Bates Motel episode review — 5.1 — Dark Paradise

Original air date: February 20, 2017
Director: Tucker Gates
Writer: Kerry Ehrin

Rating: 6/10

I had actually forgotten that I had heard that the final season of Bates Motel was basically a remake of the movie Psycho until Madeleine Loomis (Isabelle McNally) showed up. Though to be fair, if it is just kind of a remake, it doesn’t feel like it at this point.

So Norman is technically living alone, though he still imagines that his mother is alive and is just pretending to be dead to protect him, and he of course sees her. But she’s also apparently still killing people, too, which is interesting.

In the scene in which Norman meets Madeleine, he realizes he has somebody else’s wallet, which leads him to learning more about what his “mother” has done. And she’s not happy about him having met Madeleine in town.

Romero’s in prison now, though he has apparently hired someone to kill Norman, which gets taken care of. Norman finds out Romero had hired the guy when he picks up his phone, which is the best moment of the episode.

Now that Norma is actually dead, I’m not sure how I feel about the scenes with the two interacting. Like part of the magic of that first movie is the twist — you think the mother is alive until the very end, when you find out it was Norman the entire time. Obviously us knowing that going into this, something just feels a bit off. Also Vera Farmiga is kind of bad in this episode, which is not something I’ll say often about her work in anything.