‘Bates Motel’ season 2, episode 8 review: A land without answers
“Bates Motel” is a fine show that does a lot of wonderful things, whether you are talking about some excellent writing, solid performances, and a great atmospheric feel to White Pine Bay. If one of the things that you hate most is the fluorescent A&E logo that constantly reminds you that you are watching a TV show, the show is doing something right.
But Monday’s episode wasn’t the best thing that the series has put on the air, mostly because there wasn’t really all that much that actually happened over the entire hour. We can really just touch on most of it now with a series of bullet points.
- Romero is really onto Norman now, but he isn’t willing to divulge anything that happened between him and Miss Watson. Instead, his reaction is to run.
- Norman’s own confusion turned to rage against his mother, and he went into full-on passive-aggressive mode in dealing with her. This lead to many Norma breakdowns, and her deciding to hook up with George since he was at least not treating her like a pile of dirt.
- Nick Ford let Norma know that he had ensured her spot on the council, but now wants to form an allegiance with Dylan on the drug trade. Dylan’s not too keen on the idea, or the notion that Zane needs to die. Chaos of course ensues.
- The end of the episode featured Norman being taken, presumably by Ford’s people as a way to ensure that he gets what he wants.
We’ll give Nick that he is a capable villain, but he’s no Jere Burns by any means. Also, where in the world was Emma for most of the episode? The majority of this story was Norman being annoyed at his mother, while she scrambled around and eventually decided to just hook up with George when nobody else wanted to give her the time of day.
It wasn’t necessarily that anything was done poorly in this episode at all; instead, it just felt like a bridge episode to get us from the Cody storyline to where we will end season 2. Hopefully, this means that next week will be something meatier. There were no answers this week … only more questions Grade: B-.
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Photo: A&E