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Bates Motel Season Five(The Final Season): The Final Psycho Remake?

posted 7 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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On February 20, 2017, I think, I watched the first episode of Season Five -- the final season -- of Bates Motel, the successful cable show which I respect on general principles even as I feel it is NOT much of a remembrance of the 1960 movie as it is its own new story using the premise of the original. The showrunner has said this is entirely planned, and that they aren't looking to replicate what Hitchcock did -- entirely differently -- almost 60 years ago. 60 years is a long time. The movie/TV world has changed.

That said, with Season Five underway, we are definitely in the territory of Hitchocck's original film, and the references are flying fast and furious. Mother is dead in the cellar(not very rotted yet) and alive in Norman's mind...and we see -- all too clearly -- how she functions there, how he sees her there. And Norman has a bowl of Kandy Korn in the office.

And Norman has a hole in the parlor wall. Through which, THIS time...he spies a couple having sex, and goes all Vince Vaughn about it...until Mother calls him away.

There's a hardware store, and someone named Loomis runs it. Except she's a she -- MADELEINE Loomis, might as well cross reference another Hitchcock movie -- and she looks just like Vera Farmiga. Hah! Madeleine's married to a man we haven't met(but we will -- and maybe we DID in this episode; I have a guess he checked in for some motel hanky-panky with another woman), so already Bates Motel is being Psycho without being Psycho.

Oh, well. This opening episode climaxes with a murder in the bathroom which, I realized, was bloody as hell (with the victim below the frame; 2017 cable TV can be as tame as 1960 Paramount) but had no real impact. We''ve had 60 years of slaughter since Psycho and all Bates Motel can do is add to the body count. Neeldess to say, this murder had none of the cinematic flair(or cost) of the Marion and Arbogast murders -- though it did offer some flashy footwork as to how Mother did it this time.

This final season of Bates Motel is too close to the original NOT to watch. Its well made, but not at the level of say, The Sopranos or Mad Men in writing or nuance. Farmiga is great as a character Hitchcock couldn't give us and Freddie Highmore is approximating everything about Tony Perkins except his matinee idol perfection of look.

We've got Rhianna coming as Marion Crane...but a very different Marion, I hear. We may get a new Arbogast too, but I don't see how HIS murder can come close to its historic 1960 counterpart, process stairs and all.

Still, I'm in...for the entire season...

PS. Everything feels too BIG on Bates Motel. The parlor is too big. The distance from the motel to the house is too big. The hardware store is too big. Compared to the original, at least. I wonder why?

PPS. This will no doubt be dealt with, but Mrs. Bates "in Norman's mind" is still the reasonably young Vera Farmiga. Exactly how -- or IF -- Norman will age Farmiga into the croak-voiced, white-haired old crone of Hitchcock's classic -- remains to be seen.

[–] baseballzombies (16) 7 years ago

Nice write up...I don't mind the changes to update the show for modern times while sticking to the core story...It took a while for the sole focus to be on that core story but it's been worth the wait...

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Thank you...I am a major fan of "Psycho" who has become a somewhat grudging fan of "Bates Motel."

The new series really went off the track in Seasons 1-4 with its characters from the original, but I am proud that "Psycho" could generate a five-season TV series over 50 years later, and I understand that a new kind of story needs to be told for a new generation. Quite frankly, the showrunners aren't making "Bates Motel" for my generation, I don't think. I wish "Bates Motel" great success and good ratings.

But now that the story is in "Psycho territory" I may become more of a fan...even if they radically change the story from Hitchcock's version. They already have, what with the different Loomis Hardware characters and a younger Mrs. Bates as the killer(less scary, I'd say , than an incongruously superstrong old lady.)

Anyway, this might become a thread on Season Five. I'm going to try to watch all episodes.

[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

Bates Motel S05E02

Wow, it is very different from Psycho isn't it? By the end of Psycho we do have a sense that sooner or later Norman would have been found out. *Someone* local would have heard about the Mother-still-alive ruse that Norman was running out at the Motel, or one of Norman's victims would, like Marion, leave a trail of interested parties behind her, who'd investigate. Still, at the time Marion shows up any problems for Norman are still off in the future. Nobody currently suspects or knows anything so that one of the many if-onlys built into Psycho is that if-only Marion had kept on driving, or gone straight to bed without supper or showering or both, well then Norman was officially still in the clear... and in some sense this was key to Perkins's character when he meets Marion: he's a bored, isolated guy with nothing at all going on.

By way of contrast, pre-Marion Norman in BM is already under extraordinary pressure/his whole world is threatening to blow apart from several directions at once - literally at least 3 different people are either trying to kill him or are rapidy developing motives to do so. Can't say much more without spoilers....but the impact must be enormous for where the story is going. When Marion arrives, she's going to look like an island of calm to him maybe rather than someone with, as it were, 'lots more life' than him. And Norman can't strike Marion as isolated or isolated-with-mom in the same way, rather he's trapped in a web of other relationships.

Another obvious big difference between P and BM is that BM's visuals are pure X-files! You can rarely see clearly what's going inside the big house. And a crucial bit of late action was unintelligible because of this I found. Oh well...

Finally, Sam Loomis showed up this week, and what a sleaze he is! How that's going to interact with Marion showing up remains to be seen.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Wow, it is very different from Psycho isn't it?

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Yep.

I'm trying...I'm TRYING...and I have a respect for the show still(50 years later, it is STILL a hot property.) But it is just so far afield from what Hitchcock's Psycho(if not Bloch's Psycho) was ABOUT.

And I'm not just talking about characters and plot. For instance, the two murder in Psycho were BIG murders. Massively cinematic murders.Historic murders. Of characters we would never forget. Me, I've already forgotten about last week's victim and how he died. Though I remember the WHY and...its a bit silly. Who NEEDS a smirking Norman to show up at prison to essentially go "nyah nah nyah" to the crooked sheriff who tried to have him killed? I don't LIKE this Norman. He's a punk.

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By the end of Psycho we do have a sense that sooner or later Norman would have been found out. *Someone* local would have heard about the Mother-still-alive ruse that Norman was running out at the Motel, or one of Norman's victims would, like Marion, leave a trail of interested parties behind her, who'd investigate. Still, at the time Marion shows up any problems for Norman are still off in the future. Nobody currently suspects or knows anything so that one of the many if-onlys built into Psycho is that if-only Marion had kept on driving, or gone straight to bed without supper or showering or both, well then Norman was officially still in the clear... and in some sense this was key to Perkins's character when he meets Marion: he's a bored, isolated guy with nothing at all going on.

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All true about the 1960 classic!

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By way of contrast, pre-Marion Norman in BM is already under extraordinary pressure/his whole world is threatening to blow apart from several directions at once - literally at least 3 different people are either trying to kill him or are rapidy developing motives to do so.

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Yep and..honestly...

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Can't say much more without spoilers....

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So neither will I.

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but the impact must be enormous for where the story is going. When Marion arrives, she's going to look like an island of calm to him maybe rather than someone with, as it were, 'lots more life' than him. And Norman can't strike Marion as isolated or isolated-with-mom in the same way, rather he's trapped in a web of other relationships.

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Well, they are pushing the "Madeleine Loomis" thing to give Norman a more concrete Marion Crane-like person to obsess over, even before Rhianna turns up. Yes, the actress looks like Vera Famiga -- but she also summons up the pretty sisters Crane in the original.

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Another obvious big difference between P and BM is that BM's visuals are pure X-files!

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Locations, too? Is Bates Motel filmed in Canada?

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You can rarely see clearly what's going inside the big house. And a crucial bit of late action was unintelligible because of this I found. Oh well...

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I noticed this and didn't like it. Perhaps it was a bit "overlit"(ala Golden Era Hollywood AND Revue TV) but remember how crystal clear everything was in Mother's room in the HItchocck? And in the fruit cellar?

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Finally, Sam Loomis showed up this week, and what a sleaze he is!

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No fun at all, and for my money...poorly written. Interesting that the actor is another one of those "stubble-bearded TV hunks" all over the tube these days. Oh, well -- in 1960, John Gavin had the "standard hunk look." This new guy is 2017 hunky...and, of course, doesn't seem to have any of Sam Loomis' backstory.

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How that's going to interact with Marion showing up remains to be seen.

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She's coming and she's Rhianna and I think we've already seen her in Episode One. With Sam Loomis. (Er, "David Davidson." Weak writing, again. Marie Samuels was much more sophisticated.)

And so we wait to see: will THIS Marion Crane have a sister? And is there an Arbogast out there, waiting to investigate all these multiple murder plots?

I'm sticking it out!

[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

Locations, too? Is Bates Motel filmed in Canada?

Bingo! These are the coordinates for the set/lot in Google Earth:
49°01'14.28" N 122°28'19.38" W

A.k.a. 1056 272nd St in Aldergrove, British Columbia.

[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

Bates Motel S05E03
This ep. tried my patience. 1) I realize that I'm not really *that* interested in the question of how Norman/Norma intricacies can work for Chick. I guess one interesting feature of Chick is that he reminds us of the semi-insane, semi-enslaved Renfield-figure in Dracula-tales thereby pushing the Psycho mythos closer to a prior conception of horror (that the original film only flirted with doing). 2) I realize that the tale of Norma's ex-lover Alex's overcoming obstacles to get back to Bates Motel doesn't really interest me either (presumably I'd be a lot more interested if I'd watched Seasons 1-4).

Both the Caleb in the basement story (and his having some Norman-like qualities) and the growing attachment to Madeline Loomis story were good, however, so the ep. wasn't a bust by any means.... but I could do without all the padding.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Bates Motel S05E03
This ep. tried my patience.

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And mine. What good will I have extended to this series is that of someone wishing others well as they use a Great Classic as a jumping off point for their own ideas. But the more I watch it, the more I realize that if Hitchcock WAS a genius -- and at some level, he was -- when non-geniuses try to work with the same material, it can be trying to watch and deal with.

There are people in the internet press who are half critics/half cheerleaders, and they've done their damndest to tell us that this final season of Bates Motel is the one where Hitchcock's movie will be most cited -- if hardly matched. Thus we still have a Marion Crane coming(but not yet), and we have a Sam Loomis(but he's nothing like the original), and we have the house(but it sure isn't EVER as mysterious looking as Hitchcock and Saul Bass made it look in 1960) and above all, we have Norman and Mrs. Bates CLEARLY delineated in terms of "how it works." He's alone, she's dead, but he sees her and talks to her all the time and so do we.

It is that last point upon which Bates Motel claims its greatest fealty to Psycho...and that's true, as far as it goes. But in some ways, the more we see how Norman/Norma work...the more banal it becomes.

Hitchocck said many times that he elected to film Psycho as a mystery "from the outside," rather than studying Norman's psychosis from the inside. It turns out to have been a great decision. With the secret revealed only at the end, and rather briefly explained by the psychologist...we were left to ponder "how it worked." Forever after.

But damn...Mrs. Bates is BORING now. One touch that I like rather hurts: the dead Mother of Norman's imagination is now rather one-dimensional; she only has the personality he can give her. Good acting on Vera Farmiga's part but...a little boring.

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1) I realize that I'm not really *that* interested in the question of how Norman/Norma intricacies can work for Chick.

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The showrunners probably love this guy -- he's got Norman figured out and he's going along with the gag -- but its way off course, and I don't much like him. The actor has a great voice, reminscient of William Hurt and John Goodman and...someone else?(that part is driving me crazy.)

---I guess one interesting feature of Chick is that he reminds us of the semi-insane, semi-enslaved Renfield-figure in Dracula-tales thereby pushing the Psycho mythos closer to a prior conception of horror (that the original film only flirted with doing).

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Good point and understood. But its not Psycho as Hitchcock -- a rather cool cat about horror -- gave it to us.

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2) I realize that the tale of Norma's ex-lover Alex's overcoming obstacles to get back to Bates Motel doesn't really interest me either (presumably I'd be a lot more interested if I'd watched Seasons 1-4).

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Well, he's a "good guy" on a mission of mercy...killing. Seems like typical TV plotting to me. There's nothing unique they can do with it. Noteable: this actor was the Mayor in the Dark Knight series, yes? A reminder of ANOTHER better movie.

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Both the Caleb in the basement story (and his having some Norman-like qualities) and the growing attachment to Madeline Loomis story were good, however, so the ep. wasn't a bust by any means.... but I could do without all the padding.

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One scene with Madeleine bothered me, about her whole "my husband's travels a lot and I'm so lonely" routine. When she said "Sorry, I really shouldn't be telling you this," my heart sank. That's not good writing, that's basic writing. To me.

As with re the incestuous brother, I suppose he gives Bates Motel its true charge as being the kind of sick story that Psycho was in 1960...its that little something extra and gives us reasons why Norma would go ON being incestuous with Norman. Its OK. But: Norman being ordered to SHOOT the guy? Hitchcock was big on "maintaining the motif." Norman Bates was a knife guy, not a shooter(as Rusk was a necktie man). (And of course, HE can't do it...Mother has to take over to do it, and its too late...or is it? To be continued next week...)

[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

Bates Motel S05E04
I think this was probably the best ep. of the Season so far: Norman getting somewhere with Madeline Loomis and having mother terrifyingly invade that made his basic predicament seem horrific but strangely intelligible - like he's living in his own private De Palma movie! Some of this story-strand felt a little overwritten, like Madeline being thrilled by Mother's clothes and then forgetting that that's what she's wearing on their date. Haw Haw. And Madeline seeming to have pulled herself back from the brink with her husband then immediately going into cheat mode felt odd. Her husband radiates being a 'violent a__hole' type so last week's evident fear from her seemed right, but now I'm not so sure. Is the show setting her up to be more than meets the eye, i.e., as someone with her own mental problems up to and including multiple personalities herself? I assume not, but the alternative is 'bad characterizaton' right in the heart of the show's A-story, which otherwise is pretty strong.

The episode's B-story was the introduction of Sheriff Green, who splits the difference between Arbogast and Fargo (1996)'s Marge Gunderson, was also a winner. Lots of cribs from Psycho (1960) there, including a simple version of Hitch's famous 'Norman arches over to look at the registry while the camera looks up at his birdlike neck' shot. Good believable tension throughout their interactions. I didn't quite understand why the Sheriff gave Norman the car's plate #. Overwriting again? The detail *does* perhaps sell the idea that Norman might be sufficiently perturbed to panic about the car... but that's to say that a bit of plot-priming seemed to be showing (at the expense of Sheriff Green's plausibility - who keeps an eye out for number-plates?)

Alex Romero and Chick stories meandered on.

Overall, Norman/Mother is ready to blow. Even without Marion Crane showing up, he's got lots of targets and is himself a target for multiple others.

What did everyone else think?

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I think this was probably the best ep. of the Season so far:

--Umm perhaps. We got a touch of Arbogast and a bit more congruence with 1960.

--- Norman getting somewhere with Madeline Loomis and having mother terrifyingly invade that made his basic predicament seem horrific but strangely intelligible -

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Here, Bates Motel intersected with Psycho III...in which Norman is actually approached for romance by a woman(Diana Scarwid), tries to reciprocate, but finds Mother ready to stop everything. I"m reminded that the Original Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) wasn't much interested in Norman for romance, even if the story kinda/sorta felt like it might end up that way(as Janet Leigh said "the movie likes like Marion choosing between Sam and Norman at that point.) No, here we are getting into that direct, specific, and potentially sexual kind of relationship that Psycho II(a bit) and Psycho III( a lot, got into.)

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like he's living in his own private De Palma movie!

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Indeed, the "fantasy" slashing of Madleine's throat reminded me of self-same at the end of DePalma's Psycho homage/ripoff Dressed to Kill(think: Nancy Allen, as DePalma picks the bones of a dead director and gives his wife a job.)

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Is the show setting her up to be more than meets the eye, i.e., as someone with her own mental problems up to and including multiple personalities herself? I assume not, but the alternative is 'bad characterizaton' right in the heart of the show's A-story, which otherwise is pretty strong.

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THAT would be interesting. Well off course from Hitchcock and Bloch but...what the hell. And Bloch himself went off course from his novel of Psycho with his Psycho II(not like the eovie) and Psycho III(actually, "Psycho House.") Hell, let's just let the fan fiction run rampant. If it was good enough for the original author of the tale, its good enough for me.

(THIS IS AS FAR AS I GOT BEFORE THE POST DISAPPEARED . AT LEAST I SAVED THIS MUCH.) I'll be back when I can get to my "stable" computer for these posts. Everywhere else, they disappear. Too bad: I REALLY wanted to talk about the Arbogast stuff in this one.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Try, try again...

The episode's B-story was the introduction of Sheriff Green, who splits the difference between Arbogast and Fargo (1996)'s Marge Gunderson, was also a winner. Lots of cribs from Psycho (1960) there, including a simple version of Hitch's famous 'Norman arches over to look at the registry while the camera looks up at his birdlike neck' shot.

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I felt when Sheriff Green first questioned Norman on the porch of the Bates house, that an "Arbogast vibe" was settling in. The way it was a "friendly interrogation." And Green eventually reached her "And that's exactly my point!" moment("You said no one has checked in but there's a couple checked in...") when she challenged Norman on saying he knew where everything was in his house after saying he didn't. It was a weak echo(both as dialogue and as an echo)...but it was there.

But the echo became clear and strong the moment(later in the episode) when Sheriff Green asked if Norman had "one of those old-fashioned guest registers, where people would sign in." Just the phrase "guest register" was like Pavlov's dog to me, and the quite-right idea that it would be old-fashioned allowed nostalgia to creep in.

There follows an OK recreation of SOME of the Arbogast/Norman duel in the office, complete with "That shot" (more anon) and Freddie Highmore doing Norman's stutter/stammer( the first time in Bates Motel? It wasn't very good, really, almost an "in-joke impersonation" that Highmore quickly dropped.

There were a few more echoes in the scene, but not enough, and it went its own way , too.
I found myself pleased and comforted to feel that old 1960 Psycho feeling for a fleeting moment, but when it left, I realized: what did I want here, a shot by shot line by line remake?
Well, we already HAVE one of those. So we'll have to settle for the 1960 Hitchocck crumbs that Bates Motel doles out.
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Good believable tension throughout their interactions.
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Yes. I'm reminded that Police Chief Marge Gunderson in Fargo subjected William H. Macy's sneaky car salesman to some Arbogast-like interrogations(which made it all the more delicious when Macy got cast AS Arbogast in the Van Sant; it was an homage to two movies in one, even with Macy miscast.)
And I wonder: is Sheriff Green headed to survive Bates Motel? Or is a staircase waiting with her name on it?

MORE

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

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including a simple version of Hitch's famous 'Norman arches over to look at the registry while the camera looks up at his birdlike neck' shot.

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When they did this bit, my Psycho nostalgia surged...and it got me to thinking.

Hitchcock's cinema is filled with "interesting shots" and camera movements, but he was at pains to suggest in interviews that he was selective about these show-offy shots and when to use them.

That now-famous shot under Norman's throat in the original, is to me, nicely contrasted with the even more famous overhead shot of Mother running at Arbogast a bit later on the landing.

The overhead shot was flashy...but very necessary. It was designed to hide Mother's face without looking like it was being hidden(we see her nose from above, for one thing.)

The "underhead" shot below Norman's throat was flashy...but hardly necessary. The scene could have continued on without it. It is as ifHitchcock -- in a great moment of inspiration --- DECIDED that he should "go flashy" here and get that shot, which likely took special equipment and much rehearsal to stage. But he WANTED that shot, and he GOT that shot.

What's great about the shot isn't so much the flashy technique, but Hitchcock's "story telling decision": Norman's world is starting to fall apart and this vertiginous swoop under his throat TELLS us that. It also shows off Perkin's bird-like throat(which Hitch probably noticed AS birdlike in a movie about birds, in part) and makes the most of his Kandy Korn munching(Perkins' own idea...turned by Hitchcock here into "something more.")

Directors like Billy Wilder and John Huston dissed fancy camerawork like Hitchcock's. All due respect, it always struck me that they dissed it because they couldn't really DO it. Wilder and Huston made their reputations with their scripts and their characters and-- in Wilder's case-- some great compositions that WERE cinematic. But Hitchcock liked to play with his camera and "make cinema."

Hitchcock's style fit his form: thrillers. I suppose On the Waterfront or Marty or even The Bridge on the River Kwai REQUIRED non-moving cameras and basic shots to tell their tales, but Hitchcock gave himself the canvas of the screen to do ANYTHING. Cinema is better for it, and his fans are legion.

I was thinking how recent Oscar winning films like "Dallas Buyers Club" and "Manchester By the Sea" -- both of which I've seen, do practically NOTHING with their camera work in any fancy way. These are straightforward stories, carried by their actors and a bit too much by " social issue dramatics." No camera movement there...

....and then I saw La La Land. This week. And boy that camera was moving EVERYWHERE. I see where the director is a fan of the NUMBER "Singin' in the Rain,"where the camera swoops so wonderfully AT Kelly as he dances; but the director also loves Hitchocck. And Hitchcock's technique is all through La La Land along WITH the more fantastical musical stuff.

A key example of Hitchcock's technique is when Emma Stone first discovers Gosling playing piano in JK Simmons restaurant. As Stone advances happily at Gosling, "the camera travels the close-up with Stone as she walks"(an ironclad Hitchcock rule; see Cary Grant walking across the Glen Cove library and being blocked by Valerian at the door.) And then Gosling bumps angrily right past her. (The much later twist ending payoff on this moment is...Movie Magic.)

La La Land heartened me that there is still an exhilarating place for making a movie a thing of "visual fantasy" rather than TV-movie style "reportage."

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But I'll keep watching Bates Motel.

How many episodes in this final season?

[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

Bates Motel S05E05

I'm struck again by how *busy* Norman's world is on the show. This Norman is so different from Anthony Perkins's loner-ish figure filling up his empty hours with taxidermy and other hobbies and almost pathetically grateful for an interesting, pretty woman giving him the time of day.

The big Norman revelation this week - that, news-to-him, he's been a regular *as Norma* at the local LGBT bar - almost sounds like a joke. And can mother-being-in-charge really be equated to passing as a Trans-woman? or is she supposed to be a cross-dressing gay man? I wondered whether the show has bitten off more than it can chew by making this move....And practically, while the Bar in question is supposed to be a little outside Norman's main town (White Pine Bay?) it's probably the main LGBT bar in the rural/small town county. But then the whole what we might call the mainstream-alternative-lifestyles community in White Horse Bay knows that Norman has a persona as a cross-dressing gay-man or whatever it is.

Meanwhile, Norman's half-brother(?) Dylan suspects that Norman is a serial killer and that he may even have killed his wife's Mom, but he hasn't done anything about that suspicion so far, and hasn't even kept up with things enough to know that Norma's been dead a while (something his wife finds out after a couple of minutes googling). This appears to set up Dylan returning to White Pine Bay to confront Norman in teh next ep. or so.

Meanwhile, we learn that it *was* Rihanna's Marion Crane at the Motel with Sam Loomis in ep. 1 this season. Lots of callbacks to Psycho (1960) as Sam spins the story to Marion that he can't come live with her in Seattle because of White Pine Bay debts (not at all because he's married to Madeline). Ri-Marion duly jumps on the first pile of money she's entrusted with ($400K) and hits the road. She's pulled over by a cop for not very much and I don't think the cop takes her to be acting very suspiciously. There's no followup with a car-selling scene, not clear why they even bothered. The ep. ends with Ri-Marion pulling into the Bates Motel where she'll wait for Sam. (more)

[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

(Continued) Watching Rihanna was a little like watching Kiernan Shipka's B.D. on Feud: absolutely no discernible acting ability or charisma. To be fair, the writing for her and Sam seemed way below par for the show let alone anywhere near the level of Stefano's script.

(Personally that Ri-Marion coming from Seattle drives a convertible Miata made me laugh! It rains for months at a time in Seattle, summer doesn't arrive until after July 4 and even then it's pleasant rather than hot or even particularly warm. As a result there are probably fewer convertibles on the roads there than anywhere else in the US.)

What else happened? Norman spilled the beans to Madeline about Sam so that it's a dead certainty now that she'll follow Sam when he goes out to the motel to see Ri-Marion. And both the Sheriff and Norman's old Shrink know that something bad is going on with Norman right now.

In sum, together with Chick and Alex Romero who weren't featured in this ep. but who are also circling Norman just the same, a zombie army of killers, accusers, and the very very interested are now converging on the Bates Homestead. Marion Crane is the least of it. Maybe she'll look like an island of calm in the storm for Norman, and then trigger the reappearance of mother who was suspiciously absent this ep..

What did everybody else think?

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Continued) Watching Rihanna was a little like watching Kiernan Shipka's B.D. on Feud: absolutely no discernible acting ability or charisma. To be fair, the writing for her and Sam seemed way below par for the show let alone anywhere near the level of Stefano's script.
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I"m not sure about par for the show...but it was something close to shocking to watch what was a thing of precision and care by Stefano practically thrown away as we got "The Readers Digest Version of the Marion Crane Story."

I understand that Bates Motel not only feels no obligation to match up with the Hitchcock, but is now agressively trying to go entirely away from its plot(if not its premise.) But who would have cared about THIS story in 1960? Or any other year.

I mean: how about Lowery, Cassidy, and Caroline in THIS version. No trace of Cassidy and Caroline in their characters here, as visual types OR characters(perhaps the 1960 characters were more cartoonish and of the Golden Era, but they STUCK OUT). Lowery was upgraded in villainy(and played by a guy who played the smarmiest of teenage friends to Tom Cruise in "Risky Business" -- how'd we get that old all of us?).
After last week seeing "the Arbogast sequence" re-done with a new person entirely(Sheriff Green, and hey -- she's the gal Buffalo Bill kept in his pit in Silence of the Lambs!) , this week at least we got Marion Crane and Sam Loomis in a hotel room, and Marion coming in late to her office(the shot of her walking into a rather sumptious, modern Seattle office was at once nostalgic of the original and...too much?) And Marion with a suitcase full of cash ($400,000 so is this a remake of the 1998 remake?) And Marion stopped by a highway patrolman(showrunner Carlton Cuse, which excuses HIS acting?)
But none of the new scenes had much heft, did they? Meanwhile, THIS Sam is simply a two-timer caught between two lovers. Its a whole other story. I know, its SUPPOSED to be. But I would say for the Psycho old timer, this series is becoming a bit on the sad side.
Still...I'm sticking it out!

(Personally that Ri-Marion coming from Seattle drives a convertible Miata made me laugh! It rains for months at a time in Seattle, summer doesn't arrive until after July 4 and even then it's pleasant rather than hot or even particularly warm. As a result there are probably fewer convertibles on the roads there than anywhere else in the US.)
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Hah! This is weird to me: Hitchcock's film was minimalist to the max: we never even got a long shot of Arbogast pulling into a gas station; just a bit of its sign, some bushes a phone booth. And yet -- thanks to the expert process work in California's Central Valley for Marion's drive -- we FELT the countryside of Psycho intensely, certainly in the smallish hilly area that had the house and motel(on the Universal backlot.)

Meanwhile, THIS Bates Motel gives us long shots of practically everything, all sorts of sense of terrain and gas stations and buildings. And since it is entirely, richly, pine-ridden, Pacific Northwestian, and misty, we are in another "mind zone" entirely for this new Psycho. "Oh, well."

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What else happened? Norman spilled the beans to Madeline about Sam so that it's a dead certainty now that she'll follow Sam when he goes out to the motel to see Ri-Marion.
--
Ri-Marion. I like that. I suppose this is where things are going. I suppose we can wonder: WHO will get killed in the shower? And who will be the KILLER? We can lay different bests, yes? (I'll throw Sam and Madeleine into the mix along with Norman and Marion.)

--
And both the Sheriff and Norman's old Shrink know that something bad is going on with Norman right now.
So he tells the shrink "Sometimes I see my mother when she isn't there and sometimes I turn into her." Granted, he says nothing about killing people but yikes...this ain't the secretive Norman of Hitch's film.
---

and then trigger the reappearance of mother who was suspiciously absent this ep..
--
I rather liked that suspicious absence. It was as if Norman had to "go it alone" and thus remind us a bit MORE of the Anthony Perkins version who spent most of Psycho alone without Mother talking to him.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I'm struck again by how *busy* Norman's world is on the show. This Norman is so different from Anthony Perkins's loner-ish figure filling up his empty hours with taxidermy and other hobbies and almost pathetically grateful for an interesting, pretty woman giving him the time of day.
--
Yes, and thus, we really lose the essence of Norman Bates as a classic character. 1960 was a long time ago, and Psycho was a movie made when movies could be a lot simpler. Hitchcock movies were ALL fairly simple, despite how complex the plots might be. They boiled down to emotional situations. When will Cary realize he loves Ingrid and Claude is poisoning her, for instance. Did or did not Lars Thorwald kill his wife? Will Norman Bates survive these visitors to his lonely world? Will they survive?
A Norman Bates who buys flowers, drives in his car and has dinner with a woman isn't the Norman Bates Hitchcock gave us. HIS Norman "lived like a hermit" in a hermetically sealed world all his own. He was, the ultimate lonely loner -- but such a nice one, compared with creepy Travis Bickle, for instance.

The big Norman revelation this week - that, news-to-him, he's been a regular *as Norma* at the local LGBT bar - almost sounds like a joke. And can mother-being-in-charge really be equated to passing as a Trans-woman? or is she supposed to be a cross-dressing gay man? I wondered whether the show has bitten off more than it can chew by making this move....

---
This sequence came not too long after the episode of Feud which had some specific storyline about Victor Buono's gay sex life and, I feel, these are the plot elements that our modern era seems to demand. Many in Hollywood are gay and many wish to express elements of their lifestyle in frank and direct ways, I think. It made eminent sense for the Buono sequences, but with Norman Bates in Psycho well...here we go where Hitchcock and Bloch elected not to. They seemed not even willing to ENTERTAIN that Norman Bates might be a gay man. Or bi-sexual. Or even a transvestite. It was the times, to be sure. Their shrink had to say that Norman dressed like a woman simply to become the Mother he murdered. He had no interest in a "sexual change."
But this Norman kinda/sorta does. And...that's OK.
---
And practically, while the Bar in question is supposed to be a little outside Norman's main town (White Pine Bay?) it's probably the main LGBT bar in the rural/small town county. But then the whole what we might call the mainstream-alternative-lifestyles community in White Horse Bay knows that Norman has a persona as a cross-dressing gay-man or whatever it is.
--
Of interest here: When THIS Norman Bates dresses up, and puts a fairly sexy wig on, he looks like a comparatively young, sexual woman. No Grandma vibes this time. (I wonder if they are coming, if he will "accelerate Norma's age" as the final season ends.) Anyway, maybe he gets away with his female side because he looks so good and different...
--

Meanwhile, Norman's half-brother(?) Dylan suspects that Norman is a serial killer and that he may even have killed his wife's Mom, but he hasn't done anything about that suspicion so far, and hasn't even kept up with things enough to know that Norma's been dead a while (something his wife finds out after a couple of minutes googling). This appears to set up Dylan returning to White Pine Bay to confront Norman in teh next ep. or so.
---
I need to do an episode count . What's left. They've only definitively dealt with the incestuous brother(killed him off.) Now they have longtime characters and some new ones to disposed of.
Marion Crane may just get lost in the shuffle. And evidently Arbogast is a "no go." Though his staircase probably waits for SOMEONE.
---

Meanwhile, we learn that it *was* Rihanna's Marion Crane at the Motel with Sam Loomis in ep. 1 this season.
--
I suspected that when I saw the scene --it looked like Rihanna to me.
This creates a bit of a twist on the original. I have posted that if Marion Crane didn't meet Sam Loomis in Phoenix, she never would have ended up 1000 miles away from Phoenix getting killed at the Bates Motel near Fairvale.
But in THIS version, Marion has ALREADY BEEN to the Bates Motel. She's returning. Its the kind of "play" that Bates Motel is proud of. Fair enough. Still though -- no Sam Loomis in Marion's life, no Norman in her life. The "hanging issue": does she die this time? (How about a shower scene where Marion...takes a shower, towels off, gets dressed, and leaves alive?)
---
Lots of callbacks to Psycho (1960) as Sam spins the story to Marion that he can't come live with her in Seattle because of White Pine Bay debts (not at all because he's married to Madeline).
--
A nifty gag, though in the original, we saw that Sam wasn't lyin' -- and that room was even worse than he described. Hitchcock tended to play things pretty straight. One or two big twists per movie. Tops.

(MORE)

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

---
Ri-Marion duly jumps on the first pile of money she's entrusted with ($400K) and hits the road. She's pulled over by a cop for not very much and I don't think the cop takes her to be acting very suspiciously. There's no followup with a car-selling scene, not clear why they even bothered.
---
It was all distressingly perfunctory. The coat blocking the license plate was minor -- I felt a bit of a tie-in to "One More Mile to Go," the famous Hitchcock episode about a killer with his dead wife in the trunk getting pulled over. Moreso than the "plenty of motels in the area, you should have, just to be safe" gambit of a sleeping Marion.
I read that they did a car selling scene with Norma in a previous season, may have been the reason to drop it here. And(as I mentnion elsewhere), showrunner Carlton Cuse was the cop.

--
The ep. ends with Ri-Marion pulling into the Bates Motel where she'll wait for Sam. (more)
--
Arbogast: Did she make any calls? Did she meet anyone here?

---
This time...yes?

[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

Bates Motel S05E06

Norman as Norman kills Sam Loomis in the shower! (while Marion Crane drives off to Seattle to sort money things out as best she can? or just to go on the lam? will it matter?)

The basic over-business of the series, the laboriousness of its explanations of Mother, and its strange X-files-like darkened room pallette (people even shower in shadow on this show!) remain. But setting those basic show parameters aside, this was a solid, well-directed episode, one that respectfully teases us with all our knowledge of Psycho (1960), zig zags nicely in its own directions, and finally produces a novel, pretty horrible but also plausible murder. And a Norman who's so scared of his Mother-side that he actually saves Marion is worth having in the overall Psycho repertoire I think.

Rihanna is still not working for me at all. This role could have been a stepping-stone for her to have a nice acting sideline, but I don't see any of her efforts here as helping her get any further roles. It does occur to me that the lighting and color pallette of the show does her no favors. Her dee brown skin just got lost in the shadows so, e.g., in two-shots with Norman you could only see what he was thinking in his face, not what was going on with her at all. The weird upshot: Ri-Marion seemed a little dull and even stupid (certainly compared to Leigh's Marion). While it was easy to believe that Norman might think Ri-Marion was pretty and has a banging body, it was almost impossible to believe that Norman would be finding her conversation engaging enough to be really attracted to her.

Lots more to say about particular shots and scenes (and their dimensions of variation from Psycho (1960)), but I'll perhaps leave that to others. The Director for this crucial episode was a big gun and safe pair of hands, Phil Abrahams who, for example, did lots of Sopranos eps and a whole bunch of key Mad Men episodes including Joan's crisis ep. late in Season 5, 'The Other Woman'. Good job by him here too.

What did everyone else think?

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Norman as Norman kills Sam Loomis in the shower!
---
Well, what I'm about to say here is meant to be quite, quite funny and amusing to me ----no upset at all.

I was unable to view this episode first run, and I won't be able to see it for a few days.

So I came here to read the post and...well, you just performed a "shock scene on paper". My head snapped back just a little, I think.

I don't think a SPOILER warning was necessary because Bates Motel is at a point where anything can happen and practically every episode is a spoiler now and...well, I still don't think there are many of us here at this board. Yet.

Moreover, given that I barely watched Seasons 1-4 at all, and I'm a bit detached from this Season Five 'variation on a Psycho,"...it didn't much hurt to read this.

And it may be awhile before I can post again, so...here goes...

---

(while Marion Crane drives off to Seattle to sort money things out as best she can? or just to go on the lam? will it matter?)
---
All I have seen on Youtube of this episode is the Rihanna shower(I DID guess that one in advance, she just towels off) and the Sam Loomis murder. Consequently, I can't say too much more about other scenes. But I have read that Rihanna is now off the series, and "they were grateful to have had her." I expect the budget was raised a bit to get her.
---
The basic over-business of the series, the laboriousness of its explanations of Mother, and its strange X-files-like darkened room pallette (people even shower in shadow on this show!) remain.
---
And, well, sigh. "This is not your grandfather's Psycho." The overexplantion is making the psychologist scene look a like a study in brevity, and making Mother less mysterious every passing week.

---
Hitchcock's "bright white bathroom" and clean gray tiles made "the" shower scene iconic in a very grand "Hollywoodish" way -- even as the film was seen as rather cheapjack.(It was, budget wise, but not image-wise. Every image had a clear sharpness and clarity to it.) The darkness doesn't sell the same "counterpoint"(as with Cary Grant on the open prairie the year before.)

---

But setting those basic show parameters aside, this was a solid, well-directed episode, one that respectfully teases us with all our knowledge of Psycho (1960), zig zags nicely in its own directions, and finally produces a novel, pretty horrible but also plausible murder.
--
Way back when when Bates Motel started, we all wondered when/how/if it would take up the 1960 plot line, characters, and scenes. The answer turns out to be.."Oh, yeah!" but with a decided focus on veering off in new directions and reversing practically everything(thus far.)
--
And a Norman who's so scared of his Mother-side that he actually saves Marion is worth having in the overall Psycho repertoire I think.
-
This was always considered with re the Hitchcock: were there any circumstances under which Norman would spare/save Marion? Impossible in the Hitchcock. Possible, here. (And also taken up in Psycho III where Norman twice cannot kill Maureen Coyle, once because she is committing failed suicide, the second time because Norman grabs his own knife blade to pain himself into reality.)
---

Rihanna is still not working for me at all. This role could have been a stepping-stone for her to have a nice acting sideline, but I don't see any of her efforts here as helping her get any further roles.
---
Its at times like these that we have to "return to the source" and take note that Hitchcock got some great, iconic performances that have yet to be beaten or matched. That Rihanna is black and that she survives are two twists in the tail, but you gotta have more presence than she did(and more screen time) to match Leigh.
Rihanna is working in that "Ocean's " female version(Bullock, Blanchett in the leads).

---

It does occur to me that the lighting and color pallette of the show does her no favors. Her dee brown skin just got lost in the shadows so, e.g., in two-shots with Norman you could only see what he was thinking in his face, not what was going on with her at all.
---
Its like the lighting in too many early films by director Clint Eastwood; darkness was his thing, clear visiblity was not (see also: Gordon Willis, "The Prince of Darkness," who did it better.)

---- The weird upshot: Ri-Marion seemed a little dull and even stupid (certainly compared to Leigh's Marion). While it was easy to believe that Norman might think Ri-Marion was pretty and has a banging body, it was almost impossible to believe that Norman would be finding her conversation engaging enough to be really attracted to her.
--
I'll have to see the conversation scene, but it seems practically unavoidable. Hitchcock's simple little dialogue scene with Perkins and Leigh worked wonders because the actors were great, the lines were perfect and...a landmark shock lay ahead that Bates Motel simply can't match.
---
(MORE)

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Lots more to say about particular shots and scenes (and their dimensions of variation from Psycho (1960)), but I'll perhaps leave that to others.
--
Me here a little.
To see the shower scene done with the victim a man -- and a "bad" man (more on that anon) -- and from the POV of Norman outside the shower "gearing up" to become a killer(again) -- we here explore the shower scene from a few new angles. I was impressed how many "cuts" could be made in this scene(budget money well spent), and of course the violence was way up there, including a final lingering stab deep into Sam's back.

That the victim was a man this time(and a "bad" man) allowed for such savagry, of course. Arbogast is slashed brutally in the face in the original; that would have not been workable with Marion. Its just the way things are: men are more allowably slaughtered without the outrage attached to the slaughter of women(which happens to Marion, but without any wounds being shown -- well, not REALLY.)

That the victim was a "bad" man is problematic to me. Joseph Stefano once said of Psycho, "The audience was forced to watch two nice people stabbed to death...by a nice person." I'm not sure if Marion or Arbogast were "nice," but they certainly weren't villainous, mean, mocking, cruel, bullying, etc. We were meant to get no SATISFACTION from the killings. This time -- we were (and evidently in many of Norman's murders on Bates Motel, this was the case. Emma's mother, for instance. Or so Youtube showed me.)
--
for this crucial episode was a big gun and safe pair of hands, Phil Abrahams who, for example, did lots of Sopranos eps and a whole bunch of key Mad Men episodes including Joan's crisis ep. late in Season 5, 'The Other Woman'. Good job by him here too.
--
Ah ha. Again, I expect bigger money than usual was paid out to land HIM. Which suggests this is the major episode of this final season even as the ending lies ahead.
En route: somebody's gettin' stabbed on a staircase...or are they? Still, I'll bet the staircase figures.

I'll eventualy see this week's episode and say more.

A delightful surprise to first experience it THIS way, right here!

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

And now I have seen it. The next episode is due tonight, so I caught up on last week's slaughter:

You will recall my distaste for how the remakes of The Manchurian Candidate and Charade("The Truth About Charlie") pretty much threw out the plot and structure and characters of the originals(except in name) and thus lost the essence OF the originals.

I guess with Van Sant's Psycho on the books as a "faithful remake" of Psycho, I'll just have to put up with all these twists and turns and changes in Bates Motel. Its like Psycho finally got the "disrespectful" remake it had avoided all these years. And yet, I feel almost dense in rejecting THIS version of the story. THIS story is what Carlton Cuse wants to tell. On the positive side, these characters have a lot more 'meat on the bones" than Sam and Lila. On the negative side well...they just aren't very interesting characters.

This "shower episode" actually rather reminded me of ANOTHER recent remake of a 1960 classic: the 2016 The Magnificent Seven, which seemed to throw in one of the old movie's lines every seventh line or so. Notice , for instance, how in the Bates Motel "parlor scene," Norman said his line about the cheap materials of taxidermy verbatim from the original but did NOT -- to my mind -- say "A boy's best friend is his mother" and CHANGED his private traps speech.

About that private traps speech. It seemed to me that the "new writer" felt a need to use Hitchcock's old material to say new things. It got more literal, with Norman talking about both the trap of life with Mother AND about how falling in love with other human beings can trap you.

Indeed, the entire new parlor scene seemed a sketchy, dumbed-down version of Stefano's exquisitely written lines -- which had re-written the POOR lines of the Robert Bloch novel for the parlor scene(set in the Bates house living room.)

---
I have written of the scripts for all three Psycho sequels what I feel about the script for Bates Motel: Hitchocck never would have approved any of those scripts to go before the cameras. They were below par for his quality control

Except: not really. I think Hitchcock approved(i.e. settled for) subpar scripts for The Birds(the effects trumped the script), Marnie, Torn Curtain, Topaz, and half of Family Plot. Of his final films, only Frenzy seemed to have a truly professional script attached.

So Bates Motel is about as good as Topaz. Except not in other areas -- Hitchocck's great visual inventiveness made subpar scripts into good movies.

---

This is also the place, I think, to note that Bates Motel is in some ways " a film of Robert Bloch's novel Psycho." That novel was written so that the reader thought that Mother WAS real, talking to Norman in the various rooms of the house, and eventually killing Arbogast right in front of Norman. Hitchcock's movie rigorously avoided any such "mental fantasy" but Bates Motel gives it to us all the time.

Which tells us that HITCHCOCK (in the original) or a modern-day filmmaker(ala A Beautiful Mind) COULD have staged the original Psycho this way , with scenes of Mother standing there and talking to Norman, and killing Arbogast right in front of Norman, and the "twist" being the revelation that he was alone, all the time. (Think also: Fight Club.)

Me? I like Hitchcock's game with the audience and twist ending a whole lot better.

Especially given all the endless chit-chat between Real Norman and Fantasy Mother about why she's in his head, or how he knows he's mad, or how horrible his father really was...

...nope, I don't think Hitchcock EVER would have filmed THIS script.

But I'm hanging in. Let's see, we have varations on the staircase murder, the fruit cellar climax, and the jail cell finale yet to come. All changed, no doubt.

I'm in!

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

A little more on "Marion" (name of episode Number ?)

---

I wasn't much taken with the acting or the writing for Rihanna's Marion(Ma-Rihanna,ha.) But I sort of felt that David Thomson's sorta-famous re-write of Psycho got made here. Thomson felt that Hitchcock had betrayed his audience by killing Marion off after she made her connection with Norman. Thomson conjured up a story where Marion lives. And returns to help Norman later.

Well, this time...Marion makes that connection and lives. And Norman finds his decent side, after all. (I don't think Marion's coming back, though.) I still don't think its very Hitchcockian(near the end of his career Hitchcock was downright BRUTAL about his ruined lives -- Judy in Vertigo, Marion in Psycho, Babs in Frenzy come to mind) but it gave us "an alternative version" of Marion AND of Norman. She survives, he reveals a "nice side, after all."

---
Meanwhile, the producers tell us that they had Norman murder Sam without donning Mother's attire because "they didn't want to be found homophobic or transphobic."

One finds oneself practically FORCED into a conservatism(much as I hate that pigeonholing, and reject it here) about what's being said here. What seems to be being said here is that we are being given a "politically correct" version of Psycho in which Norman won't be crossdressing to kill. (But didn't he, already, on Bates Motel? Sort of?) I think the writers are writing themselves out of the perverse power of the original, you ask me. Oh, well.

THAT said, to see Norman's face slowly change as he faced the bathroom and decided to kill Sam reminded me of ANOTHER Hitchcock psycho -- Bob Rusk in Frenzy, who, I have always thought, allowed Hitchcock to give us the "full facial impact" of a psycho killer NOT hidden in shadow or seen from overhead. THIS Norman...like Hitchcock's Rusk...seems to "morph into killer mode" without any special effect or lighting necessary. Its just the face that changes, the eyes that deaden, the monster that takes over from within.

Chilling.

[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

Meanwhile, the producers tell us that they had Norman murder Sam without donning Mother's attire because "they didn't want to be found homophobic or transphobic."

I suspect that the producers have made the right decision for our times... that is, I think that there's no doubt that a cross-dressing killer would guarantee a lot of moaning coverage, maybe enough to drown out all other coverage of the final stretch of the whole series.

Note that one of the other choices the series has made - to have cross-dressing Norman in mother mode sexually active *as* a trans-woman or perhaps as a cross-dressing gay man at the local LGBT bar - probably helped force the decision about the shower murder, That is, where as the movie's psychologist could put some large distance between Norman and questions about sexual identity and sexual orientation (as we'd now put it), the show has blurred those same boundaries.

[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

Bates Motel S05E07

With just 3 eps left to go BM is moving fast towards its endgame. In this ep. after (i) cleaning up and disposing of Sam Loomis's body, and (ii) incidentally discovering that the Police are *already* pulling bodies out of the Lake (the show's swamp replacement), and (iii) fearful that the police are close to searching the House with a warrant, shifting Mother's body to the woods (we originally think it's going to be a shallow grave but, no! it's more an open air shrine - Norman doesn't seem to try to hide it, is he thinking he'll bring her back to the house in the Spring before people start getting out to enjoy the woods?) the big moves are:

a) Norman's secrets come fully out to his brother Dylan including one that's a secret to Norman himself we assume: the Doctor *we* saw him meet with last week was a hallucination. In fact the doctor's been missing for a year presumed dead. Dylan's figured out that everyone around Norman dies/disappears and guesses the full truth.
b) Mother-controlled Norman tries to kill Dylan after he tries to get Norman to go back on his meds, but Norman wrestles his Mom-side for the knife and Dylan lives just as Marion survived though his actions last week. Will Mother be able to enlist Norman's righteousness to kill else though the way we did with Sam lat time?
c) Dylan watches and listens as Norman-back-in-control calls 911 and confesses to the murder of Sam Loomis. The cat's really out of the bag now.

On one level, then, it's really over now. We could almost open next week with a Simon-Oakland-Psychiatrist figure explaining everything to a weeping Madeline and Dylan and Emma before we cut to Norman in a an white cell speaking in his own voice not mother's, with a final dissolve to a shot (possibly rotating) looking directly down on Mother's body in the woods, the blowing snow slowly covering her. THE END. [Or for the Trash version: her eyes spring open. THE END.]

But we still have 3 eps to go and arguably we're short a few thrills. The Sheriff could respond to the 911 call and end up getting killed on the stairs. Alex Romero (what's Dylan's relation to him? and he's the old sheriff right?) surely has to arrive v. soon. Before the cops? Maybe Dylan will kill him and then try to cover things up with Norman. Could there yet be an Arbogast figure from Seattle trailing Marion's money? And what about Chick?

Anyhow, quite a good tense ep.. Great work from Freddie Highmore, the show's Norman. He also wrote the ep.. Good for him. Dylan's actor (Theriot?) was pretty affecting this week; he's not really grabbed me before this. Apparently he co-starred with JLaw in a thriller called something like House At The End of the Street...*as* a cross-dressing psycho-killer!

What did everyone else think?

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Before responding on the episode per se, I'd like to stop a moment to pay a certain homage to Bates Motel, which has managed to grow on me a bit in terms of how it is honoring and playing off the 1960 original. It still isn't really the work that the 1960 original is(what could be?) or the event(DEFINITELY, what could be?) but it knows its source and in this final season is exploring a number of issues, to wit:

ONE: How does Mother function within Norman? Like we see here. I've always said that in Hitchcock's original, we need to picture Mother sitting next to Norman when he talks in the parlor with Marion, and standing next to Norman as Arbogast confronts him on the porch...well, here's the proof. We don't quite get the "often only mother, but never only Norman" idea, but we see how it works.

TWO: Folks have pondered for decades now, a "what if?": "What if Marion completed her shower, toweled off , and drove home?" The movie prepares us for that and then kills her off. And some folks have written even on re-viewings of the original, they FORGET that she's gonna get killed, so well has Hitch enveloped us in her tale. Well, this time,she takes the shower and lives. And drives away.

THREE: "A twist in the tale." Killing Sam Loomis in the shower wasn't quite genius -- and it threw off key elements of the original(the shadowy Mother, the female sexuality of Marion and thus elements of rape). But it was quite a fun twist...and very brutal. I've looked at the scene again. There aren't as many editing cuts in it, but the stabbing is as real as the shower scene has ever been (Hitchcock, Van Sant, Silence of the Hams). That's not BETTER than Hitchcock's sleight of hand, but it fits 2017. We sense EXACTLY how a stabbing victim dies in a shower. And the final shots are nicely matched to the original.

FOUR: The occasional nods to the original. The shot under Norman's chin when questioned. Lines that are hardwired into our brains("Today's linen day.") And the jolt of heavy nostalgia that every such shot and line gives us. Psycho DOES live again, a little, on Bates Motel.

MORE

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

With just 3 eps left to go BM is moving fast towards its endgame.

---

Thank you for this information! Shows like The Sopranos and Mad Men used to say "only three episodes left," but I tell you I was lost on this series. I thought we were still "midway." And I wasn't happy about that. It feels like the series has been "heading for an end" for some time now. Now, I realize, it IS.

---

In this ep. after (i) cleaning up and disposing of Sam Loomis's body,

---

A nod here to Hitchcock's great "body disposal" scenes: Marion to the swamp in Psycho; Babs in the potato truck in Frenzy and...the entirety of The Trouble With Harry.

---

and (ii) incidentally discovering that the Police are *already* pulling bodies out of the Lake (the show's swamp replacement), and (iii) fearful that the police are close to searching the House with a warrant,

---

There's a certain business to this series...plus the idea of Norman AND Mother working the body disposal shift as a team is...different.

---

shifting Mother's body to the woods (we originally think it's going to be a shallow grave but, no! it's more an open air shrine - Norman doesn't seem to try to hide it, is he thinking he'll bring her back to the house in the Spring before people start getting out to enjoy the woods?)

---

The series has compressed the ten years since Norman killed Mother into two; thus she died young and has STAYED rather young. And now she's in deep freeze. Will she ever turn into the skull-face of the original? Will her VOICE ever age to the original? I remain interested.

---

the big moves are:

a) Norman's secrets come fully out to his brother Dylan including one that's a secret to Norman himself we assume: the Doctor *we* saw him meet with last week was a hallucination. In fact the doctor's been missing for a year presumed dead.

---

Yeah, I found it weird how Norman told the guy "Sometimes I see Mother when she's not there...and sometimes I turn into her." I mean, talk about letting the cat out of the bag. But I really wasn't committed enough to the story to think past the surface.

---

Dylan's figured out that everyone around Norman dies/disappears and guesses the full truth.

----

Here's where I now realize that three episodes is about all the series can handle. Dylan's onto the game; he's witnessed it. (Indeed doesn't that make three who are on to Norman's condition..Chick, the incest father, and now Dylan? Well, only two are alive.)

---
b) Mother-controlled Norman tries to kill Dylan after he tries to get Norman to go back on his meds, but Norman wrestles his Mom-side for the knife and Dylan lives just as Marion survived though his actions last week.

---

Twice now, Norman has overcome his murderous mother..something folks hoped he would have done for Marion in the original(as the shower scene began.) This is certainly a "nicer for real" Norman than Hitchcock gave us(Perkins only SEEMED nice), and I guess that's nice, but Hitchcock was MERCILESS...and so was his Norman Bates. And his Bob Rusk for that matter. Hitchcock's Psychos had no "mercy switch." Made them scarier, I think.

---
Will Mother be able to enlist Norman's righteousness to kill else though the way we did with Sam lat time?

---
Perhaps. I'm not sure I much like that either. Norman only kills "deserving" victims? Hitchcock wasn't into that.

---
c) Dylan watches and listens as Norman-back-in-control calls 911 and confesses to the murder of Sam Loomis. The cat's really out of the bag now.

----

Yeah. I figured its some sort of trick. Perhaps no one will believe him....the body moves or something.

---

On one level, then, it's really over now. We could almost open next week with a Simon-Oakland-Psychiatrist figure explaining everything to a weeping Madeline and Dylan and Emma before we cut to Norman in a an white cell speaking in his own voice not mother's, with a final dissolve to a shot (possibly rotating) looking directly down on Mother's body in the woods, the blowing snow slowly covering her. THE END. [Or for the Trash version: her eyes spring open. THE END.]

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Ha. That's the trash ending of, er, "Dark Shadows" the movie. Which I kinda liked.

MORE

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

But we still have 3 eps to go and arguably we're short a few thrills. The Sheriff could respond to the 911 call and end up getting killed on the stairs.

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I"ve been thinking: Bates Motel has killed a man instead of a woman in the shower. Will it be fitting to kill a woman instead of a man on the stairs? If so, my theory will be tested -- that only a man should take such a brutal slash to the face on screen. (I'm oddly courtly on this point.)

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Alex Romero (what's Dylan's relation to him? and he's the old sheriff right?)

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Old sheriff...was married to Norma. Stepdad? But didn't know it?

---

surely has to arrive v. soon. Before the cops? Maybe Dylan will kill him and then try to cover things up with Norman.

---

Place your bets!

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Could there yet be an Arbogast figure from Seattle trailing Marion's money?

--

An interesting idea. There's still the money missing. I so liked Arbogast as a character. However, many of his lines have been given to the sheriff and Norman has said many of his "Arbogast responses." Plus the under the chin shot has been done. Still...it would be fun to get a new Arbogast to go with a new Marion.

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And what about Chick?
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Oh, yeah. He'll figure in this. Possibly with Romero. Bring everybody together...

Or maybe he'll just reveal that his name is really Robert Bloch.

----

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Anyhow, quite a good tense ep.. Great work from Freddie Highmore, the show's Norman. He also wrote the ep.. Good for him.

--

The Romero actor directed one recently. Its a nice perk of the job. Both did serviceable work. They might land such work in the future.

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Dylan's actor (Theriot?) was pretty affecting this week; he's not really grabbed me before this.

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Yes, this version has all sorts of people having to come to grips with the reality of Norman Bates beyond what Sam and Lila so briefly did in the original. Its a nice acting exercise.

--

Apparently he co-starred with JLaw in a thriller called something like House At The End of the Street...*as* a cross-dressing psycho-killer!

---

Ha. Well, Hitchcock found Barry Foster (Bob Rusk) in a movie about a psycho killer called "Twisted Nerve." Except Foster wasn't the killer. He was a regular guy. I guess his resemblance to Michael Caine(who turned down Frenzy) got Foster the gig after Hitch saw Twisted Nerve.

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I'm excited for the final three episodes. Despite myself!

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I wanted to stick this in somewhere:

The performance of Vera Farmiga as "dead mother alive."

I didn't much watch Seasons 1-4 of Bates Motel, but I did watch the pilot, in which Norma was raped by some guy in the house and stabbed him to death on general principles. A psycho? Not necessarily. But certainly not very honest. She and Norman buried the guy in the lake.

I therefore assume that the Norma Bates of Seasons 1-4 was troubled, perhaps "clinging and demanding," certainly a victim of incest and...what else? A killer all on her own?

But now I'm quite familiar with this Dead Mother the Killer version of Farmiga and...

...I dunno.

Its the writing more than the acting, but Farmiga is having to play Mother as a bit of a comedian on the one hand -- always flippant, always cajoling, often with the one-liners -- and Raging Jealousy on the other. Its a stilted performance and I keep remembering that in Hitchcock's original, mother only spoke THREE TIMES. The more time we spend with THIS Norma Bates, the less frightening she becomes.

There is also the matter of Vera Farmiga herself. I know her from two films of the 00's -- The Manchurian Candidate remake(2003? 04?) and The Departed(Best Picture, 2006, torn twixt Leo and Matt.) She made a name for herself, I think, because her face was incredibly distinctive, with piercing, weird, blue eyes and (Bates Motel reveals), a gigantic toothy grin. She had a "different kind of beauty" that movies love...a beauty with an edge of strangeness to it, just a touch of ugliness, frankly. If she had to "exaggerate" her features, I mean.

I recall her death scene in "The Manchurian Candidate" -- a drowning in which her face slowly freezes into place -- and as I recall, its a good dry run for how Norma looks dead, today.

One interesting thing about how Farmiga is playing Mother right now -- its as if you can see the skull-face "in utero" -- forming. Farmiga plays up the big toothy leering grins, her smile practically owns the bottom half of her face. Her eyes open wide. You can SEE the death mask ready to emerge.

I have a mixture of respect and disrespect for Vera Farmiga's work as Norma Bates. Respect for her look and what she brings to the role as an actress. Some disrespect for how the fantasy character is written -- too broad, too wise-cracking, without the intense sense of menace that Hitchcock's cranky old bat suggested.

That's about it. Not sure what else to say, but I notice the good and the bad in this character.

[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

There is also the matter of Vera Farmiga herself. I know her from two films of the 00's -- The Manchurian Candidate remake(2003? 04?) and The Departed(Best Picture, 2006, torn twixt Leo and Matt.)

You also know her as George Clooney's love-interest in Up In The Air.

One thing that I'm pretty dazzled by is how much the young actress they've got for Madeline Loomis is a dead ringer for Farmiga. I mean that if Norman were an ordinary young man he might find himself unattracted to Madeline precisely *because* she's so much like his Mom.

[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

With just 3 eps left to go BM is moving fast towards its endgame.
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Thank you for this information!

You're welcome. So, BM and Feud are in exact sync with 3 eps left each.

[quote]Yeah. I figured its some sort of trick. Perhaps no one will believe him....the body moves or something.[quote]

Interesting suggestion but getting a body out of a deep well (if we heard the body fall for t secs then the well is ~ 5*(t^2 ) meters, e.g., 2.5 secs = 62 meters) would need a huge amount of equipment and under no circumstances is a one-person job.

Still, it would seem that there has to be some twist to string things for 3 more eps... maybe something simple like Dylan and Chick testify that Norman is off his rocker and so shouldn't be believed for that reason, and Norman's released back into their custody (perhaps while the town waits for the well-extraction equipment to arrive).

[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

A point I've harped on a lot: Bates Motel is *dark*, I mean literally dark, so that almost no matter what the situation or time of day there are deep shadows in every room. This last ep. actually wasn't as (literally) dark as many others eps. have been but it still induced a comical moment near the end: Dylan comes home and Norman's cooking pretty fancily and got candle-light all over the place. The comedy is that Norman's 'atmospheric', dim lighting actually results in a better lit kitchen than we've ever had before on the show IIRC: the show's so dark that a candle-lit dinner looks like a Summer's day!

I recently stumbled across an interesting old Slate article about the literal darkness of lots of modern tv shows here. It includes a link to an arguably even more fascinating piece from a 1950s American Cinematographer about how they lit and shot I Love Lucy which set the standard for TV for decades after.

Recommended.

p.s., another show I watch, The Americans (which is back to its superb best), has Godfather 2 levels of low-light. In the most recent ep. I literally thought my screen had powered down into energy-saver mode at one point!

[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

Bates Motel S05E08

For a lot of this episode we think that via either Mother's shenanigans or the Sheriff's credulity at Norman's haltingly told story (before Mother mounts her takeover bid) or aggressive lawyering that Norman's going to be on the loose again (even if perhaps awaiting trial). But by the episode's end all those escape possibilities seem to have vanished: the well is found and Sam's body retrieved, the second body from the lake has been identified as Dylan's mother-in-law, and Norman is charged with three murders. The only way Norman's leaving the police-cell now is if with-Mother-in-control he literally breaks out. Mother-controlled-Norman's sneer/glower at Madeline suggests where that might go though to what good end is hard to say.

Maybe Mother-controlled Norman still wants to pin Sam Loomis's murder on Madeline and thinks that killing her would be easily made to look like a suicide+a confession note arranged. A long shot. And still there would be two other murder charges to avoid - *after* having made such a busy escape. No, it seems that Norman's stuck now and that Dylan and the lawyer should cooperate and plea bargain to have an insanity defence accepted.

In other developments, Alex arrives back at the motel, takes the Lila Crane route up to the house (snow-bound and reminding a lot of Edward Scissorhands), and after seeing visions of Norma throughout the house Alex kills Chick who's working on his Norman-book in the basement.

2 eps to go. It feels like something very implausible has to happen to provide enough juice for two more eps. This ep. was OK but hardly thrilling.

What did everyone else think?

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

For a lot of this episode we think that via either Mother's shenanigans or the Sheriff's credulity at Norman's haltingly told story (before Mother mounts her takeover bid)

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"Mother mounts her takeover bid" -- a great take on the situation. I was thinking, watching Mother takeover Norman's personality-- to the detail of "wearing" Norman's black crewneck sweater and white shirt -- that we were seeing what was IMPLIED in Hitchcock's Psycho when Norman(wearing the same black crewneck sweater and white shirt) told Arbogast "She may have fooled me, but she didn't fool my mother." In short: Mother IS Norman at times, simply wearing his clothes, and his face and his body.

It is in ways like this that I must admit Bates Motel is exploring that which Hitchcock left unsaid(because he couldn't) and illustrating with great clarity what we could only guess about Norman in Psycho.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

or aggressive lawyering that Norman's going to be on the loose again (even if perhaps awaiting trial). But by the episode's end all those escape possibilities seem to have vanished: the well is found and Sam's body retrieved, the second body from the lake has been identified as Dylan's mother-in-law, and Norman is charged with three murders. The only way Norman's leaving the police-cell now is if with-Mother-in-control he literally breaks out. Mother-controlled-Norman's sneer/glower at Madeline suggests where that might go though to what good end is hard to say.

---

Its all rather weird. Hitchcock's magnificently inscrutable screen character(Tony Perkins', too) is becoming a fairly garden variety "perp," with a tough defense attorney ready to help him "get off." Worse: THIS Norman Bates -- in the guise of either Norman OR Mother -- is a fairly unlikeable fellow. We're rooting AGAINST him. Particularly as Mother/Norman seeks to frame Madeleine for Sam's murder(hey-- its 'bonus" nod to Rusk framing Blaney in Frenzy, yes? With all of the unlikeability that such snake-like behavior brings on.)

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Maybe Mother-controlled Norman still wants to pin Sam Loomis's murder on Madeline and thinks that killing her would be easily made to look like a suicide+a confession note arranged. A long shot.

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But now we'll be looking for it! I would expect that Madeleine( a very sympathetic character) remains in danger for the duration.

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And still there would be two other murder charges to avoid - *after* having made such a busy escape. No, it seems that Norman's stuck now and that Dylan and the lawyer should cooperate and plea bargain to have an insanity defence accepted.

---

Well, something's gotta happen. I must admit that I felt the writing was weak on how the Sheriff went from thinking that Norman was faking it and acting out to thinking that he should be arrested. The show is rather writing itself into a corner.

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In other developments, Alex arrives back at the motel, takes the Lila Crane route up to the house

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I liked the detail of going through that famous(from the first movie) "reveal" of a passageway at the crux of the motel building, leading to the rear area and the house.

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(snow-bound and reminding a lot of Edward Scissorhands),

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Yes! The Bates Motel and house 'in the snow" has been another new touch to the story that rather negates the dust-bowl rural bleakness of the original. This is the prettiest version Psycho has ever gotten.

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and after seeing visions of Norma throughout the house

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Shades of Vertigo and Hitch's unmade "Mary Rose" in the use of green light. And sad. Norma was a figure of love to Alex(though I hear she didnt much love him.)

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Alex kills Chick who's working on his Norman-book in the basement.

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A nifty little scene. For purposes of the story , Alex is now a murderer, which means back to the pen for a longer time(IF he lives.) And Chick -- well, he was a very annoying fellow, and it just felt rather satisfying to see his hustle ended permanently, and quickly. On the other hand, he's one of the few who KNEW of the Norman/Mother psychosis (the other was the now-dead incest father)...Norman's secrets have no other keepers, now.

----

2 eps to go. It feels like something very implausible has to happen to provide enough juice for two more eps. This ep. was OK but hardly thrilling.

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Psycho was a classic movie. This is not classic TV. One clue: it is ending at five seasons. The Sopranos and Mad Men made it to "six plus," seven really. Is not Game of Thrones going even longer?

I expect we still have a staircase scene coming -- the Arbogast special.

As for the original's fruit cellar climax, recall that Hitchcock withheld our view of that room UNTIL the climax. We've been there a lot in this season. Hard to picture much of a shocker down there this time.

Still, I expect that's where we're going. Perhaps with Mother restored to her rightful, rotting place there.

Two episodes to go. Interweaved with Feud, this has been quite an interesting "TV spring."

[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

Psycho was a classic movie. This is not classic TV. One clue: it is ending at five seasons. The Sopranos and Mad Men made it to "six plus," seven really. Is not Game of Thrones going even longer?

Game of Thrones has done 6 ten episode seasons so far. The forthcoming season is only 7 eps and the final season is only going to be 7 eps. So 74 total eps are planned.

But, really, with its hundreds of locations and many hundreds of named principal players, GOT could *in principle* easily have been stretched out for many more (maybe hundreds more) episodes. The *practical* limit, however, is that these episodes are all expensive and time-consuming to make and actors age faster than their characters even now let alone if things were much more stretched out. And if GOT stretched out over 15+ seasons then it would also probably be impossible to keep enough people on contract that long, so you'd probably be dealing with lots of replacement actors, etc..

By way of contrast, I think that Bates Motel has done very well to get 5 seasons, 50 eps out of Norman and Norma and the Motel and the House. (Fawlty Towers only had 12 eps. and John Cleese was often asked why he didn't make more. His standard reply was roughly that Shakespeare had only got 3-4 hours out of Hamlet so that *he* thought that he'd done rather well to get 6 hours out of Basil Fawlty!)

Note that I'm watching The Americans Season 5 right now, which *is* great TV. The show concerns long-term, deep-cover Russian spies in the US during the 1980s (inspired by some real life cases of this phenomenon from the 1990s and 2000s). We're up to about 1985 right now and not only are we still hooked into all the details of how the main characters' covers might be blown (e.g., by their born-in-the-US children who are becoming teenagers and are starting to suspect that all is not right with their parents), how they're being worn down by all the kills and all the bogus identities and 'honey-pot' relationships they've had to form to complete missions, and also on how tempted they occasionally are to defect to the west for the easy life. *Now* in addition the Soviet Union is starting to collapse at home so that it's not clear what they're fighting for. That is, the show's getting more and more deeply suspenseful as it moves towards its end in Season 6. The Americans has never achieved mass popularity, but it's done well enough for FX to allow it to play out its full story (as itself, i.e., without having to change to try to get better ratings). It's an amazing show.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

By way of contrast, I think that Bates Motel has done very well to get 5 seasons, 50 eps out of Norman and Norma and the Motel and the House.

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The more I think about it, the less that I think my contention on episodes matters much to the value of Bates Motel as a successful series; or put another way, it IS a successful series. As a "Psycho-file," I should be proud, shouldn't I? Well, sorta...

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(Fawlty Towers only had 12 eps. and John Cleese was often asked why he didn't make more. His standard reply was roughly that Shakespeare had only got 3-4 hours out of Hamlet so that *he* thought that he'd done rather well to get 6 hours out of Basil Fawlty!)

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Ha. I guess that makes it a mini-series? Or just a long multi-part episode?

Its amazing to think that Psycho in all its shock, power and influence doesn't even run two hours!

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Note that I'm watching The Americans Season 5 right now, which *is* great TV. The show concerns long-term, deep-cover Russian spies in the US during the 1980s (inspired by some real life cases of this phenomenon from the 1990s and 2000s). We're up to about 1985 right now and not only are we still hooked into all the details of how the main characters' covers might be blown (e.g., by their born-in-the-US children who are becoming teenagers and are starting to suspect that all is not right with their parents), how they're being worn down by all the kills and all the bogus identities and 'honey-pot' relationships they've had to form to complete missions, and also on how tempted they occasionally are to defect to the west for the easy life. *Now* in addition the Soviet Union is starting to collapse at home so that it's not clear what they're fighting for. That is, the show's getting more and more deeply suspenseful as it moves towards its end in Season 6. The Americans has never achieved mass popularity, but it's done well enough for FX to allow it to play out its full story (as itself, i.e., without having to change to try to get better ratings). It's an amazing show.

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I read good things everywhere about The Americans and I think I know where I'm going with it: to the "binge watching"(Netflix? Other?) that allows us to catch up late on a show well into the run.

I've done this with only one TV series: Lost. And I did that with friends, for a few nights, as a friend. But it worked!

The entire idea of undercover work is a great "driver" of narrative. Funny that Hitchcock rather blew the format with Torn Curtain; perhaps because we didn't ever believe that Newman WAS a defector. I still think Torn Curtain has SOME tension with all the East Germans eying Newman so suspiciously once he turns himself over to them. And Hitchocck's hope that we would sympathize with Julie's decision to defect too, worked well enough. I felt Julie's pain and couldn't wait for Paul to give her the scoop. I guess I like Torn Curtain better than others do.

I raise Torn Curtain because, in a smallish way, its the Americans in reverse.

[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

I read good things everywhere about The Americans and I think I know where I'm going with it: to the "binge watching"(Netflix? Other?) that allows us to catch up late on a show well into the run.

The Americans might be a bit too intense to binge many hours in a row. But catching up with it over a month or two is definitely doable.

One thing about the new golden age of peak TV is that most of these shows' seasons are very short. This means that even if you watch 20 shows a year religiously these days (that's quite a few more than I do) then assuming 6 of those are half-hour shows that makes for only about 170 total hours of TV annually which is only a little more than 3 hours per week on average.

Somewhere out there Steve Bochco and David Kelley are grimacing: 'You oughta know how good Hill St Blues or NYPD Blue or Ally McBeal could have been if we'd only had to produce 10 eps a year instead of 26+....'

Relevant to our Going In Style discussion thread... The Americans has two older actors who are completely excellent: Frank Langella and Margo Martindale (both playing the leads' also-undercover Soviet handlers). The leads on the show are incredible but these older character actors bring a different energy, so we're *thrilled* to see them whenever they show up. And, yes, Bette Davis would have *loved* to have played Margo Martindale's role back in the day. Langella's 79 I believe and still has one of the great screen voices and presences - amazing.

Martindale has mainly worked in TV - she's popped up in almost everything there, always good to excellent. She's sort of the female Jeffrey Tambor at this point, *before* Tambor started getting big showy leads. She's even on Bojack Horseman as 'Character Actress Margo Martindale', i.e., making a joke about her status in the industry but also probably helping her achieve a Tambor-like late-career breakthrough to lead roles if she wants it.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I read good things everywhere about The Americans and I think I know where I'm going with it: to the "binge watching"(Netflix? Other?) that allows us to catch up late on a show well into the run.

The Americans might be a bit too intense to binge many hours in a row. But catching up with it over a month or two is definitely doable.

---

I'll keep that in mind. I suppose one can "control" the binging over a longer period of time.

Seen from afar, the whole concept of "The Americans" is intriguing because the American/Soviet dynamic just seems so entangled over the years. I mean, its been there my whole life, and the Russians seem to have gone from being Our Intractable Foe to our Potential Pal, with Hollywood as the Friendly Intermediary (Shirley MacLaine was travelling to Russia a lot in the 60s/70s part of the Cold War.) I'm not being facetious when I note that the TV hit "The Man From UNCLE" took pains to pair an American(Robert Vaughn's Napoleon Solo) and a Russian(David McCallum's
Illya Kuraykn) as colleagues and friends for the duration.

The collapse of the Soviet Union seemed to replace the Communistic state with the capitalistic gangster culture(the source of so many of our movie villains today) but..Putin's a Communist, yes? And somebody's pal or puppeteer or...well, I'm sure the powers that be will be getting back to us soon with what the deal is.

And so, "The Americans." Evidently whatever the Rooskies are doing on that show is important enough to kill people over, and world domination would supposedly be part of the plan.

Just as a layman, I'm intrigued how China(on the other side of the Communist coin) seems to have become a source of capitalistic wealth(movies are released there from American studios, homes are built there with American wood) for America as long as we're OK with a non-Democratic permanent government running the place. I keep seeing THAT as what somebody out there wants for the US.

Anyway, for all of the reasons above, I'd be curious to see how The Americans is meant to play out.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

One thing about the new golden age of peak TV is that most of these shows' seasons are very short. This means that even if you watch 20 shows a year religiously these days (that's quite a few more than I do) then assuming 6 of those are half-hour shows that makes for only about 170 total hours of TV annually which is only a little more than 3 hours per week on average.

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Fair enough. For me, its the idea that I'm now using cable TV shows to replace movies as the "place I go" for entertainment value. I've been reporting on movies I've gone out and seen, and the pickiin's are pretty slim right now -- "Going in Style" is nobody's idea of a classic, I went for the actors. Meanwhile, Feud has been holding my interest and totally entertaining me, and Bates Motel is THERE, I duty I could not shirk.

(Although the real eye-opener to me personally is how much I enjoy watching an old movie again rather than catching a new one. The best movie I've seen in 2017 was North by Northwest, at my local Cineplex, three weeks ago.)

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Somewhere out there Steve Bochco and David Kelley are grimacing: 'You oughta know how good Hill St Blues or NYPD Blue or Ally McBeal could have been if we'd only had to produce 10 eps a year instead of 26+....'

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Ha. And yet Hill St. Blues was presented as revolutionary in that it would allow for "story arcs" and a continuing storyline rather than self-contained one-hour stories. Which -- somebody quickly figured out -- meant it was simply emulating the soap opera (which was ALREADY in play with Dallas and followed by Dynasty, Knots Landing and the one I actually watched...the Hitchcock-star laden Falcon Crest.)

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I must say I like the idea of shorter 8 or 10 episode seasons. Feud is a perfect example. Its really said about all it needs to say, having peaked with its Oscar episode and now on the "downhill run." (But boy oh boy, how I wish the Psycho biopic "Hitchcock" could have run this long with this many faithful reproductions of scenes from the film.)

Last summer, I watched the Ellen Barkin-driven crime drama "Animal Kingdom," about a SoCal beach family of criminals and its 10-week stretch fit the summer perfectly,as did the beach locales(all nostalgic to me from my youth.) I can't say the show is great, but it is gripping, and personally nostalgic as hell, and I was GLAD when it went off the air for awhile and I didn't have to commit to it. I hear its coming back for this summer and...I'm feeling good about that. I like the summer. I miss the beach. So there's one "of my shows to watch."

Meanwhile: Ryan Murphy will have at least two more Feuds in the next two years(Princess Di/Prince Charles; Johnny Carson/Joan Rivers.) I'm intrigued. And he's just announced his next American Crime Story: Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Crime story? Let's wallow! (And don't forget the twist -- in going after the Democrat's infidelities, a bunch of cheatin' Republicans lost THEIR jobs.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Relevant to our Going In Style discussion thread... The Americans has two older actors who are completely excellent: Frank Langella and Margo Martindale (both playing the leads' also-undercover Soviet handlers). The leads on the show are incredible but these older character actors bring a different energy, so we're *thrilled* to see them whenever they show up.

----

I have noticed something about the 455 shows -- including network sitcoms -- which I "graze" on my own and more (dutifully) with significant others: it seems like EVERY show makes sure to have some "older identifiable name" on the show.

For instance, channel hopping the other night I came on the credits for a sitcom in which I didn't know the main young cast, but then came final upfront credits: "With James Brolin...and Dianne Wiest."

Well. James Brolin is Josh's more handsome dad, Babs Streisand's husband, a lookalike in his youth for Christian Bale and...the star of Capricorn One, one of my favorite movies. So I know who HE is. And Dianne Wiest. Oscar-winner, yes? And together, Brolin and Wiest are exactly the kind of "aged names" that Hollywood is full of and -- this is the best part -- Hollywood WANTS them. NEEDS them. To give these 455 peak TV shows some identifiable faces.

Aside from the "old names," I've noticed that certain current sitcoms strive to hire some known face from a PREVIOUS sitcom, as if to stamp the new one with approval. Some of the Friends cast. The geeky page from 30 Rock. Etc, etc, etc.

Yes...if you starred in SOMETHING(James Brolin), or won an Oscar(Wiest) or were on a popular sitcom(the geeky page from 30 Rock)..you will never be unemployed again!

All that said, evidently what the writers may strike on is, EXACTLY, the issue of getting paid to write fewer shows. These new series bring in less writing money, so they want more money for fewer shows. (Will this apply to the actors contracts when their strike looms?)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

And, yes, Bette Davis would have *loved* to have played Margo Martindale's role back in the day.

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We have the evidence that Davis actually anchored an episode of "Perry Mason" in the sixties; Raymond Burr was ill so they re-wrote his lines for a guest Davis character. She was already dipping her toe into TV back then.

As did some other big female stars. Barbara Stanwyck(billed as "Miss Barbara Stanwyck") on The Big Valley. Jane Wyman on Falcon Crest. I suppose in some ways, I'm suggesting something COULD happen, that DID happen (movie stars going on to TV leads.)

But its different today, isn't it? There is more of a cachet to cable TV work...so much of it is so much better written than most movies, certainly with roles in the older age brackets. And people PAY for it -- even the basic cable package costs something, and HBO/Showtime cost extra.

I do suspect modernly that our small clutch of MAJOR movie stars have to be wary of doing a TV project -- Matt Damon did the Liberace film with Michael Douglas, that was a risk, but it was on HBO. But other big stars -- Cruise, Hanks, Denzel -- have neither sought nor risked even cable TV roles at this time.

They simply have to gauge the moment. I see Reese Witherspoon doing "Big Little Lies" as her voicing a willingness to take her career off the big screen.

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Langella's 79 I believe and still has one of the great screen voices and presences - amazing.

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What's funny is he's a guy who had an early young career as a dark-haired heartthrob with an exotic air about him -- and then spent about 90% of his career as a "middle-aged character man." Indeed with one of the great voices, and with great presence, both physically(he's a tall, HUGE man) and , well, in presence.

And...79! I know acting's different as a profession, but here are a host of actors working well past Social Security retirement cut-offs. I see the 80's as an age in which a lot of actors will still be working, in movies(Caine) and TV(Langella.) Oh were it only so easy for the rest of us.

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Martindale has mainly worked in TV - she's popped up in almost everything there, always good to excellent. She's sort of the female Jeffrey Tambor at this point, *before* Tambor started getting big showy leads.

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I've seen her here, there, and everywhere. I understand she made for quite a great crime boss villain on the Elmore Leonard-inspired "Justified," a show I watched a lot for its first season and then lost interest in(this happens to me a lot, and its MY problem.) What's great about MM (uh oh, lets not confuse here with the OTHER MM -- Melissa McCarthy) is that she can play good, she can play bad -- and sometimes she can play where you're not sure which one she is. Til its too late.

Langella and Martindale are two reasons I'm all the more interested in The Americans.

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She's even on Bojack Horseman as 'Character Actress Margo Martindale', i.e., making a joke about her status in the industry but also probably helping her achieve a Tambor-like late-career breakthrough to lead roles if she wants it.

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I suppose every generation has its "always there" character people. I live in the past of Martin Balsam and Richard Boone, but "there's always somebody." Its sort of interesting how that works.

Which reminds me: another ubiquitous(and Oscar-winning) character actor is JK Simmons. He was briefly in La La Land(and great in it); he does those insurance commercials(and he's great in them) and a coupla years ago I caught him in a sitcom where he played a divorced blind guy. I watched a few of those episodes. It got cancelled and hurt his career not one BIT. Its as if JK knew, "Well, if this hits, I have a hit sitcom; if it misses, I just go back to choosing from the other 1,000 projects."

I think we should all go take acting lessons. There are jobs aplenty! We can be old, overweight, it doesn't matter. As long as we can act.

[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

But its different today, isn't it? There is more of a cachet to cable TV work...so much of it is so much better written than most movies, certainly with roles in the older age brackets. And people PAY for it -- even the basic cable package costs something, and HBO/Showtime cost extra.[/quote]

It's clear that some sort of tipping point has been reached.

Example 1: Cannes this year not only has bunch of movies for the big screen that are financed by Netflix - those guys are major studio now - it's also doing premieres of the first couple of episodes of important TV series including Twin Peaks' return and Season 2 of Top of the Lake (whose first season w/ Elisabeth Moss and Holly Hunter was too derivative and too preachy for me but lots of other people loved it; Nicole Kidman stars this time I believe maybe w/ Moss returning?)

Example 2: MTV just reconceived its Movie Awards show as something like Movie-and-TV awards saying that they just want to be 'platform-agnostic'.

[quote]I think we should all go take acting lessons. There are jobs aplenty! We can be old, overweight, it doesn't matter. As long as we can act.

Ha! Right now there's a huge pool of money principally from Netflix and Amazon but also investors in HBO and FX and AMC leading to staggering amount of production. Sooner or later the investor sources of all that money are going to expect big returns, and stock prices will collapse eventually unless massive profits start to be booked. What's going on now *is* a bubble with jobs for everyone in the industry. That *has* to burst. But the overall drive to a kind of platform-agnostic world where the biggest screens are reserved principally for 2-hour spectacles with $100 million per screen hour budgets and smaller screens are principally for longer forms with not more than $10 million per screen hour budgets is now complete.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Example 2: MTV just reconceived its Movie Awards show as something like Movie-and-TV awards saying that they just want to be 'platform-agnostic'.

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I also understand that the MTV awards are dropping separate male/female acting categories. My only question is: so, fewer winners?

I suppose that the ongoing problem of the Oscar ceremony often being about a handful of good(not great) indie films might yet find even that venerable old institution opening its gates to filmed drama in other media. On the other hand, Oscar got there first, it has the tradition to uphold -- I expect it will take many years for changes to occur THERE.

(Meanwhile, the Golden Globes cannily does movies AND TV of all types, and keeps the awards "above the line," while also offereing a "comedy and musical" category that lets in more box office pop stuff. That's the role model, that's the show the stars turn out for nowadays. It don't matter that the voters there are negligible.)

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I think we should all go take acting lessons. There are jobs aplenty! We can be old, overweight, it doesn't matter. As long as we can act.

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Ha! Right now there's a huge pool of money principally from Netflix and Amazon but also investors in HBO and FX and AMC leading to staggering amount of production.

Sooner or later the investor sources of all that money are going to expect big returns, and stock prices will collapse eventually unless massive profits start to be booked. What's going on now *is* a bubble with jobs for everyone in the industry. That *has* to burst.

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I would figure. To me, the dark side of 455 shows is...are some of them being watched by, what...ten people? Can they realistically earn any sort of profit for their producers(to pay their writers?)

In the bad old days of independent production, one always read of fly by night producers literally running out of the money to pay their actors, or using ALL their money ONLY to pay their actors...everybody else got stiffed.

Could that happen here?

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But the overall drive to a kind of platform-agnostic world where the biggest screens are reserved principally for 2-hour spectacles with $100 million per screen hour budgets and smaller screens are principally for longer forms with not more than $10 million per screen hour budgets is now complete

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Something ominous in that regard is happening at my favorite neighborhood multiplex:

Reserved seats for EVERYTHING.

No longer can I just drop by the theater about 30 minutes early, walk in and choose my favorite seats(usually up high in the back.) For hits, the seats are already reserved when I get there, MY favorite seats were booked days ago and -- hey, I don't want to have to BOOK my movie seats a week in advance.

My short-term solution: I'm currently going to a "second runnish" theater -- used to be a first-run. It has enough new releases to see despite mainly being a second-run place, and the seats aren't reserved.

But I can already feel the "big hit movie" being priced high and reserved-seat specialized out of my spontaneous movie-going habit.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Alex kills Chick who's working on his Norman-book in the basement.

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A nifty little scene. For purposes of the story , Alex is now a murderer, which means back to the pen for a longer time(IF he lives.) And Chick -- well, he was a very annoying fellow, and it just felt rather satisfying to see his hustle ended permanently, and quickly.

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I actually enjoyed this scene so much on the first viewing -- and Chick's all too sudden demise DID surprise me -- that I watched it again. A couple of times.

And I felt good doing so. For here is the kind of scene in ANY movie or TV show I enjoy watching -- solid dialogue, with a humorous edge, between two characters of some interest.

The actor who plays Alex Romero is a solid, macho leading man type, with an ethnic edge and some "meat on the bones" to play. I don't know about the Alex/Norma romance (I didn't watch Seasons 1-4), but the man's pain is palpable and the extent to which he at least has Chick here to ask questions of, to learn things from, to CONFRONT..gives this scene some good tension from the "good guy" side of the coin.

Meanwhile, Chick. I can't say this wasn't a well-developed character. A very disturbing and realistic character. Physically, he's literally TOO MUCH. Too much hair, too many clothes, too much accompanying stuff. He's a vision of that part of homelessness that can irritate as well as create guilt. One of those guys who rather desperately tries to create a sense of having a career when he really doesn't.

And the actor has a hell of a great voice. Its William Hurt's voice, I'm now sure, except BETTER. Bigger, more resonating, practically entertainment all by itself. And the actor (in this scene with Romero) really knew how to sell the lines, staggering through them, sputtering, sometimes executing them with what I would call "Martin Balsam naturalistic precision."

My favorite line in this scene is Romero's , about mid-scene: "Say it like a normal person!" Funny, macho, a "reality check."

And Chick IS shot, it comes on Chick himself speaking to how the ongoing story of Romero versus Norman("Two worthy adversaries") will no doubt have a surprise that "comes out of nowhere."

Bang. There it is. At least THIS one.

MORE

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Why does Romero shoot Chick, and what consequences are in store?

Well, it seems that once Chick lets on that he's aware of Norman having "dug her up"(Norma), Romero realizes that Chick is just too complicit in the death of Norma...and too complicit in the desecration of her corpse. I figure that Romero -- still a lawman at heart -- knows that Chick is SOME sort of accessory to SOMETHING(and he is, he is, the death of the incest father.)

But Chick himself points out to Romero, "I figure it was a very hard trip you made to get this far...and now you find that Norman's not here." The rage and murderous vengeance in Romero's soul may not yet successfully find Norman but...in the meantime, here's Chick.

A little of the writing here wasn't precision enough; perhaps the scene went on a bit too long, but honestly, its the one scene I've seen in Season Five that felt like something Hitchcock himself might have committed to film, with his kind of precision, love-lorn obsessional emotion(Romero's to Norma),cynicism, bite...and wit.

I do think that Freddie Highmore is doing great work in his own mode(very UN-Anthony Perkins like; Highmore's voice and line readings are all his disturbing own) but is being defeated by a storyline that is simply spending too much time with Norman and making him too unlikeable in any mode.

Its not Highmore's fault anymore than it was Vince Vaughn' fault or...even ANTHONY PERKINS fault(in his subpar Psycho II, III, and IV performances.)

Something hit perfectly for Anthony Perkins at age 28 in 1960 playing Norman Bates for Alfred Hitchcock reading a Joe Stefano script. And nobody...including an older Anthony Perkins himself reading subpar later lines ..has been able to match it.

[–] Popcorn Kernel (2368) 7 years ago

Why does Romero shoot Chick, and what consequences are in store?
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There are almost no consequences of that specific murder, so it seems like the only purpose of their meeting was for Romero to learn that Norman dug Norma's body up. That was Chick's entire purpose.
Chick was the only one who knew about mummified Norma (other than Norman), so it had to be him that told it to Romero. And after he passed along the info, his usefulness to the plot had come to an end.
But as far as 'consequences'...Romero was never caught or charged for that crime, and even in the second to last episode where the cops found Chick's body in the opening scene, they never mentioned him again or even questioned Norman about him. He was just completely forgotten, when his writings should have been important evidence. Chick was not listed with the other victims in Norman's preliminary hearing. So he really was just disposable. The plot just required someone to tell Romero about Norma's body, so that he could take kidnapped Norman to the body. As soon as Chick fulfills that plot purpose, he is summarily dismissed.
I think we are lucky that we got such a colorful and entertaining character when he was really just a plot device and he didn't matter at all as a person.

[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

@Popcorn Kernel. Excellent points, especially about Chick's writings surprisingly playing no role whatsoever after his death (either in the actual investigation or as motivation for Dylan or even as a perspective for the viewers in the finale - a Chick voice over read to us from beyond the grave perhaps).