Bates Motel: Stylish, lunatic, sometimes frightening. But can you build a show on schadenfreude?

This week I’ve powered through Season 1 of Bates Motel, the A&E “contemporary prequel” to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. It’s an exciting first season, with many things done right from a stylish setting to a cast that really held my attention. But there are also weaknesses, most of them baked right into the show’s premise. Part of me wants to give Season 2 a try, and another part of me wonders if a show can ever overcome the flaws in its foundation (though it’s been renewed for a fourth and fifth season, so they seem to be doing all right).

Bates Motel follows the recently widowed Norma Bates (Vera Farmiga) and her son, Norman (Freddie Highmore) as they attempt a fresh start by moving to White Pine Bay, Oregon, where Norma has bought a roadside motel which she plans to run. Norman’s father died under circumstances that are left unexplained until most of the way through the first season. No sooner have the Bates arrived than they start to discover that their new hometown, while bucolic, is also secretive and really very ominous. It makes for an interesting setting in part because it’s not far from the truth — there are enormous swathes of northern California and Oregon where the only real industry is producing cannabis. Even with recreational drugs being decriminalized in many parts of America, cannabis is part of the grey economy where the law often fails to reach and a Wild West style of justice has taken hold. The backwoods are not welcoming to outsiders.

What Norma and Norman discover is even more ominous and leads to a bodycount. And it’s a story that moves along briskly enough. But part of what makes the show appealing — the connection to Psycho — also dampens the suspense: ultimately, we know that Norman Bates will end up all alone in his mother’s spooky house on the hill, amassing a world-class taxidermy collection and knifing guests in the shower. Freddie Highmore gives a talented performance, combining sweetness and vulnerability with a creepy blankness and moments of frighteningly unrestrained adolescent rage. But I’m not sure if knowing he will become a (serial) murderer makes the character more interesting; stories in which a sympathetic character turns bad can be compelling, but not if the narrative arc becomes a flatline.

The more frustrating character for me, though, is Norma. The problem is not the actress; Vera Farmiga does a bang-up job with the material she’s given. Rather, the show has been written to depend on Norma making one bad decision after another. She’s a bungler, and she doesn’t simply bungle: she panics, throws temper tantrums, sulks, and backs herself into corners like it’s the only thing she knows how to do. She’s enough of a schemer to ask the town sheriff (Nestor Carbonell) for help with a political favor, but not a good enough one to anticipate his refusal, then makes a clumsy attempt at blackmail — which predictably backfires. When a motel guest starts behaving strangely, she follows him, leading to a confrontation she wasn’t prepared for and even bigger problems. And so on. By season’s end, I found myself laughing out loud at her look of panic every time she found herself in hot water. Can you build a show around schadenfreude? Apparently, yes.

So that, in a nutshell, is why I’m not sure whether to continue with Season 2. Of the leading characters, the only really sympathetic one is Dylan (Max Thieriot), Norman’s more sensible half-brother. He’s a good influence on Norman, but also the third wheel in Norma and Norman’s uncomfortably close relationship. Norma is on the way to becoming a melodramatic archetype who propels the story forward by fucking up all the time. Norman, meanwhile, lacks the self-awareness to be properly interesting as a villain. You feel bad for him, even as his eyes glaze and you ready yourself for another teenage rage-murder. You know how it’s going to end.