'Bates Motel'

A&E is known for showing murder on television and airing reality crime programs like “Cold Case Files” and “American Justice” to exhaustion. But now they’re going fictional with the debut of the Chloe Sevigny vehicle “Those Who Kill” and the season two premiere of “Bates Motel.”

As anyone with a passing knowledge of horror cinema could decode from the title, “Bates Motel” is an extension of the story made famous by director Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 classic “Psycho.”

But instead of adult Norman Bates killing pretty women and parading under the psychosis of his dead mother, the TV series created by Carlton Cuse and Kerry Ehrin acts as a prequel set in the 21st century, in which Norman (Freddie Highmore) is a teenager and his mother, Norma (Vera Farmiga), is alive and well.

Well ... maybe not so well. But at least she’s still alive.

The second season opens right where the first left off — with Norman’s high school teacher, Miss Watson, dead and Norman’s culpability in the matter likely but not confirmed.

We then flash forward four months where Norman is still reeling about the loss of his teacher, and Norma has adopted a blonder look, more likely to evoke the idea of “housewife” rather than “mother of a psychotic killer.”

Things seem to be going well for the Bates. Their motel business is soaring, and
Norman hasn’t seemed to kill anyone recently.

But a highway cutting off the main roads from the Bates Motel and bringing in bigger, commercial business threatens to thwart Norma’s success.

This subplot gives Vera Farmiga, who received an Emmy nomination last year for the first season of “Bates Motel,” a salacious and powerful monologue in front of the town’s city council. Farmiga is full of spit and fire, coming undone at the drop of a pin and launching into a tirade you both fear and admire.

Equally as compelling is poor Norman, whose fixation with taxidermy only seems to be on the rise. “You’re taking apart a woodchuck. I don’t know how long that’s supposed to take,” Norma quips early on in the episode.

Though the show is rooted in mystery and bloodshed, “Bates Motel” doesn’t take itself so seriously that it can’t laugh at itself and its history every once and a while.
There exists a “Twin Peaks” element to it all. It’s a high wire act of self-aware drama that would easily topple if Farmiga and Freddie Highmore, who plays Norman with an awkward menace, weren’t so fantastic.

The show runners would do well to nip and tuck some of the extraneous storylines and keep the focus on Norma and Norman. They’re the main draw.

And even though we all know how this story ends, it’s impossible not to be excited to get there.