Well, with another season still to go, I wasn't expecting that!
Alex couldn't sleep last night. Norma wakes to find him drinking coffee with his gun at the ready. She tells him Norman could never hurt her. Cue sardonic laughter. Norman's due at therapy. He talks about Alex and Norma's marriage. It happened while he was in Pineview and out of the way. Norma replaced Norman with Alex because she can't bear to be alone. Alex was happy to get Norman out the way, but it won't last. “She is as fragile as a baby bird,” he says. “He has no idea what he’s got coming for him.”
Episode 9 has Alex trying to recruit Dylan into the let's get Norman committed club. He doesn't realise how complicated Dylan's own feelings about his mother are. He couldn't do that to her. Instead he does the honourable thing and tries to convince Norma that Norman is a killer. I'm not sure whether he expected it to work, my guess is he didn't, but at least he tried and tried again to convince Norman to check back into Pineview. Hopefully it's enough to assuage his guilt.
Rebecca tries to get Alex to confess he killed Bob Paris while wearing a wire for the DEA. He sees straight through her.
"We're supposed to be together, aren't we, Norman?" "Yes we are, mother. Forever." Mother and son spooning in bed is never a comfortable image. Norma cannot forgive Alex's betrayal and decides to end the relationship with a letter left on her bedroom table complete with wedding ring. “I will always love you, no matter what. I’m truly sorry.” It looks almost like a suicide note. Norman tells her they'll start again, move to an island, be happy. She dries her tears and falls asleep with her son snuggled up behind her.
It seems my theory in the last episode was correct. Flash back to episode 8 when Norman overhears about the cracked firebox. Yes, it seems like he didn't break it, but will use it as a weapon. A quaint little suicide/murder. He lights the boiler and shuts off all the vents except the one under Norma's bed, then cozies up for some eternal sleep.
Alex arrives and tries to save them both. Norman survives, Norma doesn't.
Season Finale
The police interview Alex in the house. With the letter as evidence they believe that Norma commited suicide. Alex doesn't buy that for a second. “If I were you, I’d question her son, Norman Bates.” I had wondered at the end of the previous episode whether Alex would consider, even for a moment, whether Norma might have lit the boiler. She's a very damaged character, lonely and desperate. In his position I would have thought it possible. But Alex has more faith in her. He knows Norman is to blame and his anger is ready to boil over. Alex meets with Norman as he's checked out of the hospital. Norman is sticking to the Mother committed suicide story. Alex slams him against a wall in the busy hospital corridor. His rage overwhelming his common sense. “I’m going to prove you did it, you piece of shit.”
Alex goes to see Norma at the morgue. Tells her he will always love her even if she isn't around and puts the ring back on her finger. The acting here conveys how much he did love her and how empty he feels without her. It seemed like a quick romance, but I suspect these deep feelings had been building within him for much longer than two weeks.
Norman cannot believe Norma is gone. “She was not supposed to leave me.” It seems insane for Norman to be angry at Norma for dying when he was the one who killed her, but of course he is insane. His plan had been for them both to die, to be together forever. Now he is left in the world without his only support. She isn't there. But he convinces himself that she'll be back, he has to be patient. And his old pet dog, Juno, returns from the grave to wait with him.
To rid himself of any trace of Alex's involvement in his mother's life, he carries the television set down the stairs, tripping over the cord before he reaches the bottom. He's taking his anger at Alex out on the TV as a detective arrives to speak to him. Her expression as she talks to him suggests she thinks Norman is mad, but perhaps she believes it is his grief that makes him seem that way.
The funeral home phone Norman to make funeral arrangements. Once again he wants her all to himself. He doesn't want Alex anywhere near the funeral and doesn't tell Dylan that Norma is dead. He gets the funeral director to agree to let him see his mother and spotting the wedding ring, he removes it. She's mine!
Alex arrives uninvited to the funeral as Norman makes his speech about how she was half-queen half child. Norman cannot hide his triumph and returns the ring to Alex. Alex punches Norman again and again.
Alex takes his gun from the police station, presumably to use it on Norman, but as he leaves the DEA pick him up for the only charge they can make stick for the moment, perjury, And so Norman is left to do what he has to do.
Norma hasn't arrived back at the house yet. Is she testing Norman? He certainly thinks so. He flushes his medication and recovers her body from her grave. Still she doesn't look at him, so he glues her eyelids open. Shudder. Her dead eyes can't focus on him, and he gets angry at her again. However much he shouts she won't focus on his face when he talks to her.
Chick arrives. Super smart Chick who sees things other people don't. He tells Norman that Norma was too good for this world and offers him food as comfort. I am sure Norma's face on the arm of the couch doesn't evade his attention. He sympathises, telling Norman, “You do what you have to do, but you understand she’s dead, right?”
Norman, ready to join his mother, loads a gun and holds it to his mouth. But the self-preservation aspect of his Dissociative Personality Disorder kicks in and he hears his mother playing the piano. He runs downstairs to a decorated room to celebrate Christmas with her.
This season was one hell of a ride. We were treated to a beautifully respectful and loving romance and extraordinarily dark scenes from Norman's history. I am excited to see what the final season will bring.