Checking in to the Bates Motel

I'd like a room with a nice clean shower..Pic courtesy of Wikipedia

Le Printemps

Today is beautiful, the first day of Daylight Saving Time. People are walking around in flip flops and shorts with a full week left in the winter season. My yard is looking green after a full week of gentle rain and my cedar elm is ablaze with new green leaves. The sun reappeared today and one might think it’s the middle of June. I’m not complaining, just enjoying.

Bates Motel

I’ve added yet another show to my long list of television addictions. A&E’s Bates Motel is in its 4th season and I’m relishing what happens next in the series. The show is a prequel to the famous 1960 movie Psycho, although now it’s given a contemporary setting in White Pine Bay, Oregon. It tries to give context and background to the troubled family dynamics of Norman and his mother Norma.

The show introduces a number of other characters – family members and neighbors who are variously afflicted with their own neuroses and situations. There are strong intimations of incest – in fact Norman’s uncle may well be his father. That might explain the weird mother-son coziness that exists between Norman and Norma. They take naps together and kiss full on the lips. An older half-brother, Dylan, is the prodigal son involved sometimes in drug-running and other shadowy things. But he’s basically a decent kid and just needs to be re-centered with family love. (Good luck with that! )

White Pine Bay is a regular Peyton Place with secret societies, sex clubs, crime syndicates and crooked cops. How could so much moral turpitude stem from a sleepy little seaside village in Oregon? Vera Farmiga is stellar as Norma Bates, really the driving force through the whole series. She tries to protect Norman from the consequences of his misdeeds (done in dream-like blackouts) and becomes his unwitting accomplice. Her enabling paves the way for things we know happen later in the movie Psycho.

Today I watched the first episode of Season 4. It did not disappoint. In 42 minutes, we had crime cover-up, murder, transvestism, incestuous kissing, desperate sexual propositions and schizoid ramblings. In days of yore, I watched Dynasty and wondered if the screen writers didn’t giggle with each preposterous turn of the scripted page. Maybe they were drinking appletinis while they wrote it. I think much the same must be at work here. But the fact is I watch it in all seriousness – I have to know what terrible demons will be unleashed, what new depravity of nature will be loosed upon White Pines. One must tune in to A&E’s Bates Motel to get the answer to these urgent questions.

Elsewise and Other

My job has become incredibly busy with “agile sprints” and whatnot. I’m dreading the onslaught of Saint Patrick’s celebration in my neighborhood next weekend. The last couple of years, it has become a morass of drunks and trespassers who decorate our yards with green cups, Rolling Rock bottles and sometimes barf. With this bit of negativity toward the Irish, I will sign off. Maybe today’s nice weather will put me in a better frame of mind.

© 2016 Snillor Productions