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selenakRewatching the first half of s1 in the light of current events is fascinating. It also made me want to committ meta, spoilery for both seasons as broadcast so far.
Aesthetics: it's very noticable that the show deliberately avoids bad weather clichés. From the moment Norma and Norman drive towards White Pine Bay, you have a lot of sunshine. Even the woods aren't ominously dark, they're of a bright green, corresponding, of course, to the weed that turns out to be White Pine Bay's major source of income. The sinister undertone is achieved first by the audience advance knowledge of who these particular people, mother and son, are, and then by the juxtaposition of that picturesque scenery with its bizarre goings on, not limited to the Bates family. I had forgotten quite how gruesome the fate of Bradley's father in the second episode is, and it's a scene in bright daylight as well, going from Norman, Bradley and classmates waiting to go to school to the sight of a car apparantly driven by a drunk to the reveal that the man behind wheel is actually a man burned alive. The fact that no one in White Pine Bay - except for Bradley - treats this as particular unusual - tells you something about what type of town it is.
Norma, Norman and Dylan are all dressed very pointedly to evoke movie associations (beyond the obvious one). Norma has clothes that vaguely evoke the late 50s, early 60s, without being exact period replications. She's in dresses when she's happy or when she goes out to achieve something; after she got raped in the pilot, she switches to trousers (apart from going out with Deputy Shelby) for several episodes to come when in her home until after Shelby's dead. (She does wear a dress during the big mid-season reveal episode at home, but then again she did dress up to go out.) Her dresses are in bright colours or white, her trousers uniformly dark. Norman wears also vaguely 50s associating clothes - the sweaters, the trousers - which is especially noticable because we see him with a lot of teenagers, all of whom are of course wearing contemporay clothing, and mostly wears dark colours, with the very rare blue or red shirt. Dylan wears leather, which isn't as contemporary as it sounds; all in all, he's very much dressed as Marlon Brando in The Wild One, with a touch of James Dean, and of course 50s rebel is part of his persona. Considering their story is pretty much a professional AU that transplants characters from the 50s into a contemporary world, this is very fitting.
Exposition and information: the pilot introduces everyone who is going to be important for the season - not just Norma and Norman, but also Emma, Bradley, Alex Romero, Shelby, Miss Watson and not in person but via a phone call Dylan, more about that in a moment - and even one of Norma's ongoing central problems for the show, the fact she got suckered into buying the motel which the impending bypass threatens to make redundant - and does so in a way that doesn't feel overwhelming but conveys a lot of information. There are two deaths - the death of Norman's father in the teaser, which is a half-season mystery, and the death of Keith Summers mid-pilot, which is clear as day in how and why it happens but still manages to look somewhat differently when revisited. First of all, it struck me that when Keith Summers originally shows up to threaten Norma and her son, he responds to Norma's "I'll call the police" with retorting he's buddies with half of them and they'll be on his side. Which isn't the only reason why Norma later doesn't call the cops, or even the major one, but it feeds into that decision. As it turns out, Summers wasn't lying, but Norma is making a fatally wrong assumption as to which cop was his ally. When grim Sheriff Romero and nice, smiling Deputy Shelby show up at her doorstep, Norma picks Romero as the threat and Shelby as a potential ally, and when Shelby later tells her Romero was Keith Summers' best friend, this judgment is seemingly confirmed. Of course, as it turns out it was Shelby who was buddies with Keith Summers and in business with him; choosing the wrong person to trust and distrust, though, is an ongoing theme on this show and not limited to Norma. Dylan and the audience are also cases in point. From the opening scene onwards, where Norma reacts oddly to Norman's discovery of his father's body, the audience is primed to distrust her and assume she is responsible. She is, after all, Norma Bates, she is "Mother" and thus the source of all evil and crazy in her son. And later, we do see her kill someone with the iconic knife (at hand because she and the man are in a kitchen). It's the man who brutally raped her just before, yes, but the show deliberately let her not knife Keith Summers until Norman knocked him down and she put the handcuffs he previously used on her on him. (BTW, the fact Keith Summers has police handcuffs and indeed a police belt at his disposal is a signal to both Norma and the audience he didn't lie about his cop connections.) And she doesn't just stab him once, but multiple times. Clearly, a murderess waiting to happen/has happened already.
Rewind, repeat: the moment when Norma loses it and goes from defending herself with the knife to attacking and stabbing multiple times. It comes when Keith Summers taunts her, grinning: "You liked it." (Cue some fantastic facial acting on Vera Farmiga's part.) The rape itself was bad enough (and filmed in a way that leaves no doubt about that), but being told by the perpetrator "you liked it" is the trigger of all triggers. Which is understandable without additional information, but once you watch it with Norma's backstory in mind - being raped by her brother for years, and her brother insisting that hey, it wasn't rape -... no wonder that this is what drives her kill. (BTW, this also is worth bearing in mind when in s2 Norman, who witnessed most of the Keith Summers incident (though significantly not the taunt) for the first time becomes Norma and goes to her brother. Of course he brings that particular knife along.) And that's one reason why Dylan's "this is your mess" and "that's not what he (Caleb) said" in s2 were so upsetting to me. I couldn't help but wonder whether Norma heard as another version of that "you liked it".
Something else that struck me upon rewatching was that for all that Dylan gets referred to as "the normal one" in the family by fans and occasionally some of the production crew, he and Norma actually aren't dissimilar in their level of normalcy or craziness. Because Dylan in some ways speaks for the audience, says what the audience knows to be right, when commenting on the Norma and Norman relationship - Norma is smothering, Norman should get some distance from her - there seems to be a tendency to assume he's right in general on all things Norma. This despite the fact that not only is he himself far too emotionally invested to be a balanced judge (that of course is true for all three family members re: how they see each other), but the narrative actually points out he's wrong in one of his key assumptions at the half point of s1 already. Dylan spends the first half of the season thinking Norma killed her husband for the insurance money. He also calls her crazy (mostly when talking to Norman, but also once or twice when talking to her) at least once per episode, once even "crazy and dangerous", and "addicted to drama". The irony is that Norma, while definitely in need of therapy as much as her sons and hardly a balanced person, is no more or less crazy than Dylan himself is and definitely no more "addicted to drama". That the audience, going by what I've seen, tends to regard Norma as crazy and Dylan as normal (albeit currently shocked and traumatized) says something, imo, about gender coded behaviour.
Take the violence question: during that first half of season one, we see Norma kill another human being after the man assaulted her (i.e. at its most basic, a revenge killing after a horrible experience). We also see Dylan kill another human being after the man shot his colleague/friend, Ethan, right in front of him. In both cases, there was some very brief but siginificant temporal distance between the trauma and the lethal response. (Dylan spots the killer after having tried in vain to save Ethan, drives the man into an alley and runs him over with Ethans truck.) Both the men whom Norma and Dylan killed were lethally dangerous but not armed any longer at the moment where they killed them. Both Norma and Dylan afterwards cover up what they did. Norma's feverish "we came here to start over and by God, I'm starting over!" , her frantic cleaning of the house and drowning Keith Summers' body has its equivalent in Dylan torching the bloody truck he used to run Ethan's killer over. Yet Norma's response is seen as irrational and a sign of her "craziness" whereas Dylan's is not, and I think it's because much of the audience is primed to see male revenge violence as normal, part of the code, so to speak, and a man covering up said death as the rational, sensible thing to do, whereas a woman doing it is acting irrationally, madly. (BTW for what it's worth I think both Norma and Dylan acted emotionally and had reason to assume this was best.)
As for "addicted to the drama": we get our first impression of Dylan-Norma interactions in the pilot via the phonecall Dylan makes. He opens with demanding to know why she left state and moved without telling him.
Norma: "Well, the last thing you said to me was, and I quote, 'Drop dead, bitch.' Forgive me for taking it personally."
Dylan: "What if I had an accident? Or were sick and in hospital? What if I needed you?
Norma: "Did you have an accident? Are you in hospital?" (Note the omission of the third reason here.)
Dylan: "I need money."
Norma: *hangs up*
Dylan then shows up at Norma's doorstep in episode 2 because "that's what normal people do, Norma, when they have no where else to go. They come home". (There is an ironic counterpoint here; a few episodes later Dylan will tell Norman again and again that the normal thing that people do is to leave home. Not that both aren't true.) As we'll find out in a conversation Dylan has with Ethan later, he does have an alternative: when Ethan asks him about his family, Dylan mentions his father (meaning, of course, his legal father, Mr. Masset) being alive, but "I don't talk with him anymore". (BTW, I had forgotten that detail until I rewatched.) Considering he also has no problem finding a job in White Pine Bay, I find it hard to believe he couldn't have done elsewhere. Thus, a good argument can be made that he shows up at his mother's and brother's because he wants to be with them, but that relationships have become so toxic that he can't admit that. Well, the mother part anyway. (He improves relations with Norman pretty quickly.) For the first six episodes, your typical Norma and Dylan scene proceeds thusly:
Norma: *is distant*
Dylan: * is relentlessly insulting, with a disquieting sexual undertone*
Norma: *either exits or responds increasingly angrily*
But on no occasion is the "drama" initialized by Norma. It's Dylan who pursues, openly attackes and provokes until he gets responses from her, and most definitely is addicted to enacting this particular brand of drama with her again and again. My own theory is that he does it because negative attention is still attention, and this is one surefire way he can her to focus on him. His attacks have three main subjects: a) her relationship with Norman, b) general accusation that she's crazy, and c) her sexuality. The last makes for the above mentioned disturbing undertone:
"You skanked about with Sam Bates and left my father."
"How are the sheets working out for you, Norma?" (After the revelation he was waiting outside the motel room where she just had sex with Deputy Shelby.)
"The Whore" as his name for Norma on his mobile, which causes Norman to attack him.
"Put that lipstick off your mouth, Norma."
Their big argument in episode 4 manages to combine all three factors, coming after Norman has confided into Dylan about the truth re: Keith Summers' death. Dylan opens fire by telling Norma Norman is away having sex with Bradley, makes clear Norman told him some dark stuff (though I don't think Norma realizes exactly what until the next episode when both brothers visit her in jail) about her, repeats she's crazy and expresses the hope "they" will take Norman away from her. At this point, Norma who until then has kept her physical distance from Dylan as well throughout the season, as opposed to her repeated hugging and general standing close of Norman, comes closer when saying "Nobody is taking Norman away from me". Dylan taunts: "That girl is right now!" Norma slaps him; Dylan takes her arm, turns her around and presses her against the wall. Allow me to illustrate with gifs taken from here (all credit to the tumblr in question):
Until s2 and the Caleb revelations, this is arguably the darkest Norma and Dylan scene, a disturbing and fascinating mixture of emotional violence and neediness. The positive counterpoint to that scene, btw, comes two episodes later, when after Dylan emerges from the Bates house alive after his shootout with Shelby Norma runs towards him and hugs him fiercely (the first time she does on the show) and after a while he relaxes into her embrace. In both cases, it's clear that mother and son rarely touch, and like I said earlier, I think that's one reason for Dylan's constant insults in the first half of the season - he gets her to respond to him that way, with the curse of it being that this method increases the dysfunction and alienation between them. (You'd have to be a saintly masochist, which Norma decidedly is not, to respond with understanding and forgiveness to being called a crazy slut all the time.) Not to mention the mutual distrust and mutal assumption of the worst about each other: Dylan thinks that Norma killed her husband for the insurance money, Norma thinks he wants to turn Norman against her to hurt her. Neither of them is completely deluded - Norma does cover up something about the death of her husband (just not what Dylan thinks, and for the opposite reason), and while I think Dylan is mostly motivated by a sincere desire to help his brother and have a positive relationship with him in his she's-crazy-get-a-way-from-her campaign, using Norman as a weapon against Norma is also a factor.
There are hints as to the root of why Norma's relationship with her older son is so different from the one with her younger son before the s1 finale. In the pilot, she says that Norman is her "second chance" and that she wanted to do everything right this time, which of course implies something about who the first chance must have been. After the rape and the killing of Keith Summers, she refuses to talk about it after her "and by God, I'm starting over!" declaration, until in episode 4, when she and Norman end up in front of a locked waste disposal in the middle of the night because it holds incriminating evidence they can't reach, and Norma has her second (after the Keith Summers scene) big freakout with a belated "why did this happen". One of the things she yells when Norman is trying to calm her down is "you don't understand, all my life has been like this" before she catches herself. (BTW, speaking of Norma's life, we get a time line with everyone's ages: Norman as of the start of the show is 17, Dylan is 21, and Norma was 17 when marrying for the first time - which as of s2 also means when Dylan was born - which means Norma as of the beginning of the show is 38. Going by Dylan's comments about the late Sam Bates and also one exchange between Norma and Norman about him, and of course the flashback in episode 1.6., that marriage was abusive. Her first marriage might not have been, but can't have lasted long since Norman and Dylan are only five years apart in age, plus the fact that Dylan is on non-speaking terms with the man he believes to be his father doesn't exactly augur well for the later's nature. (Then again: if Dylan talks to him like he does to Norma early on, Masset Sr. might have cut contact to preserve his sanity.) As we later find out (and it's one of the few things both Norma and Caleb's version of their backstory agree on), Norma's father hit his children and her mother was drugged and spaced out into being not there (which perhaps is why we never see Norma consider psychopharmaka for either Norman or herself), and her brother raped her. Which means she literally did not have a functional, non-abusive relationship in her entire life. That her relationships with her own children are in different ways spectacularly dysfunctional isn't that surprising (one of the things the show does is illustrate damaged people damaging each other), though it's also true that neither relationship is relentlessly dark. Norma and Norman do have a rapport beyond dysfunctionality (the shared fondness for old movies and the quick banter when they're in a good mood), Dylan and Norma, after coming to a truce achieved by him fighting Shelby and her finally entrusting him with the truth about Norman and Sam Bates' death, can have a cautious hopeful tenderness that's quite heartbreaking to watch (as when he's teaching her to shoot). And one of the biggest changes from Psycho also makes the whole thing so damm tragic: what triggers Norman into blackouts and psychotic episodes so far isn't repressed sexuality (though that comes into it in one case, his blackout at Miss Watson's), it's the desire to protect his mother. (He blacks out and kills his father after Sam Bates has started to hit Norma; he starts his fight with Dylan still conscious over "The Whore" on Dylan's mobile phone but then blacks out for the second round when he attacks Dylan with a meat tenderizer, something he later can't remember; and he literally becomes Norma in order to confront her brother.) And what causes Norma to keep the blackouts a secret even from Norman himself is the desire to protect her son. Which is exactly the wrong thing to do, of course, but with her psychological make-up and background, it's hard so see her able to reach out and trust.
All of which isn't to say that Norma is acting all selflessly here re: Norman. There is a reason why Dylan's accusations re: her smotheringness hit home. I'm pretty sure even if Sam Bates had died of a heart attack Norma waould still have been distrustful and hostile towards first Bradley and then Cody. And her hostile, passive aggressive reaction towards Norman trying out for the track team (whatever that is - I'm German, I don't know, but I gather from the context it's a high school sports team) is classic possessiveness. (Which Norman mirrors back at her when Norma starts to date Shelby, long before he has reason to distrust Shelby; Norman has a desire for independence from his mother, but he also has a simultanous desire to be the only man in her life, and it's really striking how their reactions are pretty much identical - Norma's "I waited hours for you" etc. when Norman comes home late after trying out for the team, Norman's "I worried about you for hours" after Norma returns from Shelby, Norma's "fine!" *signs the permission letter* "enjoy your food, I'm not in the mood", Norman's "Oh, Mr. Wonderful saves the day again, just don't expect me to congratulate" (after Norma told him that Shelby has destroyed the evidence against her), and so on. The one exception to Norma's possessiveness re: her son is Emma. Rewatching their first encounter, I'm not quite sure whether Norma intuits that early that Norman isn't sexually interested in Emma (despite Dylan later taunting her "do you think she takes that thing out of her nose when they make out?") or whether it's Emma's illness that makes for the difference, but the difference - and the Emma encounter comes an episode after the Bradley encounter - is startling. Norma is inquisitive and not tactful at all - she asks what C.F. stands for, and what Emma's life expectancy is - but she's not hostile, and maybe the fact she asks straightforwardly instead of pretending not to be curious is what makes Emma, in turn, become the only character in s1 who takes to Norma in a non-sexual way instead of regarding her as odd or crazy.
It's also not that Emma only sees Norma at her best. She's a front row witness to Norma losing after in spectacular Norma fashion after finding out the truth about Shelby (btw, Norma's yelling "he can't get away with it! They're always getting away with it" is another of those moments that takes on additional meaning after knowing about her background). So, at the very least Emma is aware Norma has a spectacular temper. Something I had forgotten before rewatching is that Emma's own mother isn't dead but wasn't up to coping with a terminally ill daughter and thus left, and Emma hasn't seen her for ten years; it makes Emma regarding Norma's close relationship to Norman not as dysfunctional but as enviable understandable. Ditto for her receptiveness to Norma being kind to her. Norma's first overture of friendliness is somewhat manipulative (as it comes after Norma has calmed down from her initial shock and realized they need to get the belt incriminating her and Norman from Shelby before denouncing him to the authorities, and thus they need to keep Emma from insisting on telling the truth all at once), but once Shelby isn't a factor anymore, the friendliness towards Emma continues (quite independent from anything related to Norman, as in the aftermath of Emma having accidentally eaten the weed cupcake). By the time we're in s2, there is a kindness between them that's quite touching (Norma's response when Emma asks her about first time sex being a case in point - the audience was aware what she was remembering, but Norma managed still to not let Emma know and not to spoil the moment for Emma but be there for her in the capacity Emma needed, as a reassuring presence). Something else I had forgotten was that in 1.06 we get a line where the irony is thicker and heavier than usual when Emma, re: Norma and Shelby, says, looking directly at Norman Bates: "What must it feel like, to realize the guy you've been so into turns out to be a complete monster?"
Of course, we have no idea whether Emma will live long enough to find out - her life expectancy is 27, which assuming Norman in Psycho is in his mid 20s means she just might, provided nothing else happens to her. But then, part of the show's point is that Norman - and his mother - aren't "monsters". They're locked in a cycle that will lead to her death, and his becoming the death of others as well. But they try so hard not to be, and that makes the show.
Aesthetics: it's very noticable that the show deliberately avoids bad weather clichés. From the moment Norma and Norman drive towards White Pine Bay, you have a lot of sunshine. Even the woods aren't ominously dark, they're of a bright green, corresponding, of course, to the weed that turns out to be White Pine Bay's major source of income. The sinister undertone is achieved first by the audience advance knowledge of who these particular people, mother and son, are, and then by the juxtaposition of that picturesque scenery with its bizarre goings on, not limited to the Bates family. I had forgotten quite how gruesome the fate of Bradley's father in the second episode is, and it's a scene in bright daylight as well, going from Norman, Bradley and classmates waiting to go to school to the sight of a car apparantly driven by a drunk to the reveal that the man behind wheel is actually a man burned alive. The fact that no one in White Pine Bay - except for Bradley - treats this as particular unusual - tells you something about what type of town it is.
Norma, Norman and Dylan are all dressed very pointedly to evoke movie associations (beyond the obvious one). Norma has clothes that vaguely evoke the late 50s, early 60s, without being exact period replications. She's in dresses when she's happy or when she goes out to achieve something; after she got raped in the pilot, she switches to trousers (apart from going out with Deputy Shelby) for several episodes to come when in her home until after Shelby's dead. (She does wear a dress during the big mid-season reveal episode at home, but then again she did dress up to go out.) Her dresses are in bright colours or white, her trousers uniformly dark. Norman wears also vaguely 50s associating clothes - the sweaters, the trousers - which is especially noticable because we see him with a lot of teenagers, all of whom are of course wearing contemporay clothing, and mostly wears dark colours, with the very rare blue or red shirt. Dylan wears leather, which isn't as contemporary as it sounds; all in all, he's very much dressed as Marlon Brando in The Wild One, with a touch of James Dean, and of course 50s rebel is part of his persona. Considering their story is pretty much a professional AU that transplants characters from the 50s into a contemporary world, this is very fitting.
Exposition and information: the pilot introduces everyone who is going to be important for the season - not just Norma and Norman, but also Emma, Bradley, Alex Romero, Shelby, Miss Watson and not in person but via a phone call Dylan, more about that in a moment - and even one of Norma's ongoing central problems for the show, the fact she got suckered into buying the motel which the impending bypass threatens to make redundant - and does so in a way that doesn't feel overwhelming but conveys a lot of information. There are two deaths - the death of Norman's father in the teaser, which is a half-season mystery, and the death of Keith Summers mid-pilot, which is clear as day in how and why it happens but still manages to look somewhat differently when revisited. First of all, it struck me that when Keith Summers originally shows up to threaten Norma and her son, he responds to Norma's "I'll call the police" with retorting he's buddies with half of them and they'll be on his side. Which isn't the only reason why Norma later doesn't call the cops, or even the major one, but it feeds into that decision. As it turns out, Summers wasn't lying, but Norma is making a fatally wrong assumption as to which cop was his ally. When grim Sheriff Romero and nice, smiling Deputy Shelby show up at her doorstep, Norma picks Romero as the threat and Shelby as a potential ally, and when Shelby later tells her Romero was Keith Summers' best friend, this judgment is seemingly confirmed. Of course, as it turns out it was Shelby who was buddies with Keith Summers and in business with him; choosing the wrong person to trust and distrust, though, is an ongoing theme on this show and not limited to Norma. Dylan and the audience are also cases in point. From the opening scene onwards, where Norma reacts oddly to Norman's discovery of his father's body, the audience is primed to distrust her and assume she is responsible. She is, after all, Norma Bates, she is "Mother" and thus the source of all evil and crazy in her son. And later, we do see her kill someone with the iconic knife (at hand because she and the man are in a kitchen). It's the man who brutally raped her just before, yes, but the show deliberately let her not knife Keith Summers until Norman knocked him down and she put the handcuffs he previously used on her on him. (BTW, the fact Keith Summers has police handcuffs and indeed a police belt at his disposal is a signal to both Norma and the audience he didn't lie about his cop connections.) And she doesn't just stab him once, but multiple times. Clearly, a murderess waiting to happen/has happened already.
Rewind, repeat: the moment when Norma loses it and goes from defending herself with the knife to attacking and stabbing multiple times. It comes when Keith Summers taunts her, grinning: "You liked it." (Cue some fantastic facial acting on Vera Farmiga's part.) The rape itself was bad enough (and filmed in a way that leaves no doubt about that), but being told by the perpetrator "you liked it" is the trigger of all triggers. Which is understandable without additional information, but once you watch it with Norma's backstory in mind - being raped by her brother for years, and her brother insisting that hey, it wasn't rape -... no wonder that this is what drives her kill. (BTW, this also is worth bearing in mind when in s2 Norman, who witnessed most of the Keith Summers incident (though significantly not the taunt) for the first time becomes Norma and goes to her brother. Of course he brings that particular knife along.) And that's one reason why Dylan's "this is your mess" and "that's not what he (Caleb) said" in s2 were so upsetting to me. I couldn't help but wonder whether Norma heard as another version of that "you liked it".
Something else that struck me upon rewatching was that for all that Dylan gets referred to as "the normal one" in the family by fans and occasionally some of the production crew, he and Norma actually aren't dissimilar in their level of normalcy or craziness. Because Dylan in some ways speaks for the audience, says what the audience knows to be right, when commenting on the Norma and Norman relationship - Norma is smothering, Norman should get some distance from her - there seems to be a tendency to assume he's right in general on all things Norma. This despite the fact that not only is he himself far too emotionally invested to be a balanced judge (that of course is true for all three family members re: how they see each other), but the narrative actually points out he's wrong in one of his key assumptions at the half point of s1 already. Dylan spends the first half of the season thinking Norma killed her husband for the insurance money. He also calls her crazy (mostly when talking to Norman, but also once or twice when talking to her) at least once per episode, once even "crazy and dangerous", and "addicted to drama". The irony is that Norma, while definitely in need of therapy as much as her sons and hardly a balanced person, is no more or less crazy than Dylan himself is and definitely no more "addicted to drama". That the audience, going by what I've seen, tends to regard Norma as crazy and Dylan as normal (albeit currently shocked and traumatized) says something, imo, about gender coded behaviour.
Take the violence question: during that first half of season one, we see Norma kill another human being after the man assaulted her (i.e. at its most basic, a revenge killing after a horrible experience). We also see Dylan kill another human being after the man shot his colleague/friend, Ethan, right in front of him. In both cases, there was some very brief but siginificant temporal distance between the trauma and the lethal response. (Dylan spots the killer after having tried in vain to save Ethan, drives the man into an alley and runs him over with Ethans truck.) Both the men whom Norma and Dylan killed were lethally dangerous but not armed any longer at the moment where they killed them. Both Norma and Dylan afterwards cover up what they did. Norma's feverish "we came here to start over and by God, I'm starting over!" , her frantic cleaning of the house and drowning Keith Summers' body has its equivalent in Dylan torching the bloody truck he used to run Ethan's killer over. Yet Norma's response is seen as irrational and a sign of her "craziness" whereas Dylan's is not, and I think it's because much of the audience is primed to see male revenge violence as normal, part of the code, so to speak, and a man covering up said death as the rational, sensible thing to do, whereas a woman doing it is acting irrationally, madly. (BTW for what it's worth I think both Norma and Dylan acted emotionally and had reason to assume this was best.)
As for "addicted to the drama": we get our first impression of Dylan-Norma interactions in the pilot via the phonecall Dylan makes. He opens with demanding to know why she left state and moved without telling him.
Norma: "Well, the last thing you said to me was, and I quote, 'Drop dead, bitch.' Forgive me for taking it personally."
Dylan: "What if I had an accident? Or were sick and in hospital? What if I needed you?
Norma: "Did you have an accident? Are you in hospital?" (Note the omission of the third reason here.)
Dylan: "I need money."
Norma: *hangs up*
Dylan then shows up at Norma's doorstep in episode 2 because "that's what normal people do, Norma, when they have no where else to go. They come home". (There is an ironic counterpoint here; a few episodes later Dylan will tell Norman again and again that the normal thing that people do is to leave home. Not that both aren't true.) As we'll find out in a conversation Dylan has with Ethan later, he does have an alternative: when Ethan asks him about his family, Dylan mentions his father (meaning, of course, his legal father, Mr. Masset) being alive, but "I don't talk with him anymore". (BTW, I had forgotten that detail until I rewatched.) Considering he also has no problem finding a job in White Pine Bay, I find it hard to believe he couldn't have done elsewhere. Thus, a good argument can be made that he shows up at his mother's and brother's because he wants to be with them, but that relationships have become so toxic that he can't admit that. Well, the mother part anyway. (He improves relations with Norman pretty quickly.) For the first six episodes, your typical Norma and Dylan scene proceeds thusly:
Norma: *is distant*
Dylan: * is relentlessly insulting, with a disquieting sexual undertone*
Norma: *either exits or responds increasingly angrily*
But on no occasion is the "drama" initialized by Norma. It's Dylan who pursues, openly attackes and provokes until he gets responses from her, and most definitely is addicted to enacting this particular brand of drama with her again and again. My own theory is that he does it because negative attention is still attention, and this is one surefire way he can her to focus on him. His attacks have three main subjects: a) her relationship with Norman, b) general accusation that she's crazy, and c) her sexuality. The last makes for the above mentioned disturbing undertone:
"You skanked about with Sam Bates and left my father."
"How are the sheets working out for you, Norma?" (After the revelation he was waiting outside the motel room where she just had sex with Deputy Shelby.)
"The Whore" as his name for Norma on his mobile, which causes Norman to attack him.
"Put that lipstick off your mouth, Norma."
Their big argument in episode 4 manages to combine all three factors, coming after Norman has confided into Dylan about the truth re: Keith Summers' death. Dylan opens fire by telling Norma Norman is away having sex with Bradley, makes clear Norman told him some dark stuff (though I don't think Norma realizes exactly what until the next episode when both brothers visit her in jail) about her, repeats she's crazy and expresses the hope "they" will take Norman away from her. At this point, Norma who until then has kept her physical distance from Dylan as well throughout the season, as opposed to her repeated hugging and general standing close of Norman, comes closer when saying "Nobody is taking Norman away from me". Dylan taunts: "That girl is right now!" Norma slaps him; Dylan takes her arm, turns her around and presses her against the wall. Allow me to illustrate with gifs taken from here (all credit to the tumblr in question):
Until s2 and the Caleb revelations, this is arguably the darkest Norma and Dylan scene, a disturbing and fascinating mixture of emotional violence and neediness. The positive counterpoint to that scene, btw, comes two episodes later, when after Dylan emerges from the Bates house alive after his shootout with Shelby Norma runs towards him and hugs him fiercely (the first time she does on the show) and after a while he relaxes into her embrace. In both cases, it's clear that mother and son rarely touch, and like I said earlier, I think that's one reason for Dylan's constant insults in the first half of the season - he gets her to respond to him that way, with the curse of it being that this method increases the dysfunction and alienation between them. (You'd have to be a saintly masochist, which Norma decidedly is not, to respond with understanding and forgiveness to being called a crazy slut all the time.) Not to mention the mutual distrust and mutal assumption of the worst about each other: Dylan thinks that Norma killed her husband for the insurance money, Norma thinks he wants to turn Norman against her to hurt her. Neither of them is completely deluded - Norma does cover up something about the death of her husband (just not what Dylan thinks, and for the opposite reason), and while I think Dylan is mostly motivated by a sincere desire to help his brother and have a positive relationship with him in his she's-crazy-get-a-way-from-her campaign, using Norman as a weapon against Norma is also a factor.
There are hints as to the root of why Norma's relationship with her older son is so different from the one with her younger son before the s1 finale. In the pilot, she says that Norman is her "second chance" and that she wanted to do everything right this time, which of course implies something about who the first chance must have been. After the rape and the killing of Keith Summers, she refuses to talk about it after her "and by God, I'm starting over!" declaration, until in episode 4, when she and Norman end up in front of a locked waste disposal in the middle of the night because it holds incriminating evidence they can't reach, and Norma has her second (after the Keith Summers scene) big freakout with a belated "why did this happen". One of the things she yells when Norman is trying to calm her down is "you don't understand, all my life has been like this" before she catches herself. (BTW, speaking of Norma's life, we get a time line with everyone's ages: Norman as of the start of the show is 17, Dylan is 21, and Norma was 17 when marrying for the first time - which as of s2 also means when Dylan was born - which means Norma as of the beginning of the show is 38. Going by Dylan's comments about the late Sam Bates and also one exchange between Norma and Norman about him, and of course the flashback in episode 1.6., that marriage was abusive. Her first marriage might not have been, but can't have lasted long since Norman and Dylan are only five years apart in age, plus the fact that Dylan is on non-speaking terms with the man he believes to be his father doesn't exactly augur well for the later's nature. (Then again: if Dylan talks to him like he does to Norma early on, Masset Sr. might have cut contact to preserve his sanity.) As we later find out (and it's one of the few things both Norma and Caleb's version of their backstory agree on), Norma's father hit his children and her mother was drugged and spaced out into being not there (which perhaps is why we never see Norma consider psychopharmaka for either Norman or herself), and her brother raped her. Which means she literally did not have a functional, non-abusive relationship in her entire life. That her relationships with her own children are in different ways spectacularly dysfunctional isn't that surprising (one of the things the show does is illustrate damaged people damaging each other), though it's also true that neither relationship is relentlessly dark. Norma and Norman do have a rapport beyond dysfunctionality (the shared fondness for old movies and the quick banter when they're in a good mood), Dylan and Norma, after coming to a truce achieved by him fighting Shelby and her finally entrusting him with the truth about Norman and Sam Bates' death, can have a cautious hopeful tenderness that's quite heartbreaking to watch (as when he's teaching her to shoot). And one of the biggest changes from Psycho also makes the whole thing so damm tragic: what triggers Norman into blackouts and psychotic episodes so far isn't repressed sexuality (though that comes into it in one case, his blackout at Miss Watson's), it's the desire to protect his mother. (He blacks out and kills his father after Sam Bates has started to hit Norma; he starts his fight with Dylan still conscious over "The Whore" on Dylan's mobile phone but then blacks out for the second round when he attacks Dylan with a meat tenderizer, something he later can't remember; and he literally becomes Norma in order to confront her brother.) And what causes Norma to keep the blackouts a secret even from Norman himself is the desire to protect her son. Which is exactly the wrong thing to do, of course, but with her psychological make-up and background, it's hard so see her able to reach out and trust.
All of which isn't to say that Norma is acting all selflessly here re: Norman. There is a reason why Dylan's accusations re: her smotheringness hit home. I'm pretty sure even if Sam Bates had died of a heart attack Norma waould still have been distrustful and hostile towards first Bradley and then Cody. And her hostile, passive aggressive reaction towards Norman trying out for the track team (whatever that is - I'm German, I don't know, but I gather from the context it's a high school sports team) is classic possessiveness. (Which Norman mirrors back at her when Norma starts to date Shelby, long before he has reason to distrust Shelby; Norman has a desire for independence from his mother, but he also has a simultanous desire to be the only man in her life, and it's really striking how their reactions are pretty much identical - Norma's "I waited hours for you" etc. when Norman comes home late after trying out for the team, Norman's "I worried about you for hours" after Norma returns from Shelby, Norma's "fine!" *signs the permission letter* "enjoy your food, I'm not in the mood", Norman's "Oh, Mr. Wonderful saves the day again, just don't expect me to congratulate" (after Norma told him that Shelby has destroyed the evidence against her), and so on. The one exception to Norma's possessiveness re: her son is Emma. Rewatching their first encounter, I'm not quite sure whether Norma intuits that early that Norman isn't sexually interested in Emma (despite Dylan later taunting her "do you think she takes that thing out of her nose when they make out?") or whether it's Emma's illness that makes for the difference, but the difference - and the Emma encounter comes an episode after the Bradley encounter - is startling. Norma is inquisitive and not tactful at all - she asks what C.F. stands for, and what Emma's life expectancy is - but she's not hostile, and maybe the fact she asks straightforwardly instead of pretending not to be curious is what makes Emma, in turn, become the only character in s1 who takes to Norma in a non-sexual way instead of regarding her as odd or crazy.
It's also not that Emma only sees Norma at her best. She's a front row witness to Norma losing after in spectacular Norma fashion after finding out the truth about Shelby (btw, Norma's yelling "he can't get away with it! They're always getting away with it" is another of those moments that takes on additional meaning after knowing about her background). So, at the very least Emma is aware Norma has a spectacular temper. Something I had forgotten before rewatching is that Emma's own mother isn't dead but wasn't up to coping with a terminally ill daughter and thus left, and Emma hasn't seen her for ten years; it makes Emma regarding Norma's close relationship to Norman not as dysfunctional but as enviable understandable. Ditto for her receptiveness to Norma being kind to her. Norma's first overture of friendliness is somewhat manipulative (as it comes after Norma has calmed down from her initial shock and realized they need to get the belt incriminating her and Norman from Shelby before denouncing him to the authorities, and thus they need to keep Emma from insisting on telling the truth all at once), but once Shelby isn't a factor anymore, the friendliness towards Emma continues (quite independent from anything related to Norman, as in the aftermath of Emma having accidentally eaten the weed cupcake). By the time we're in s2, there is a kindness between them that's quite touching (Norma's response when Emma asks her about first time sex being a case in point - the audience was aware what she was remembering, but Norma managed still to not let Emma know and not to spoil the moment for Emma but be there for her in the capacity Emma needed, as a reassuring presence). Something else I had forgotten was that in 1.06 we get a line where the irony is thicker and heavier than usual when Emma, re: Norma and Shelby, says, looking directly at Norman Bates: "What must it feel like, to realize the guy you've been so into turns out to be a complete monster?"
Of course, we have no idea whether Emma will live long enough to find out - her life expectancy is 27, which assuming Norman in Psycho is in his mid 20s means she just might, provided nothing else happens to her. But then, part of the show's point is that Norman - and his mother - aren't "monsters". They're locked in a cycle that will lead to her death, and his becoming the death of others as well. But they try so hard not to be, and that makes the show.
