Spoilers

“Goodnight Mother”

I really love the relationship that developed in this series between Norma Bates and Alex Romero. Alex, who is anything but an angel, goes to such lengths to help Norma.

Freddie Highmore is exceptional. You can see how he is slipping deeper into his own insanity with every scene. Despite what we know of the eventual fate of Norman Bates, you can’t help but hope he makes it through.

That said, Norman’s mental break this episode was absolutely frightening. You could tell that Norman really believed that Norma was the person who had killed all the other women, even though none of that made any sense. It just fueled his rage and Highmore was compelling the whole time.

The show then juxtaposed Norman’s story of downward spiral with the new hope given to Emma after the lung transplant. The scene of Emma taking her first breaths in the hospital was just as powerful and engaging as the scenes of Norman and Norma.

With all her flaws and lack of trust, Norma Bates truly loves Norman, which makes everything that goes down here even more tragic. Bates Motel succeeds dramatically at making Norma Bates a deeply three-dimensional character and the fact that she winds up dead and in an attic is even more tragic. It provided even more layers to the film Psycho than it had before.