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Bates Motel: Season One
Released by: Universal Studios
Released on: September 17th, 2013.
Director: Various
Cast: Vera Farmiga, Freddie Highmore, Max Thieriot
Year: 2013
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The Series:
When A&E announced that they'd be bringing Bates Motel to television audiences and setting it up as a prequel of sorts to Psycho, most of us were perplexed. After all, there's absolutely no reason that this series should work as well as it does. The idea of taking the characters that Robert Bloch created and which Alfred Hitchcock immortalized, transplanting them and their hotel from the desert to the Pacific Northwest and setting all of this in the modern day had FAILURE written all over it. And yet, thanks to some solid writing, crazy plot twists and impressive performances, the first season of the series, now available on Blu-ray, DVD and digital copy, actually turned out to be a remarkably entertaining slice of television.
When the series begins, seventeen year old Norman Bates (Freddie Highmore) finds his father dead in the garage, seemingly of an accident where a shelving unit full of paint cans fell on him. Shortly after, he and his mother, Norma (Vera Farmiga), move from New Mexico to the small coastal town of White Pine Bay in Oregon. Norma got a foreclosure deal on a small hotel there, with an aging but nice old house on the back of the lot. They're going to start over there, and shortly after they move in, Norman catches the attention of the 'pretty girl' in school, Bradley Martin (Nicola Peltz). She invites him out to a party one night and against his mother's wishes, he goes. When he comes home, the previous owner of the hotel, Keith Summers (W. Earl Brown), has roughed Norma up and bent her over the table. As he starts to rape her, Norman knocks comes home in time to knock him out but Norma, in a fit of rage, stabs him to death.
They dump the body but soon enough the local cops, Sheriff Alex Romero (Nestor Carbonell) and Deputy Zack Shelby (Mike Vogel), come knocking. Romero in particular is quite suspicious of Norma, though Zack takes a liking to her. As Zack and Norma become involved, Norman finds a strange notebook with Chinese writing in it and illustrations depicting sexual bondage taking place around the hotel. When Norman befriends a girl named Emma Decody (Olivia Cooke), who suffers from Cystic Fibrosis, they take it upon themselves to try and solve this particular mystery. Meanwhile, Norman's older half-brother, Dylan Massett (Max Thieriot), arrives unannounced. Through he and Norma have a tempestuous relationship at the best of times, he needs a place to stay and she begrudgingly obliges him. As Norman and Emma start putting together the pieces of the puzzle offered by the book, the town's secrets begin to come to light as do the strange events from that Bates family's dark past.
Taken as a direct prequel to Hitchcock's first movie, this series changes too many things to really work but judged on its own, as a series inspired by that classic movie, The Bates Motel is actually pretty fun. It's one of those shows where seemingly everybody has a skeleton or two in their closet, be it involvement in an Asian sex slave ring, an association for a marijuana farming operation or a murder long since covered up and because of that at times it feels like a little too much but stick with it. By the time the first season ends (on somewhat of a cliffhanger, of course, but not without wrapping up more loose ends than you might expect), the series will have set its hooks in you.
The performances are strong across the board and go a long way towards making this show work as well as it does. Freddie Highmore does a great job of bringing the quirkiness and awkwardness that Anthony Perkins invested in Norman Bates to his take on the character. If he's not a dead ringer for Perkins, he's close enough - had he not looked right, it would have taken most of us out of the series from the start. The way he clams up around certain people, the way he acts around his mother compared to everyone else he encounters and the way he's able to switch from calm and docile to a cold blooded killer in the blink of an eye is impressive. Even better than Highmore is Vera Farmiga as Norma. She, more than anyone else in the series, completely convinces. If she's not necessarily what you'd expect Mrs. Bates to look like, by the time you're a few episodes in it hardly matters. She plays her character as a masterful manipulator, someone able to take advantage of anyone around her regardless of cost but at the same time, she shows remarkable fragility and is very obviously damaged goods. Max Thieriot and Mike Vogel are also very good here, as is Nestor Carbonell in their supporting roles. Olivia Cooke is also excellent and winds up being the one and only truly sympathetic character that gets a whole lot of screen time.
By the time the final season of the episode finishes up, you're left wanting more. The series does a good job of filling in some of the blanks in Norman's past, and while it's obviously not a direct prequel (it can't be based solely on the fat that it is set in the modern day), it does a great job of dropping little hints and nicely setting up just what Norman will become as he gets older.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Each episode in this set is presented in 1080p AVC encoded 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen. Generally the episodes all look very nice here with some very lifelike color reproduction throughout. Skin tones look lifelike and natural and detail is very strong even if some scenes do exhibit some general softness to them periodically. There aren't any problems with edge enhancement or mpeg compression artifacts and the image stays clean and clear throughout. Some of the darker scenes in the house don't look quite as good as those shot outdoors but they still look quite good. Really, the material does transfer very nicely to the Blu-ray format and fans should be pretty pleased with how the transfers have shaped up on this release.
The best only audio option in this collection is an English language DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio mix that sounds pretty good. The rears come to life nicely during the more intense scenes while most of the more dialogue heavy bits come at you from the front of the mix, as you'd expect. Dialogue stays clean and clear and there are no problems with hiss or distortion at all. Optional subtitles are available in English SHD only.
Extras on the first disc are slim, limited to a few marginally interesting deleted scenes. On the second disc, however, there's a forty-five minute long Paley Center Panel Discussion with the cast and crew behind the show that's actually quite interesting. Included, for now (apparently this is limited), inside the Blu-ray case are some collectible sketches from Jiao's Notebook. These are kind of neat to have. A download code for digital copies of the episodes that make up the first season is also included. The case comes housed in a slipcover.
The Final Word:
This turned out to be a surprisingly fun show. Yes, it borders on the absurd but it features some impressive performances from the principal cast members and some great plot twists too. It might pile it all on pretty thick and occasionally go into weird for the sake of weird but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Universal's Blu-ray set is surprisingly light on extras but the audio and video quality is strong across the board. If you're a fan of the series, don't hesitate to pick this up and if you haven't given the series a shot yet, don't miss out. The Bates Motel is great entertainment.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
