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Critic Reviews
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Bates Motel has a talented cast and a memorable back story that guides, but doesn’t limit, the narrative, and at its best it’s intriguing and enjoyably grim. But even more than Norman, the series itself has a split personality, a Hitchcock classic grafted onto a much more mundane brand of suspense. Each new twist moves it further from “Psycho” and closer to Nancy Drew.
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It could be problematic that we know almost no one here will live happily ever after. But while it could head down several wrong highways, it could also give us a nice creepy ride.
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Whether other people's secrets will prove to be as interesting as the intimations of Norman's not-so-sweet future remains to be seen.
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Bates Motel isn’t Hitchcock, and doesn’t try to be. But the show does make intelligent use of what you already know about Norma and Norman in their efforts to “start over.”
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I’m torn between condemning the series for piggybacking on a classic and promising an origin story it doesn’t really care to deliver, and praising it for avoiding the homicidal Muppet Babies formula and pulling a pretty brazen bait-and-switch.
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The show is overworked and overthought. [25 Mar 2013, p.43]
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To their credit, the producers do keep things interesting, for the most part without resorting to the cheap tricks that have characterized the vastly overrated “American Horror Story.” Nevertheless, the premise becomes its own creative prison, fostering a hurry-up-and-wait attitude as the story metes out its examples of the things that make this duo, well, different.
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All in all, the stories about the town feel somewhat contrived, and the lead characters' arcs feel predictable, despite the texture the actors are occasionally able to give the material.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 340 out of 415
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Mixed: 27 out of 415
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Negative: 48 out of 415
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Mar 19, 2013
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Mar 18, 2013
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Mar 19, 2013