Bates Motel

Bates Motel

Did you watch Bates Motel on A&E?  It's a prequel to Hitchcock's masterpiece movie, Psycho.

The premiere episode of Bates Motel last night was cinematically brilliant.  I don't know enough about the visual arts to know who's responsible--the writer, the director, the producer--but he or she is a genius!  The show is set in current time, yet it's a prequel to a movie that's more than 50 years old.  How is that going to work, exactly?

The answer is working brilliantly!

I don't think you would notice how it works if you weren't paying attention. 

I also read books, novels, while paying attention to the mechanics of the story.  So I was paying attention.

Norman and his mother, Norma (I don't think we knew her name in the movie, did we?) Bates move from Arizona to start over.  The location isn't specific, but I assume the road trip is on the Pacific Coast Highway.  Mrs. Bates bought the property that is so familiar to us who've seen the movie.  We find out that the house at the top of the hill was built in 1912 (and apparently not much updated since then) and the motel was built in the '50s.  (Duh, obviously.)  The previous owner of the bank-foreclosed property comes back to make threats.  The pretty girls of the high school flirt with Norman, and they all text each other on their smart phones and one of the girls drives everyone in her new Mercedes convertible.  All very present day.

The show feels very modern yet very retro.  Retro yet current.  How is that possible?  Like I said, brilliant!  The old house, obviously, feels old.  Norman does his homework while listening to vinyl on a huge '60s console stereo.  The lighting of many of the scenes seem slightly tinted.  Not sepia but maybe a hint of yellow, just enough to suggest age.  Norma and the school teacher wear clothes that are not vintage, but hint at a retro style.  Norman wears a crew-neck sweater.  Isn't that what he wears in the movie?  Nothing overt, but your subconscious picks up the retro feel, and translates it in the same way that your brain translates to vertical what your eyes see if you are lying horizontal on the couch watching television.  It makes more sense by using the familiar (smart phones, calling 911, the economy) than if "they" (director, writer, producer??) had tried to keep the prequel time-accurate to the 1960 movie.

There are subtle references to the familiar movie, too.  Remember why Janet Leigh finds the Bates Motel so deserted?  Bypass--no one comes by anymore.  In this episode, there is notice for a town meeting to discuss building a bypass.  And we didn't know before that there's an older brother, Dillon.  We don't know exactly what happened to Mr. Bates.  I bet we find out.  I can't wait to see how Norman discovers taxidermy.

The story line for the next seventeen episodes has potential to turn violent and silly.  I hope not.  I hope it spans all the years between now and the movie.  I'll be watching.

But I'll still be watching for the way the old morphs with the new to give this series its current retro, vintage contemporary mood.

I'm hooked.