Bates Motel/What's Wrong With Norman

What's Wrong With Norman
Season 1, Episode 3
Airdate	April 1, 2013
Written by	Jeff Wadlow
Directed by	Paul Edwards
← 1x02 Nice Town You Picked, Norma...	1x04 → Trust Me
Bates Motel — Season One

What's Wrong With Norman is the third episode of the first season of Bates Motel.

Starring: Vera Farmiga (Norma Bates), Freddie Highmore (Norman Bates), Max Thieriot (Dylan Massett), Olivia Cooke (Emma Decody), Nicola Peltz (Bradley Martin)

Guest Starring: Diana Bang (Jiao), Nestor Carbonell (Sheriff Alex Romero), Terry Chen (Ethan Chang), Keegan Connor Tracy (Miss Watson), Mike Vogel (Deputy Zack Shelby)

Also Starring: Peter Bryant (Doctor Levine), Scott Patey (Omar), Angela Moore (Nurse)

Plot Overview

Norman suffers a mental breakdown that causes him to pass out in school. While in the hospital, Sheriff Romero searches the Bates home, and Norman returns to find the belt he kept from Summers is now missing. Dylan starts working guarding a pot field while Emma encourages Norman to search for the girl in the book.

Arc Advancement

Happenings

• Police search the Bates home and Keith Summer's belt is missing. It's later found to be taken by Deputy Shelby and is kept safe.

• It's revealed the town's economy comes from marijuana trafficking.

• The Asian sex slave, Jiao, was in Room 4, where Norman found the sketchbook.

Characters

• Norman is hospitalised after suffering an episode that has some relation to thinking about the sexual illustrations in the sketchbook.

• Dylan begins working with Ethan guarding the pot fields.

• Norma's relationship with Shelby turns romantic.

• Norman doesn't remember attacking Dylan.

• Norman has an illusion of his mother telling him to take the belt from Shelby.

• Norman finds Jiao in Shelby's basement.

Referbacks

• The pot field is the same one Norman and Emma happened across in the previous episode.

Trivia

Allusions and References

• Dylan makes a parallel to the woods they're in to the setting of the 1972 film Deliverance, a reference lost on Ethan.

Quotes

• Dylan: This where they shot Deliverance?

Ethan: What's that?

Dylan: The movie. You know, "Boy, you got a pretty mouth."

Ethan: What kind of movies you watch?

Dylan: The kind where bad things happen to people in the middle of the woods.

• Dylan: Can I give you some advice? You gotta cut that shit out. "Mother"? It's just weird.

Norman: It's just a habit. I guess calling your mom a whore is perfectly normal.