Bates Motel: First You Dream, Then You Die Review

Okay, so for those of you who ever wondered what I look like, I look exactly like Freddie Highmore. Seriously. It's kinda scary.

Full Spoilers follow.

Alright Bates Motel is Lost alum Carlton Cuse's modern reinterpretation/prequel to Pyscho. Basically, its the story of Norman Bates when he was a teenager and before he was... well, you get the idea. And it is good.

Also, I'm just gonna establish this right now: yes, I have seen Pyscho. I didn't see it when I first heard about the show, but I did watch it recently because, well, I wanted to watch the show and decided I needed to see the movie first.

All start with the acting: it's awesome. Freddie Highmore plays the young Norman Bates and he kills it; he does this whole fish out of water thing because he's put in positions he's never been in before, he does a good job as a teenage boy who has, at the very least been smothered by his mom, and plays it really well when his character keeps getting traumatized by the all dead bodies his mom seems to result in. His mom is played by Vera Farmiga, and she's messed up. She really is; the first seen is Norman finding his dad's body, and the implication is that Momma Bates killed him. Further enforced when she kills another guy later. And you can tell that she's going out of her way to control her son in every way possible. Part of the idea of the show is that Norman was pretty messed up to begin with and his mom's complete lack of parenting skills just made matters worse, and she really sells it. And she's creepy. And hot. Just saying.

Its not just them either, pretty much all the characters have their own qualities and are interesting on their own, like Norman's hot blond (of course she's blond) potential love interest whose name I can't remember (you can tell she's not just their as a love interest either... which is good, given what would probably wind up happening to any love interest for Norman Bates). They all have something going for them, is what I mean. And based on the trailers for the show, the whole town's pretty messed up. It's a messed world. And they had a few good very good twists and cliffhangers in there, (translation, Norman's brother and and bit at the end with injections) and I'm very interested to see they proceed.

The show does a really good job of homaging the movie, too; the motel and house look pretty much exactly like they did, and they replicated just the right number of shots. It's not shot for shot, it's not the Pyscho remake with Vince Vaughn (yeah, that actually happened), but they through in enough of them as nods that I was pretty happy. That being said, they also did a good job of updating things for the modern times, and not making anything too anachronistic (whoa James, big words, calm yourself).

Two complaints, and one's a total nitpick: first, and this is the nitpick, I was hoping the show would be in black-and-white. I know, that's asking for way too much, and doesn't take away anything from the actual show, but when I first heard about this, I remember thinking "I hope it's in black-and-white". Second, and this is the actual complaint, I hope they don't make disposing of bodies a regular part of the show. Look, I know that this is a dark, disturbing, and heavy story line they're working with, but if the Bates' have to dump a body in the lake every episode its just gonna get ridiculous.

All in all, I really enjoyed the episode, I'll be sticking around for the next episode for sure, and I'm glad the show is here.

Final Rating: 86%