“The incredible writing team and talented Bates Motel cast has made this series one of the most compelling original dramas on television,” said David McKillop, Executive Vice President and General Manager, A&E Network. “The brilliant twists and turns of the past two seasons keep its loyal fan base coming back for more. We are so proud of the show.”

The network’s highest rated drama of all time, Bates Motel tells the story of Norma (Emmy nominee Vera Farmiga) and Norman Bates (Freddie Highmore), who move to the small town of White Pine Bay where they open up a motel. The series gives an intimate view at Norman’s unraveling psyche and the impact that his inappropriately close relationship with his mother has on his life. In addition to Farmiga and Highmore, Bates Motel stars Max Thieriot (My Soul to Take), Olivia Cooke (Blackout), Nicola Peltz (The Last Airbender), and Nelson Carbonell (Lost).

Bates Motel airs Mondays at 10:00 on A&E.

Have you been watching Bates Motel this season? Are you excited at the prospect of watching Norman further descend into the man he would become? What do you hope to see from the third season of the show?

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At home, Norman stares out the window and laments that Miss Watson was so kind to him. Norma tries to tell him that he only knew one side of his teacher and that there was no telling what her life away from school looked like, yet when she leaves the room, Norman produces the pearl necklace that Miss Watson was wearing at the time of her murder. Elsewhere, a drunken Bradley nearly runs her car into a truck before stopping on the town bridge and jumping off into the water below.

Four months later…

Business is booming at Bates Motel, as the summer season has brought more traffic down the main highway and caused the motel to be sold out. However, while Emma is still working at the front desk, Norman is busy with his taxidermy hobby, this time working on a beaver. It’s the most sophisticated animal he had ever attempted to do by himself, but Norma doesn’t care; she wants him out working the front desk and doing things that she deems to be normal. When he goes out to the desk, he receives the bundle of letters he wrote to Bradley at the mental institution, all returned to sender, and learns that she’s getting out today following her suicide attempt. While a dead-eyed Bradley is sent home to her mother, Dylan attempts to pay Norma rent, though she rejects it knowing where it came from. He argues that the entire town is built on the weed business before leaving the money with her.

Norma takes Norman driving and becomes the prototypical backseat driver, getting in his ear about being too much on one side of the road and mentioning the possibility of them veering into a tree. Already stressed enough, Norman takes a detour into Shepard’s View Cemetery so that he could continue the process of saying goodbye to Miss Watson. Norma chastises her son again for being abnormal and unable to let go of someone who wasn’t especially close to him and instead of visiting the grave, Norman makes his mother drive them home. The two run upon construction of the bypass, which Norma learns is officially beginning on Monday despite the assurances she received that it would be delayed.

That night, Norma signs herself up to speak at the following day’s city council meeting and reminisces with Norman about the first time they got to flip on the No Vacancy sign and how they want to keep that feeling for as long as they can. Meanwhile, Bradley goes to Gil’s to ask about what happened to her father and who was responsible for killing him; she’s told that Jerry was a heel who only had it out for himself, a bad thing in White Pine Bay. She returns home and goes through her things, including the letters from mysterious B and a hand gun, before having to entertain Norman, who came to see her after writing her every day she was inside. The reason he came? He wanted to tell her that he thought about how isolating and lonely Bradley’s life must have been for her to attempt suicide and assure her that he would always be there to help her, causing her to cry as he leaves.

The following morning, Norman fondles Miss Watson’s pearls and rereads the newspaper article about her murder. The memories he has of the night that she died motivate him to go to her grave, where he sees Gil mysterious hovering over her stone. He takes a few cell phone pictures before being chased away; when Gil returns to work, he mentions to Dylan that they have to get rid of Bradley, as she’s poking around into what happened to Jerry and he doesn’t want her to uncover something that she doesn’t need to know. Another worker comes up to Dylan after Jerry leaves and mentions how Gil hates Jerry Martin for sleeping with his girlfriend Blair – Blair Watson. Elsewhere, Norman goes to Sheriff Romero with the cell phone photos and the meeting turns into Romero questioning how often Norman visited Watson’s grave and if he had ever been to his teacher’s house. He let him go with the assurance that Miss Watson’s killer will be found.

Norma heads to the city council meeting and squeezes her agenda at the tail end, telling those in attendance about how the bypass would harm her business and how the big box stores would take away the quality of the quaint town. However, the council writes her off as stupid and confused and Lee Berman, head of the council, calls her outburst out of line. She, in turn, calls him a dick, upset that she’s now stuck with a motel that she can’t sell and irritated that the PTA mothers in attendance are more concerned about banned book lists than the quality of life in town. After the meeting, Norma runs into Romero, who tells her about the encounter with Norman and encourages her to push him to simply be a kid. When she heads home, she confronts Norman about his obsession with Miss Watson and he confesses that he did go over to her house that night. He describes what happened with the tea and her changing with the bedroom door open, but he doesn’t remember what happened between that and running home. She tells him that he did the right thing in coming home when Miss Watson tried to seduce him, even though he feels guilty over not being there to protect her.  

Bradley goes to Gil’s again and this time, she comes inside. He pours her a drink and she makes it obvious she’s willing to fool around with him, as long as she gets answers to her questions about her father. She gets on top of him, takes her jacket off, and gets an important piece of information before pulling her gun out and shooting him in the head. She then goes to Norman’s in the middle of the night, taking him up on his offer to help her no matter what.

Additional thoughts and observations:
-“This is the road that’s going to ruin our lives.”
-“Yes, I just called you a dick because that’s what you are.”
-“Not easy being a girl without a daddy, y’know?”
-As always with anything TVHackr-related, if you want coverage of Bates Motel to continue, please share the link to this recap on your social media sites, with your friends, etc. I might like talking about any and every show that I watch, but a recap that falls in a forest doesn’t make a sound. Or something.
-I didn’t care for how the episode was structured. The “X months later” device is so lazy and robbed us of psychologically interesting material, e.g. how Norman dealt with the immediate aftermath of Watson’s death, etc.
-Although Bradley’s drunk driving scene was painfully cliché, pretty much everything else they gave her to do was actually pretty strong. The shots of her jumping from the bridge, her body falling through the water, and her walking the hallways of the institution were powerful in their own way, while she feels more integrated into the show than she did for the majority of season one. I hope that the shooting provides her with the type of material that we didn’t get from Norman following Miss Watson’s death.
-Norma looked very Sarah-Jessica-Parker-circa-Sex-and-the-City-season-5 with her new haircut, especially when she was on her bed planning for the council meeting. I like it, though.
-Very little Emma, which was interesting. Since she and Norman are so distant, it makes sense that she wouldn’t be all over the premiere, but I’m curious how their falling out at the end of season one will impact season two, especially since she was such an important part of Norman’s life last season.
-Another gorgeous shot: the semi-overhead of Miss Watson’s memorial, all black umbrellas and rain. Coincidentally, the rain when Norman got home wasn’t my favorite thing, just because it looked like the film was damaged vs. anything realistically resembling rain.
-As much as I would like the show to embrace what makes Norman Bates the iconic character that he is, I think it would be a nifty twist if it turns out that Gil did, in fact, kill Miss Watson and that Norman has been torturing himself over nothing. We’ve seen already that he doesn’t have the most reliable memory and while it looks as if he killed Watson with the pearl necklace, which he’s keeping as something of a trophy, there’s always a chance he snagged it on the way out when he left the house.
-Every television episode needs to have Vera Farmiga calling somebody a dick. Every single one of them. Bates Motel, Modern Family, Sesame Street – just Vera Farmiga walking on screen with a bewildered look on her face to call somebody a dick.
-I also love how she moved over into the driver’s seat at the cemetery. Say what you want about Farmiga’s performance, but she commits 120% and I completely buy this character coming from her. Even at her most outlandish, there’s an earnestness to Farmiga’s performance that keeps everything grounded.
-Norma Bates: world’s worst driving instructor? She put me on edge and I was stationary, so I can only imagine having to operate a motor vehicle with her in your ear.
-Next week on Bates Motel: Norma tries to distract Norman from his obsession with Miss Watson.

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The existence of Bates Motel: After Hours follows a recent TV trend where genre shows or cable anomalies try to engage fans beyond the running time of a weekly episode. Currently, there are two other after shows on television in Teen Wolf‘s Wolf Watch and The Walking Dead‘s Talking Dead, but Mob Wives and Breaking Bad had their own after shows in the past, while Sons of Anarchy produced multiple online after shows during its most recent season. In the case of Bates Motel, the after show is being used as additional incentive for people to sample Those Who Kill, an upcoming crime drama that will be premiering Monday, March 3rd at 10:00.

While A&E has had unscripted success with the likes of Duck Dynasty and Storage Wars, Bates Motel is the first breakout scripted series they’ve had, which makes its success all the more important. The network must use Bates in order to launch additional scripted programming and solidify its success, something that will be much easier to do if Bates can launch pretty big and enough people stick around to watch both Those Who Kill and the Bates after show.

The second season of Bates Motel is set to premiere Monday, March 3rd at 9:00 on A&E. You can check out two Bates Motel season two teasers below, as well as a recap of the first season finale here.

Will you be watching Bates Motel: After Hours? Would you like to see more after shows/fan events in the vein of After Hours? What do you expect to happen during the second season of Bates Motel?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4ZK6Ip0JFE

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The second season of Bates Motel finds the Bates household increasingly destabilized, as Norman has become fixated on the death of Miss Watson and Norman’s brother has arrived in White Pine Bay, stirring up bad memories for the single mother and making her feel even more off-kilter than normal. Season two will also see Dylan further entrenching himself in the town’s drug war, Bradley push herself to precarious extremes in hopes of finding her father’s killer, and Emma’s relationship with Norman complicated by new love interests on both sides.

Bates Motel stars the likes of Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air), who received an Emmy nomination for her work as Norma Bates; Freddie Highmore (Finding Neverland); Max Theriot (My Soul to Take); Nestor Carbonell (Lost); and Olivia Cooke (The Secret of Crickley Hall). New additions to the cast for season two include Kathleen Robertson (Boss) as savvy businesswoman Jodi; Michael O’Neill (Grey’s Anatomy) as the father of Miss Watson; Paloma Kwiatkowski (Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters) as Cody, a small town party girl who befriends Norman; Michael Vartan (Alias) as George, a man who develops a crush on Norma; and Rebecca Creskoff (Hung) as Norma’s first female friend, White Pine Bay socialite Christine.

You can check out a recap of the Bates Motel season one finale here.

Will you be watching Bates Motel next season? What did you think about the way the show concluded its first season? Where do you expect the show to go during season two?

The post Bates Motel Season 2 to Premiere Monday, March 3rd appeared first on TVHackr.

What should be interesting to see is just how long it takes before Nick gets to work on getting his revenge for the death of his daughter. Norman isn’t exactly an expert at covering up a crime scene and committing a “perfect murder,” especially given his mental state at the time of the act, but the White Pine Bay PD’s ineptitude could buy him some time to figure out what happened and how he can protect himself from the impending fallout. Once word gets out of what happened, though, he’ll instantly become an even bigger town pariah, leading to his life being in danger. Will he be able to shield himself from the town’s anger if he’s revealed to be the killer?

In addition to her role as Kitty O’Neill on the Starz political drama, Robertson has appeared on the likes of Flashpoint, Rookie Blue, and Beverly Hills, 90210. Meanwhile, character actor O’Neill’s TV credits include everything from Rectify to Vegas, Fringe, and Army Wives. They join a list of new additions to the A&E drama that includes Michael Vartan as George, a man who develops a crush on Norma; Rebecca Creskoff as Christine, a White Pine Bay socialite and Norma’s first ever female friend; Kenny Johnson as Norma’s brother Caleb; and Paloma Kwiatkowski as party girl Cody, who teaches Norman about the value of dulling your inner pain.

The second season of Bates Motel is set to premiere sometime in 2014.

Will you be watching Bates Motel next season? What type of role do you think Jodi will have in season two? How long will it take the town to figure out that Norman was the one who killed Miss Watson?

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While Norman was already wrestling with his inner demons, the killing of Miss Watson could be the catalyst for his first major steps toward becoming the Norman Bates of Psycho – if he knows what he did, that is. The character of Cody will already bring about noticeable shifts in dynamics for the series, particularly when it comes to Norma wanting to protect Norman from women (or, conversely, women from him, once she finds out about what he did to Miss Watson), but she could become that much more complex if she acts as Norman”s confidante about the murder and everything swirling around in his head. Aside from providing him with a social connection outside of his household, could she also be the first person aside from Norma who completely accepts Norman for who he is?

This will mark 19-year-old newcomer Kwiatkowski”s first television role. She can next be seen in her feature film debut Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, which hits theaters on August 7th.

The second season of Bates Motel is set to premiere sometime in 2014. You can check out a recap of the first season finale here, as well as details on who recent additions (and fellow recurring players) Michael Vartan (Alias), Rebecca Creskoff (Hung), and Kenny Johnson (Sons of Anarchy) will be playing in the second season here.

Will you be watching Bates Motel next season? Is there a chance that Cody could be in danger now that she”s gotten closer to Norman? Could seeing Norman around with Cody make even a tiny part of Bradley jealous?

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It seems like the second season of the show will be about building Norma up only to knock her back down. While there’s no guarantee that George and Christina will be positive influences in her life, considering how White Pine Bay is filled with secrets on top of secrets, there’s at least a chance that they could help her feel more welcomed in the town after what happened with Jake and Deputy Shelby. On the other hand, the introduction of her brother (presumably the one she was forced to have sex with) could bring up a lot of the demons that Norma thought she had exorcised long ago, meaning that the already unstable motel owner could go even further off the rails when forced to face her bumpy past. Could Norma find a way to triumph over her brother and come out on the other side of the season with someone like George in her life?

In addition to his role as Vaughn on the J.J. Abrams actioner, Vartan has appeared on the likes of Go On and Hawthorne, while Creskoff’s credits include How I Met Your Mother and Justified and Johnson was a regular on The Shield and Prime Suspect.

Bates Motel returns for a second season in 2014. You can check out a recap of the first season finale here.

Will you be watching Bates Motel next season? Do you think they made good casting choices for all three roles? What are you hoping to learn during the second season about Norma, Norman, and the horrors of White Pine Bay?

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According to TVLine, the drama will be seeing three new additions for its second season: George, a divorced man in his 40s who takes a romantic interest in Norma; Christine, a socialite in her late 30s who becomes Norma’s first friend in her new town; and Caleb, Norma’s estranged brother who is looking for his sister’s help in getting his business off the ground. There’s been no mention of whether Caleb is the brother that Norma was forced to have sex with or where their relationship stood before she made the move to Oregon, so his presence in White Pine Bay could either be awkward or really awkward, depending on the answers to those two questions; hopefully Norma’s other two connections will balance any of the harm that Caleb being in town will do, since she’s been very lonely after moving to White Pine Bay and needs the companionship that George and Christine could provide. Casting for each role should be announced in the coming weeks/months.

Having all three of the new character connected to Norma makes sense, as Vera Farmiga’s performance has been the most well-received part of Bates Motel, garnering nominations at the Critics’ Choice Television Awards and the TCA Awards, respectively. She’s been in the conversation for Emmy attention, as well, but nominations will not be coming out until July 18th.

The second season of Bates Motel begins production later this month for a 2014 debut. You can check out a recap of the first season finale here.

Do you have any casting suggestions the three new characters on Bates Motel? What are you expecting from the next season of the show? How far will Norman’s sanity slip during the next set of episodes?

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That afternoon, Norma drops off her dry cleaning and makes a stop at the office of Dr. Kurata, the therapist she took Norman to last week. Once there, she gets him to take her in during an empty appointment slot in hopes of figuring out how to manage and cope with the immense amount of stress in her life. Instead, he steers the conversation to Norman, Norma’s reaction to him growing up, and how she views the concept of parenting. Norma’s evasive when her childhood is brought up, aside from revealing that her father was always smiling and her mother smelled of cookies, and suddenly has a stomach ache that tears her away from the appointment.

Meanwhile, Romero goes to the home of Maggie Summers, Keith’s sister and the one responsible for the bookkeeping of the operation he ran with Jake and Zack. It turns out, though, that Jake (whose real name is Joe Fioretti) had already been by to see Maggie regarding the money and roughed her up when she didn’t have it. Eventually, he leaves her alone, letting ti slip that he has the same operation going on at four different coastal ports.

Dylan comes by the motel with a gun wrapped in a brown paper bag, warning Norma not to make him regret agreeing to get her the gun. He takes his mother out to an open field where he lines up empty bottles and tries to teach her proper shooting technique. She messes up the first time when she goes too early before nailing it the second time; she even gets him to call her “mom” on an accident. However, that joy is short-lived when she finds out what he’s been doing that requires carrying a gun.

Later, Maggie stops by to warn Norma about Jake, dropping even more tension on the motel owner’s shoulders as midnight speeds closer into view. Norman, meanwhile, gets his hopes up when Bradley comes ringing the doorbell, only to want to talk to Dylan. He gives her the stuff from her dad’s office and the two have a quick, pleasant conversation before she leaves. Norman overhears everything that they say and works himself up into a bit of a frenzy, confronting his brother over his former crush.

The time is now 7:30 p.m. and Norma decides to come clean with Norman about something she never told him. She was molested by her brother from the age of 13 until he moved out of the house. Their family was broke, her mother had already checked out by that time, and her father was a violent, violent man, though the scar on her leg was from an accident she had when he caught her and her brother together. Norma jumped up quickly and knocked a hot iron onto her thigh, which left the mark that still stands today.

Once she gets Norman off to the dance and receives a menacing call from Jake/Joe, Norma loads a bag to make it look flush with cash and places her gun right where she can get it. With her head wrapped in a scarf, Norma arrives at the docks and hides when she sees a car coming. However, it turns out to be Sheriff Romeo, lugging a duffle bag full of money that he got from Shelby’s garage earlier that day. Jake/Joe shows up right after Romero arrives and while the Sheriff lays down the lay about how business is done in White Pine Bay, everything being ran through him, Norma gets her gun out and prepares to shoot. Who? At this point, she doesn’t care.

Romero ends up shooting Jake/Joe, whose body falls into the water below. He tosses the money in, too, and tells Norma to come out of hiding and that when he says to trust him, she should trust him.

Dance, Dance
Norman asks Emma to go to the winter formal that same night and she says yes. Not long after, Norman overhears Miss Watson having an argument on the phone with a man named Eric; he promises not to tell anyone anything that he heard and she seems okay with that, as they’ll now have a secret to share. She touches his face gently and gives him a tearful hug of appreciation.

At the motel, Emma shows Norma her dress for the night’s dance – a lace-y purple number that she’s excited about being able to wear. Norma’s very surprised about Norman agreeing to take her to the dance, but she’s ultimately supportive and thrilled for Emma to be as happy as she is. However, after she tells Norman about being molested right before he’s to leave, she all but sabotages his time with Emma.

The winter formal is Norman and Emma’s first dance ever – a glowing sea of white fabric, clear Christmas lights, and fake snow. From the time that they arrive, Norman can’t quite looking at Bradley and her date, to the point where Emma ditches him and Bradley’s date takes him outside to punch him in the eye. Bloodied, Norman begins walking home alone in the rain, only for Miss Watson to drive by and offer him a ride.

She takes him to her home and begins cleaning his eye after bringing him some tea. Miss Watson reminds him not to tell anyone that he came there that night and moves his hair just a bit when she finishes wiping his face up. When she goes to change before driving him home, leaving the door open and herself available to be seen, Norman has a vision of his mother in the room with him. Norma tells him that he “knows what he has to do” and the next thing he knows, he’s running down the road in the rain. Norman makes it home and hugs his mother, the two deciding to go make a fire now that their troubles are over and the night is nearly finished.

As for Miss Watson?

Norman left her with a sliced throat, dead on her bedroom floor. He had killed her during the time that he couldn’t remember anything.

Additional thoughts and observations:
-It’s interesting that this episode was exponentially less crazy than the previews made it seem. I appreciated both Dylan and Norma being made into more vulnerable characters, as well as Emma finally standing up for herself after Norman again treated her poorly, but the pacing was decidedly different than what I was anticipating.
-As for Miss Watson’s death, I figured that someone would die during the finale – I just assumed it would be Bradley, especially after Dylan and Norman had their argument in the bedroom. Props for subverting the “sexy teacher seduces a student” trope, though.
-So how will a second season of this show look? Norman is going to continue spiraling into his own psychosis and there’s the matter of Miss Watson’s death to take care of, but after that, where does it go? Very intriguing to think about.
-Finally, Vera Farmiga for every award ever. The end.
-Thank you guys for reading my Bates Motel coverage this season. I wasn’t sure what I was getting into when I picked it up earlier this season, but I’ve enjoyed writing and thinking about the complex psychology and unusual plotting of a show like this. I hope that we see one another next year when season two picks up.

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On the next episode of Bates Motel, Norma has to prepare for the midnight meeting Jake set up, where she’s to bring the $150,000 Shelby owed him or face the greatest threat to herself and her sons yet. Seeing as how Norma doesn’t have the money, has no means of getting the money, and wants to rid herself of Jake Abernathy, she decides to get a gun from Dylan, if not for protection than to make the latter happen. Of course, Norma isn’t exactly a marksman and doesn’t have much (if any) experience around guns, so she has only a few hours to figure out the basics and come up with a plan that would get her the best shot at Jake. Having learned her lesson from the unsuccessful sinking of Keith Summers’ body, she’d find a way to make all traces of Jake Abernathy vanish from her life and the motel, but if she does kill him, would anyone connect it back to her? Or does she have a chance to get away with it?

The season finale of Bates Motel airs Monday at 10:00 on A&E. You can check out a recap of the most recent episode here.

What are you most looking forward to in the Bates Motel season finale? Do you think that Norma will be able to kill Jake, keep her money, and protect her family? Where do you think the show goes in its second season?

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