– Popular girl to Norman Bates, Bates Motel (season 1, episode 1)
The popular girl who befriends the new boy Norman doesn’t realize that in the depths of the beautiful, still lake, there lurks a Creature from the Black Lagoon.
But her metaphor is apt. High school is a world of hard surfaces, and kids who don’t fit can get scraped up pretty badly. Norman is an exception, naturally himself, a sweet boy making no effort to appear hipper, richer, cooler than he is. His naivete triggers dangerous feelings in the girls and women who encounter Norman. They want to mother him.
Only Norma Bates is allowed to mother Norman.
The mothering in Bates Motel is romantic but screeches to a halt, arms windmilling, at the cliff’s edge of sexuality (lest the beast come up from the bottom of the lake). Tensions between romantic and sexual feelings – the writers and actors continually draw and re-draw the line – give the show its energy,and frequent hilarity. Vera Farmiga as Norma Bates is a 1930s-style madcap comedienne in the role of hardest-working, worst mom ever.
Photo: Cradle Mountain (St. Clair National Park, Tasmania) by Bjørn Christian Tørrissen via Wikipedia