“Bates Motel” Review/Recap: "Caleb"

Dymon Lewis ’14 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer

On a normal show, a lead character finding out that his birth was the product of an incestuous and nonconsensual relationship between his mom and her estranged older brother would . . . well never happen or not be revealed until way later in the season. And in a film it would be the kind of scenario that would either explain a character’s psychopathy or cause a character to go mad from the revelation.
On Bates Motel, however, this discovery is just an ending to what was a rare good day for Dylan Massett (Max Thieriot).
The character of Dylan is largely sympathetic, despite his violent day job, because it is clear in the love-fest that is Norma (Vera Farmiga) and Norman (Freddie Highmore) there has never been any room for her unwanted older son. From the beginning of the series Dylan has sought to form a deeper bond between himself and his family although his distrust of his mother is palpable. Furthermore, the series has already established that Norman’s biological father was not the same as Dylan’s.
His joy in making a friend with his never-before-met-or-knew-of Uncle Caleb (Kenny Johnson) shows that he is desperate to connect with a male family member, and that despite his current occupation he is incredibly and dangerously naïve. His desire to believe Uncle Caleb’s Costa Rica hotel story and hand him over ten thousand dollars is cleverly juxtaposed to his burying two dead bodies. Dylan is definitely in over his head. His refusal to believe Norma’s claim that Caleb raped her for years, while reprehensible, is understandable. Norma is a master-manipulator and even her reveal of Dylan’s parentage seems plotted despite its seeming heat-of-the-moment pronouncement.

Over in Norma and Norman land, Norma’s failure to capture the lead in the community theatre musical leads to both her and Norman making new friends. And even from this first episode of the two friendships blooming, disaster is happily waiting around the corner ready to ruin everything. Norma makes friends with the director, Christine Heldens (Rebecca Creskoff), who invites her to her swanky garden party. Once there Norma channels her crazy into awkward but funny sociability.
Christine’s hot brother, George Heldens (played by the aging not so well Michael Vartan) even hits on her. Of course she ends the party by exchanging info with Miss Watson’s drug lord grief-addled father Nick Ford (Michael O’Neill), so it’s all but given she’ll be cleaning blood out of her carpets before the summer is over. Norman is persuaded to join the tech crew for the community musical by sometimes checkout girl and always-bad girl Cody Brennen (Paloma Kwiatkowski). And viewers can tell she’s bad because she’s got multiply pierced ears, wears a leather jacket and combat boots, and makes out with gay guys on the beach for the hell of it.

Over in the sad world that is Emma Decody (Olivia Cooke), the perpetually heartbreaking redhead plans a beach memorial service to honor the presumed dead-via-suicide Bradley Martin (Nicola Peltz). As noted by Norman, Emma and Bradley were not friends, so Emma’s desire to honor the missing girl is odd but it becomes obvious at the memorial that Emma is thinking about the inevitability of her own demise and how people will remember and mourn her. Her lament that the teenage attendees are using the memorial as an occasion to hook up and get wasted is rooted in her own fear that when she dies she will also be so casually forgotten.
While Emma’s character is well written and complex, her minor interactions with Norman and Norma each episode tend to make her an desert island of a character. Her romantic escapades with a drug dealer this episode, as well as Norman’s probable future romance with Cody, don’t make it seem like the series will be rectifying this issue soon.
Overall Episode Grade: A