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'Bates Motel' Reopens With Bloody Premiere Of Season 2

Heather Navarro |
March 3, 2014 | 7:27 p.m. PST

Executive Producer

You’re favorite creepy, murdering, man-child is back.

Norman Bates is back in the season 2 premiere of "Bates Motel." (A&E)
Norman Bates is back in the season 2 premiere of "Bates Motel." (A&E)

And the interactions with mommy dearest, Norma Bates, are as sexually-charged (yuck) as ever.

If you remember from the first season -- available on Netflix -- Norman, played deftly by the young Freddie Highmore, apparently had just murdered his teacher. His psychosis, which is basically a hallucination of his mother portrayed by Vera Farmiga, tells him that the teacher is trying to seduce him on the way home from a school dance. Which, let’s face it -- that’s exactly what it looked like.

“You know what you have to do, Norman,” the hallucination says while Miss Watson changes within eyeshot of the underage Mr. Bates.

“Yes, mother,” Norman says.

The next thing he remembers is showing up at home. He apparently blacked out. 
The next thing we see is Miss Watson in a gruesome pool of blood with her throat slashed.

An ominous sign: a  “B” necklace hangs on Mrs. Watson’s slashed throat.
Some “Bates” fans surmise that Miss Watson was having an affair with Bradley’s father. Bradley, remember, is the blonde who broke poor Norman’s heart when she hit it and quit it, then started making googoo eyes at Norman’s half brother, Dylan.

From a two-minute long promo released, it looks like there’s a possibility that Norman wasn’t even the murderer. Now you’re just messing with us, A&E.

We all knew something bad was coming after Bradley’s pseudo-boyfriend decked Norman at the dance.

Another shocker -- Norma tells her son, right before his first date to his first dance, that her brother used to rape her. What the what?!

Now that you're up to speed, let’s move on to the Season 2 premiere.

Warning: SPOILERS Ahead

The episode kicked off with Norman’s awkward teenage boy crying at Miss Watson’s funeral. It was loud, and drew a lot of stares since he sounded vaguely like a donkey braying.

Emma, the brown-haired beauty who lugs around an oxygen tank and pines not-so-secretly for Norman, even shot him an odd stare.

Cut to the blonde poor-little-rich girl Bradley. She’s drinking and driving, and swerving all around the highway. She’s likely sad that her father died in a fiery car crash, so she’s probably trying to kill herself in a fiery car crash.

She pulls to an overpass and hurls herself over a bridge. It looks more like a bad belly flop, it was enough to land her in a mental institution for four months.

Maybe she and Norman are perfect for each other after all!

Norman is still obsessed with Miss Watson and her death however. He must think about it as he spends more and more time in the basement, doing what all teenage boys do when they hit that special age: taxidermy.

Miss Watson strokes Norman Bates' face in a former epsiode of "Bates Motel." (A&E)
Miss Watson strokes Norman Bates' face in a former epsiode of "Bates Motel." (A&E)

He slices into a beaver, quite brutishly for someone practicing taxidermy on the regular. Norma comments how weird it is, and says, all right weirdo -- that’s enough. Let’s go do something normal happy families do, like learning to drive. Norman agrees in his unassuming way.

Norma takes him on a ride in the family station wagon, and where does he go? To the cemetery, of course, to look at Miss Watson’s grave. Norma assumes the worst about what happened the night she died, and really doesn’t like his obsessing over another woman.

They head back to the motel, and on the way Norma sees they are breaking ground on the bypass, which would render her motel useless. You can’t run a business if no one sees it.

Back at the motel, Norma calms down and says they will figure it all out.
Norma awkwardly hugs Norman, and their faces come way too close to kissing as they stare at their profitable hotel parking lot filled with summer vacationers.

Norman is left to stare out the window, and this is where we first get a glimpse of a strand of pearls he rolls around in his hand. A clue! It has to belong to Miss Watson.

As the episode goes on, we see Dylan at his lucrative pot job, the same one where Bradley’s father worked.
Bada bing! A worker reveals to Dylan that Miss Watson was sleeping with Bradley’s father.
 Suddenly Norman looks less guilty -- like, less guilty if he didn’t creepily clutch pearls or stroke her obituary photo in his bed. 

Norman goes to visit her grave once more, and sees some random guy there, viewing the grave. Not on Norman’s watch. He snaps photos and takes them to the police where Romero, the just and yet corrupt sheriff, starts to suspect Norman is a freak. He makes cryptic comments about fingerprints in Miss Watson’s house.

Norma hits up a city council meeting to protest the bypass and gets put in her place by a council member. “You’re a dick!” she shouts at the council. And he was. She also loses it, yelling about how the town is run on drug money. You know, the drugs that her son helps sell.

Dylan makes more googoo eyes at Bradley while telling her at the same time that his brother likes her.

Next we see officer eyeliner, AKA Romero, tells Norma after spotting her on the street to tell Norman to cut it out with the Miss Watson obsession. Norma takes this as a cue to yell at her creepy son, and the truth comes out: Norman tells her he was at Miss Watson’s house the night of the murder.

Then he delves into the little strip tease Miss Watson gave him through her bedroom mirror. He sobs and confesses that if he had stayed, maybe he could have saved her. “You’re a good boy,” Norma tells her son, and kisses him in that loving way a serial killer would.

Norman Bates walks home in the rain from Miss Watson's house in the season 1 finale. (A&E)
Norman Bates walks home in the rain from Miss Watson's house in the season 1 finale. (A&E)

Bradley is back on the screen, and goes to a strange older man's house. He used to work with her father and looks like he’s three times her age. She kisses him, and basically gives him a lap dance to get information out of him about her father’s affair with the dead teacher.

She looks like she’s about to perform fellatio, when she comes back up with a gun. BOOM. Blood sprays, and it’s curtains.
Bradley decides she needs to confide in the one weirdo who would understand: Norman.

Now, Bradley is a murderer who knows it, whereas Norman is a sweet boy who doesn’t necessarily realize he’s a psycho. Oh, what trouble this crazy Bonnie and Clyde duo will get into next week.

Check out an exclusive clip of Miss Watson's "sex tape" that is yet to be explained.

Contact Heather Navarro here or follow her on Twitter.



 

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