TV Review: Bates Motel – 108 – “A Boy and His Dog”

“12 rooms, 12 vacancies.”

I meant to post this yesterday but, in all honesty, House of Cards has taken over my life the past few days. I guess this week I’ve lived up to my online persona.

This week Norman studied some taxidermy while a variation of a famous line from Psycho crept its way into the show. (SPOILERS AHEAD….)

Dylan is coming into his own in his managerial position within the shady underworld of White Pine. Despite getting into a pretty intense bar fight with shady coworker #2, Dylan stepped up and put his foot down on the hippie with the guitar. It was a good look at the cruelty Dylan is capable of when someone goads him to take action. Alarming, but not surprising, was shady coworker #2’s warning that you can’t quit the job. It makes me curious about what the writers have planned for Dylan.

The man in number 9 can tone down the creepiness whenever he feels like it, by the way. The actor playing him is all right. I’ve seen and enjoyed him in other things. But there’s a limit to how much “oh my God, look how shady this guy is being” acting I can take in one episode. Luckily, some shit went down with him this week that will reverberate through the two episodes that remain this season.

It’s still not very clear to me what the hell his deal is, but I am more excited about it than I was last week. The apparent Godfather nod at the end of the episode sealed it for me. The shit is going to hit the fan and I’m pretty excited to see what happens.

The weirdly touchy teacher from the pilot episode made her return while Norman handled more high school drama. Emma defended Norman and let it slip that he had sex with Bradley. Bradley was upset with Norman afterward. I like Bradley. It sucked that she rejected Norman but she has such a kind, broken was about her that you can’t fault her for her indiscretions.

The best thing to come about the White Pine High soap opera this week was the ensuing scene between Norman and Emma. He confronts her at her house but instead of going all “Norman” on her, the budding psychopath calmly tells her not to do it again. With this, I feel like they are setting Emma up to be Norman’s anchor to sanity. She’s going to keep him grounded in whatever resembles normalcy for a young Bates boy. The problem, however, is that this is high school. Drama is bound to happen and I hope there is some outward (and violent) manifestation of the high school drama on Norman’s part.

There’s one last thing to discuss about this week’s episode. The scene with Norma and Romero was great. Norma misreading their relationship and the sheriff bluntly spelling out everything for her was very well done. However, there was a reference made later in the episode to a bigger fish in the shady underworld organization. I feel like they are setting up a mystery and I really hope it doesn’t turn out to be Romero running the crime world of White Pine.

I’ve been saying for weeks that I want Romero to have more screen time, but I think stuffing the character they’ve established into that archetypical villain role would lack some serious imagination. It would also put a death sentence on Romero and I like seeing Nestor Carbonell work. So there’s an added incentive for the writers not to screw it up.

That does it for this week’s Bates Motel. What did you think of the episode? Leave me a comment and don’t forget to follow me on Twitter and like the blog on Facebook.

Previous Episode Reviews:

Bates Motel – 101 – “First You Dream, Then You Die”

Bates Motel – 102 – “Nice Town You Picked, Norma…”

Bates Motel – 103 – “What’s Wrong with Norman”

Bates Motel – 104 – “Trust Me”

Bates Motel – 105 – “Ocean View”

Bates Motel – 106 – “The Truth”

Bates Motel – 107 – “The Man in Number 9”