When considering a stay at the “Bates Motel,” it’s probably worth remembering that couple who were looking for a quiet night at the start of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” Judging by its Gothic ambiance and mentally unstable management, teased in a new 6-minute clip from the upcoming A&E drama, the place is just ripe for this brand of freakish escalation.
We land, in the first minute of the opening clip, in Bates central, with an intimate but sinister exchange between the same mother and son who gave hilltop hotels a bad name in 1960’s claustrophobic “Psycho.” Mrs. Bates, who in 2013 is alive and relatively well in comparison to her Hitchcockian counterpart, upon hearing the screams of her son, Norman (a deftly-Americanised Freddie Highmore) is creepily unmoved to find him clutching the body of his father. With the Norma-Norman dynamic logged safely in the viewer’s mind under “unusual: further episodes required,” the pair proceed to uproot in search of a clean break. With this in mind, their destination of the deserted and mouldering Bates Motel probably wasn’t the best call.
“Bates Motel,” which casts Vera Farmiga, Max Thieriot, Olivia Cooke, Nestor Carbonell and Mike Vogel as its residents, will be opening its doors for a ten-episode first season on March 18th on A&E. [STYD]
