Bates Motel bosses talk shower scene – Sam Loomis twist

On Monday night’s Bates Motel season 5 episode, we had a chance to see finally the show’s version of the infamous shower scene from Psycho — however, it was a little bit different than the one first presented there. Going into the episode, the expectation was that we were going to see Norman Bates eventually murder Marion Crane (Rihanna), much in the way that it was done in the movie. However, on the show they instead had it be Sam Loomis, her far-from-great love interest who certainly wasn’t treating her way. Norman killed him, therefore creating a very different flavor and one that probably took many viewers by surprise.

So why go in this direction and do something that drastically different? This is something that executive producer Kerry Ehrin explained further to TVLine:

“It was a big responsibility to take an iconic film and use [that sequence] in a way that both honored it but also integrated it into the story we were telling. And the idea of the person in the shower being Sam and being a type of a metaphor for Norman’s own father who was violent and who had really started all of Norman’s problems seemed so fitting to the story we were telling.”

Maybe it’s possible that there are some people out there who wanted a little bit more of a pure interpretation of the Crane scene, but we think that for the most part, the internet reception here seems to be positive and there are many people out there who are happy with what the show did. They changed things up, and they got people talking. Meanwhile, Marion gets a chance to start a new life following a conversation with Norman … who probably isn’t the person you want to be talking to. The guy didn’t kill her, but he is very much still a killer.

Overall, we gotta give credit to the writers, Ehrin, and Carlton Cuse for feeling empowered enough to make this twist. It was something that easily could’ve failed in the execution, but they delivered in giving us something that was very much entertaining, and brought something new to the table as the same exact time. There’s nothing else that we can do other than applaud it.

What do you think of the way Bates Motel did the shower scene twist? Share below!