell anyone about the Chinese girl in the basement who has asked him for help? And what would Dylan do? He seems like he isn’t as bad of a person as he’s made out to be and that he really does have something of a conscience. It’s just that life seems to have been pretty hard for him. I don’t know. It all keeps you sort of wondering and I like that. I appreciate that this show can constantly throw us for a loop even though we’re pretty much all familiar with the source material.

It’s definitely keeping me interested, anyway.