"Bates Motel" Review/Recap: "The Escape Artist"

Dymon Lewis ’14 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer

While Norma Bates (Vera Farmiga) may be the unluckiest woman in the world, she may also be the toughest. She will not be defeated. Norma is a shark—she can only move forward or she’ll die. But what is infuriating about Norma is that, despite the copious amounts of terrible situations she finds herself in, she lacks any kind of awareness of situations that will ultimately become terrible. For example, only drug dealers have meetings on gated yachts. Normal people conduct business meetings in offices.
These are facts. Nick Ford (Michael O’Neill) radiates menace. He would set anyone else’s spidey-senses tingling, but Norma is so determined to save her motel that she is blind to the obvious danger in which she has placed herself. She is all too pleased to be used as Ford’s instrument in stopping the bypass and taking on the city council. Even by the end of the episode when Sheriff Romero (Nestor Carbonell) warns Norma to stay away from Ford, it’s obvious that she will not heed his warning. This is partly because nobody puts Norma in a corner, but mostly because Norma doesn’t back down when she throws in her lot with someone, though the death of a city council member in a suspicious car crash may cause her to change her mind.

Over in realm of raging teenage libido, both Norman (Freddie Highmore) and Emma (Olivia Cooke) get lucky with their respective bad girl and bad boy. Norman and Emma are absurdly good-looking awkward outcasts. It’s hilarious and heartbreaking when Emma has to go to crazy Norma Bates for sex advice because she has neither a mom nor any close friends, female or otherwise. Meanwhile, Norman’s closest friend is his mother and she has never approved of any of his choices in girls. Norman and Emma occupy the same space often, but there is a gulf in their friendship, and the closeness between them of last season is gone while they discover romance apart from each other.
Norman’s romance with Cody (Paloma Kwiatkowski) is the opposite of what he had with Bradley (Nicola Peltz)—instead of being the protective male figure, Norman is able to rely on Cody to take care of him and be the stronger person in their relationship. Gunner (Keegan Connor Tracy) and Emma connect due to their outsider status. Emma’s disease and Gunner’s transient illegal job puts them outside the world of a normal teenager and allows them to sidestep the traditional steps of the adolescent romance. Emma literally does not have the time to waste—they need to and do have sex now.

The title of the most heartbreaking is now officially bestowed on Dylan Masset (Max Thieriot). Dylan is Bates Motel loneliest character, which makes him especially vulnerable to the power players in White Pine Bay. The character has had almost no romantic relations because what Dylan craves and needs is a connection to an authority figure. He is initially drawn to the drug business through the kindness of strangers—a kindness his own mother has never bestowed upon him. Dylan has an aura of potential neediness about him that radiates “give me a hug and I’ll do anything for you.” When a drive-by shooting erupts in the streets, Dylan not only protects his boss but he walks directly in the line of fire, and in front of a car, to take out the threat. The introduction of his new (female) boss should prove very interesting.
Overall Episode Grade: B+