Bates Motel Season 3

DVD Wholesale Quick Overview:

The season has gotten off to an excellent start. Absolutely love the acting by Vera and Freddie. They truly transcend the tv show. The looks on Norma’s face while she contemplates just what might be going on with Norman are priceless. Her increasing agitation and desperate actions are believable and fun to watch. Not real happy with the other son’s story line and would like to see more of him in another setting or with a more developed and interesting plot. I thought last year I wouldn’t be able to continue watching as Norman’s incestuous thoughts are so disturbing, but it is such compelling writing, acting, and direction that I don’t want to miss an episode.

-Kathryn Ingram

As you can tell if you’ve seen my reviews of Seasons 1 and 2, I LOVE this series! lol Retrospectively, I think I said that I thought Season 2 was even better than Season 1. In some ways, that’s true, in others not. The one area that I would say Season 1 did better than Season 2 is the drug trade subplot. However, what Season 2 did that was more important is delve deeper into the twisted Bates’ extended family relationships, including pushing the envelope on the symbiotic Norma-Norman mother-son bond and diving into the truth about Norma’s sexual abuse by her older brother Caleb and how it affects Dylan. SEASON 3 upped the ante! Focusing a lot less on the subplots of Seasons 1 and 2 (drug and sex trade, town politics and shady dealings), Season 3 introduces a subplot, the Arcanium Club, that deftly ties back into the genesis of the Bates’ clan arrival in White Pine Bay, Oregon back in Season 1.

The Season 3 opener introduces a new character to the Bates Motel, the mysterious guest Annika Johnson (well played by Tracy Spiridakos), a seductive young call girl who checks into the motel who Norman (brilliantly essayed by Freddie Highmore) immediately is attracted to and Norma (the great Vera Farmiga) develops feelings of jealousy towards. Norman and Annika hit it off immediately, but Annika disappears by episode’s end. A worried Norma, hoping that Norman is not involved with the lady’s disappearance and possible murder, finds a card for the Arcanium Club, which she investigates and finds is a high class prostitution ring run by the mercurial Bob Paris (superbly played by Kevin Rahm, my favorite villainous portrayal of the entire series). Paris is no-nonsense and doesn’t hide his evil nature. It turns out that Paris was a childhood friend of Sheriff Romero (superbly performed by Nestor Carbonell in a real breakout season for him) and Paris is one of the major town players that Romero offers protection to. A few episodes into the season, Norma finds out Annika’s fate and then a season-long cat-and-mouse game ensues between Norma and Paris, with Romero caught in the middle. The real treat in all of this are the developing strong, passionate feelings between Norma and Romero that comes to the surface and plays out during the season. Romero realizes that he and Norma are not so different and Norma cracks his steely exterior. Farmiga and Carbonell play out the incredibly awkward, endearing chemistry superbly.

Meanwhile, Dylan (excellently played by the reliable Max Thierot) finally free of the drug traffiicking war fought in the first 2 seasons, branches out on his own to start a legitimate business. Complicating things are the return of Caleb (strong turn by Kenny Johnson, who returns as a regular for Season 3), Dylan’s father and Norma’s brother. Dylan tries to hide Caleb’s return from Norma, and allows Caleb to be his business partner. Also, Dylan and Emma (played by the effervescent Olivia Cooke) bond during the course of the season.

Another subplot involves Norma enrolling at the local community college to earn her business degree and connects with her psychology professor James Finnigan (reliably played by Joshua Leonard). Norma feels normal around James and eventually confides in him on Norman’s growing psychosis and involvement in his father’s death. Norma gets James to try to shrink Norman, but it goes horribly wrong and she soon realizes that Norman needs true professional help, but it may be too late!

It’s really becoming almost criminal that Vera Farmiga continues to get overlooked for awards for her amazing work as Norma Bates. In my opinion, she is before my eyes creating one of the most fascinating, deep, provocative characters I’ve seen on a TV in an eternity! I mean, there are a lot of shows I like (some even love), but almost NONE of them boasts a performance as incredible as Miss Farmiga’s on this show! She actually got nominated for an Emmy for her work in Season 1, has gotten even better in Seasons 2 and 3, so where are her nods for these later seasons, Academy?!

The overall highlight of Season 3, in all of this, is Norman Bates’ further descent into madness. Essayed by the brilliant Freddie Highmore, this actor has got me firmly convinced that he will eventually become the legendary psychotic killer who is charming on the surface, but lethal underneath! In truth, this series at it’s core is what it should be, showing us HOW Norman Bates came to be what he is in the classic 1960 film. The getting there might take liberties, but at it’s core, this series continues to impress with it’s perfect casting, strong acting, great writing, and creepy atmosphere. Keep the ball rolling, Bates Motel!

-BackToGood

Season three and four of Bates Motel is the point of the show where things begin to get interesting and go down hill.
Its always nice to see familiar faces making cameos on the newer shows, but for some reason, Bates Motel doesn’t do that. Other than that, the show is almost flawless. The writers are really stretching things by not completely following what the background from the original Psycho movie.
My advice for the viewer is to watch season three and four back to back. I don’t watch TV all that much, and what I watch is usually on disc. I never got into the whole ‘download’ thing. What happened with Bates Motel was I put off getting season three for a good five to six months, and by the time I got to it, season four was out on release.
The acting is good, but I really do pity Norma and Norman. For what the show is supposed to do, its almost heartbreaking to see the way they converse with each other. It’s a little funny at times seeing Norma react to different things that come up, but I hope that most viewers who watch this show can see, there really is hope in a broken down world.

– Jeffrey Elya

DVD Wholesale Main Features :   

Actors: Vera Farmiga, Freddie Highmore
Format: Multiple Formats, Box set, Color, NTSC
Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), Portuguese (Dolby Digital 5.1), Spanish (Dolby Digital 5.1)
Subtitles: Portuguese, Spanish
Subtitles for the Hearing Impaired: English
Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only.)
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Number of discs: 3
Rated: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Universal Studios
DVD Release Date: October 13, 2015
Run Time: 429 minutes