Bates Motel: Underwater Recap

Yeah, so, did you know this was the ninth episode out of a total of ten episodes this season? I guess I did but the actual meaning of that is just now striking me. Next week is the season finale. Next Monday there will be no more new Bates Motel episodes until 2014! Crazy. I appreciate these shows with their short seasons because a lot of the times they can tell better stories but still.

No more Bates Motel for a year.

Before I make us all too sad let’s get to talking about this week’s episode. While I generally think that Norma is a little crazy pretty much at terrible parent, I feel for her this episode. I mean, really. For the first time in her life she’s not exaggerating things and she’s actually pretty dead on. The creepy guy in room nine left Deputy Shelby’s dead, bloated body in her bed. That’s just terrifying. She legit has every reason to be scared. Plus the whole town is pretty messed up. The local economy is supported by weed and sex trafficking, the local sheriff is crooked as shit, and there are a bunch of stoners in her motel smoking weed on the porch.

Which, by the way, upsets Norma so much she goes off on the kids and then starts talking about getting out of town and moving as far away as possible. That in turn upsets Norman who starts having dreams of killing Bradley – probably because she used him for sex. But also because he’s a murdering psychopath. Or, rather, he will be. Eventually. Well, moreso than he already is. Normal keeps trying to look up all these safe towns to move to and has Emma going through old files to get rid of them and get them ready to sell the property. Unfortunately, because of the highway bypass that they are looking to put in, the property’s value has decreased by about half and there’s really no way for her to get her money back.

The man in number nine isn’t making things better. He keeps following her, sending her flowers with creepy messages, and generally threatening her. Norma calls up Sheriff Romero and the guy actually seems to genuinely care that she’s being harassed. Sort of. There’s like this moment where I’m just like, “So…. are they going to sleep together now?” Because that’s kind of the vibe I’m getting between the two of them. But I digress. Basically, all the info the guy gave Dylan when he checked in was made up and the best Romero can do is have some guys patrol by the property every half hour.

Norma decides to leave Emma alone with the stoners and possibly the creepy number nine guy which actually turns out to be good because love blossoms a bit. She sees this kid not too much older than her smoking a joint outside his room and she goes after him as per Norma’s orders. He offers to give her a joint or a pot cupcake but she declines. Then later she comes to work and there’s a little pot cupcake there on the desk for her with a note from the boy – Gunnar. After which she goes up to the house carrying a tree branch and acting all kinds of stoned in front of Norma and Norman.

Meanwhile in a completely unrelated storyline Dylan is helping Bradley break into her dad’s office in the town’s central pot plant or whatever. Because she’s all kinds of depressed and her mom threw away all of her dad’s stuff. She just wanted to go see the office and feel like he was still somehow around. Which nearly gets him shot by the douchebag older guy he went to pick up the hippies with and it’s pretty obvious that the guy is going to tell their boss and Dylan will probably get in trouble for bringing Bradley there in the middle of the night. C’mon, Dylan. You can’t be playing this game. And you definitely cannot sleep with this girl. You know that will screw Norman up even more.

Life is actually going great for Norman, though. He’s got friends. His teacher is helping him get one of his stories published. She likes him, he likes her. He even brings back the stuffed and mounted Juno! (Who he keeps on his bed and talks to and which Dylan calls crazy.) He likes being in town no matter how crazy it is and he doesn’t want to leave. So there’s going to be some conflict there in the future, probably. If Norma tries to leave.

Which she probably should because holy shit she gets in her car and the guy from number nine is there with a gun to her heard threatening to kill her and the boys if she doesn’t pony up this shit ton of money that Keith was apparently hiding in the motel. So. Good luck getting him his money Norma.

But yeah.

After this episode, I’m totally on Norma’s side. They need to leave. Like now. This isn’t her moving. This isn’t her being crazy. This isn’t her being melodramatic and forcing Norman to move around every few months. They legit need to leave because people in this town will kill them.

Like, they really will kill them. A lot of people seem to have tried for ten episodes. Norman. C’mon. Be reasonable. You need to go somewhere else.