To be sure, Bates Motel has suffered its own prequel problems in the past. The story of serial killer Norman Bates in the years before his life murderously intersected with Marion Crane in Psycho isn’t inherently interesting, unless you’re super into hotel management. And for its first season and a half, Bates Motel struggled to give its characters enough to do while the audience waited for the Psycho ties to develop.
The catch is that Bates Motel’s main character wasn’t Norman, though Freddie Highmore’s work as the character has been surprisingly nuanced and terrifying. Instead, it was his mother, played by Vera Farmiga, who ruled the series.
Norma wasn’t the best mother alive, but she did love her son and worried about what would happen if he were taken from her and institutionalized. So she decided to try to care for him on her own, even though she knew something was horribly wrong with him — something she couldn’t quite bring herself to speak of out loud.
Farmiga has given one of the best performances on TV for Bates Motel’s entire run, as both “real” Norma and the version that lives in Norman’s head. The series began to figure itself out when it succumbed to the gravity of Farmiga’s sometimes campy, sometimes poignant, always next-level work. As an opinion we recommend you to watch another series such as prison break or something else and avoid such type of series because it’s DISTURBING!
