‘Bates Motel’: Don’t expect it to be an homage to ‘Psycho’
A&E’s new upcoming series “Bates Motel” certainly looks creepy and the relationship between Norman Bates and his mother definitely has the ick factor to it, but if you are expecting the series to follow the original mythology behind how Norman Bates became a killer then you will likely be disappointed.
In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Carlton Cuse (executive producer and co-showrunner of “Lost”) said that they thought of doing an homage to Hitchcock’s original character of Norman Bates, but in the end decided that they would come up with their own mythology about Norman’s teenage years and his relationship with his mother. Cuse said:
“The idea of doing an homage — neither one of us wanted to feel like we had to lock into the cannon of the previous Psycho movies. We wanted to take these characters and come up with our own mythology about how they were connected to each other; what was going to make Norman the guy he was going to become. Immediately we both thought, We’re not going to slavishly owe ourselves to the preexisting mythology. That was liberating. There’s this expectation that: Norman was berated by his mother into becoming crazy and that wasn’t interesting to us. What was much more interesting was creating this positive, loving, 1940s movie kind of relationship for these two.”
If you’re still hoping to see some of Hitchcock in the show, Cuse promises that there will be some Easter eggs threaded throughout the series and that even though they won’t be following Norman Bates’ original background that there will be a few small homages to Hitchcock. The one aspect we are most looking forward to in “Bates Motel” is the fact that they decided to give Norman an older half-brother – someone that is completely removed from the tight bond that Norman and his mother have, and will offer an outside perspective to their relationship.
“Bates Motel” premieres on Monday, March 18th at 10 p.m. on A&E – Will you be watching? If you haven’t had a chance to check out the first 6 minutes of the premiere episode we highly recommend that you do – you can see it here.
Photo: A&E