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Welcome toBates Motels final season, where the relationship between Norman and Norma Bates is more complicated than ever.
(Yes, even now that she’s dead.)
Credit: A&E; Inset: Adam Larkey
BATES MOTELSEASON 5: A PLAYER’S GUIDE
Welcome to our fifth and final season ofBates Motel!
The biggest challenge was not the story we knew where we wanted to go.
Mother was a challenge.
Kerry Ehrin
We had to divorce ourselves from thinking of her as a fictional character that existed in Norman’s mind.
We wanted the viewer to experience her as Norman does, not from “outside” of him.
Like she could make bedroom eyes at you one second and kick your head in the next.
Kerry Ehrin
Human and feeling and wise and worldly and yet impenetrable.
Good and bad all at once.
These were qualities that began to get grafted on the page for Mother.
Kerry Ehrin
Then maybe just get a latte.
She is a beautifully amoral character brought to life by Farmiga.
(I love being my own TV critic lol.)
Kerry Ehrin
She doesn’t “know everything.”
She doesn’t have super powers.
She can’t control everything but she often can control a lot.
Kerry Ehrin
She’s kind of like a Secret Service agent for Norman.
But it’s your job, your instinct, your internal force.
you might’t escape it, even if you want to at times.
Kerry Ehrin
We landed, eventually, on the truth that madness has no rules.
It gave their relationship a wonderful existential quality.
They had no rules.
They just “were.”
Norman, also, had to be psychologically carved out this season.
All the pieces are in place for “happiness.”
This was what we based the psychology on for Norman’s understanding of his situation.
Life is ridiculous and often the more horrifying it is, the more ridiculous it gets.
Mother does this in spades and Vera kills it.
In reality, however, he is living in a house that is physically a chaotic mess.
So thank you, wonderful, brilliant production team, for your patience and inspiration!
Finally, I just want to say thank you to all of you following the show.
(I have wandered around in my own brain dreaming up crazy s my whole life.
We are all stuffed in there together, which is challenging because Carlton is a big guy.
The film is a comedy made in the ’50s that involves cross-dressing.
Which brings us full circle back to ourBates…)
And on that note, welcome home.
Wrapping you in some love and madness.
Thank you so much for being here.
Now let’s get this party started.
