In the Bates Motel recap for the season 4 finale, Norman deals with the fall out of his mother’s death as Alex does everything in his power to prove he was the one who murdered her…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
Anybody who has ever seen the movie Psycho that started watching Bates Motel knew that Norma Bates wasn’t going to make it out alive. The entire premise of the classic Robert Bloch story was Norman Bates was a man who went mad and imagined speaking to his mother for years after she was already dead.
Still as last week’s episode came to an end, it was difficult to see Norma Bates so vibrant all season long, snuffed out by poisonous gas courtesy of her son’s murder-suicide pact with himself. His rationale was that the only way to ensure that the two of them would remain with each other together forever would be to die in the same place where they lived.
His plan nearly worked — but Norman didn’t account for the deep love and affection Alex Romero gained for Norma over these past couple of seasons and he knew leaving her along with a psychotic son wouldn’t end well.
Sadly, Alex reacted but it was just too late to save Norma but he still managed to save Norman, much to his chagrin.
Now Norma is dead, Norman is slipping further and further into his own fractured mind and Alex Romero is left to pick up the pieces.
With that said, let’s recap the Bates Motel season 4 finale titled “Norman”…
He Did It
The episode picks up just moments after last week’s ended with Alex shattered into a million pieces after the love of his life was just carted out on a gurney following her own asphyxiation from carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty furnace in the basement. As Norman gets wheeled out of the house, barely conscious but still very much alive, he looks back at his stepfather with such utter contempt while still somehow justified in his actions.
As Norman fades in and out of consciousness, he flashes back to years ago when his mother was there beside him and promised that she would never leave him. By killing his mother, Norman has just ensured that will never happen.
If Norman can’t be with Norma, no one can.
The police are forced to question Alex about what happened and they show him the note that Norma left behind — it reads like a suicide note as she mentions how she’ll always love him no matter what even if they can’t be together. Tucked inside the envelope is the wedding ring he gave her just a couple of weeks ago.
Of course, Alex doesn’t buy that Norma committed suicide and decided to take her son with her. In fact, he believes exactly the opposite and tells the police that they should be looking into Norman Bates for this murder.
At the hospital, Norman checks out with a clean bill of health but it’s clear the doctors aren’t getting through to him when they explain that his mother is gone. He gets up from the bed and proceeds to leave for home when Norman is intercepted by Alex, who intends to “care” for his stepson on the way out of the hospital.
Norman is filled with rage, but not nearly as much as what’s simmering inside Alex right now as he stands just inches away from the man he knows killed his wife.
Finally, Alex snaps and tosses Norman against a wall — there’s no more handling this fragile psycho with kid gloves. That’s what his mother did for years and Norman only got sicker. Alex declares that Norman is guilty of matricide and he’s going to do everything in his power to prove it.
Home Alone
When Norman returns back to his house, he finds it completely empty.
He’s forced to sit alone while he eats, while he walks through the house and through every nook and cranny inside. Norman was convinced that when he returned home, his mother would be there to greet him.
Norman does everything he can think to bring her back — which includes flushing all the anti-psychotic medication that was given to him to stop the hallucinations that produced a split personality in the first place where his “mother” persona first emerged. Still even with the pills gone and the house empty, Norman can’t find a way to bring his mother back.
Norman is forced to make funeral arrangements for his mother, all while still assuming that she’ll be returning to him at any time. Alex refuses to participate in a funeral put on by his wife’s murderer so he shares a quiet moment with Norma in the morgue where he returns the wedding ring to its rightful place.
Of course, when Norman sees his mother downstairs at the funeral home, he’s hoping she’ll get up from the table to hug him and say everything is going to be all right. Instead he just spots the wedding ring that symbolized the split he suffered with his mother right before her death. Norman removes the wedding ring before returning home where he attempts to wash the house clean of any remnants of Norma’s marriage to Alex.
The biggest part of that cleansing process is getting rid of the monstrosity of a TV that Alex bought Norma while Norman was still suffering away at the Pineview Institute. Norman smashes the TV but his rage is witnessed by a police officer who came to investigate his mother’s death.
Norman tries to explain away why he was stomping a TV in the middle of a staircase outside his home before then turning the tables on his stepfather and blaming him for the mental state that left his mother fragile enough to consider suicide. One of the scariest things about Norman over the past four seasons has been his innate ability to convince anyone and everyone around him that he’s fine and he’s doing nothing wrong.
Unfortunately the cop in this case looks suspicious.
Meanwhile, Alex tries to gain his own evidence against Norman when he visits the repairman who fixed the furnace in her house after the heat went out. Alex’s blinding rage isn’t without purpose because he discovers that when the repairman told Norma about how dangerous this furnace could be if it was turned on, Norman was close by and could have heard every word that was uttered.
Now Alex is more convinced than ever before that Norman killed his mother and he’s going to pay.
Return to Me
Norman is not only in full denial about his mother’s death, but he’s not even willing to tell the people closest to her that she’s gone. Even when his brother Dylan calls from Seattle, expressing remorse about how things ended between him and his mother, Norman just pretends like nothing is wrong. Dylan hangs up the phone still not knowing that his mother is dead.
At the funeral, Norman sits by himself and even gives Norma a eulogy to an empty room. Throughout his speech, Norman talks about how much he loved his mother and how much she loved him back, but he also slips into bouts of rage while lashing out with angry guttural screams about how she left him alone now.
In the end, Norman finishes his speech just as Alex shows up to greet him. Norman throws the ring back at Alex and says that it has no place on his mother’s finger and his stepfather finally loses it. Alex punches Norman repeatedly after snatching back the ring. It’s utterly frustrating for Alex that he knows Norman killed her yet he still can’t prove a thing.
Back at the house, Norman is still soaking in misery that his mother hasn’t returned so he does the next logical thing — he goes to the graveyard and digs up her body.
Norman returns home with Norma’s body and even super glues her eyes open so she’s forced to look at him. Norman can’t accept that his mother is really gone. Even when he gets a visit from Chick Hogan, who comes by with a casserole while paying his respects, Norman can’t fathom that his mother is dead. Chick tries as best he can to explain that no matter how much he misses her that she’s gone, but Norman won’t accept it.
Alex decides that working inside the law won’t get Norman so he decides to take matters into his own hands after getting a gun from work and trotting back out to head back to Bates Motel. Unfortunately for Alex, the DEA is outside waiting on him. It seems he’s being picked up for perjury after lying and saying that he didn’t have a personal relationship with Rebecca.
Now Alex has to fight off these charges while still contemplating all the ways he wants Norman to pay for what he did to his mother.
And back at the house, Norman is finally reaching the breaking point (as if he hasn’t already careened off that cliff by now). He’s begged and pleaded and cried while trying to revive his mother, but she’s not coming back to him.
So Norman goes back to plan ‘A’ — if Norma wont’t rejoin him in life, then he’ll have to rejoin her in death.
Norman gets the gun from his mother’s bedroom and he’s ready to pull the trigger, when he hears piano music coming from downstairs. Norman rushes back to the living room, which is lit up as bright as the sun with Christmas decorations all around and sitting at the piano is Norma — alive and well in her son’s head.
She’s playing “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” while once again promising Norman that she would never leave him no matter what. She’ll be there forever. And they’ll be there together.
As the camera pulls away from Norma and Norman sitting on the piano bench together, a flickering sign of Bates Motel burns into the night sky. Norman has his mother back and now he has her all to himself — just like he always wanted.
Bates Motel will return with the fifth and final season in 2017!
