We are galloping towards the end of this show, and A&E are doing an amazing job of hiding their final hand.
Episode 7
Sam Loomis is dead and Norman killed him. This is the first murder of which Norman seems fully aware. His mother pushes and prods him to help her clean up. They have an agreement and she cannot simply take over without breaking it. “You wanna play with the big kids, you gotta act like the big kids.”
They put the body in the car and drive toward the lake, but police are already there and they are pulling bodies from the depths of the water. “How many times have we done this, mother? How many bodies are they gonna find in that lake?” They take the body to the woods instead and dump it in a well then take the car to a chop shop and walk back to the motel.
Norman needs to hide the evidence of his crimes. Not because he wants to keep killing, he does consider handing himself in the the police, but because if he's caught he'll be killed or drugged and either way he'll lose Norma.
When he returns, Sheriff Green pulls up to the motel. They found multiple bodies and Jim Blackwell is one of them. Green manages to question and reassure Norman at the same time. The tire tracks outside the motel do not escape her notice, “Someone left in a hurry.”
Norman is aware that he will be questioned about the bodies in the lake and decides he must move Norma from the cellar. He sets up a Snow White style shrine for her in the woods, where she can wait until it's safe. This time, when he returns, Dylan is waiting for him.
Dylan talks to Norman and tries to understand all that has happened over the past year and a half. He sees large high heels by a chair in the sitting room and a packet of cigarettes at the piano. The kitchen is in disarray. He feels guilty that Norman has been living alone all this time, like a good big brother, even while he is upset that Norma died and no one told him. He tries to fill Norman's prescription and we are told that Dr Edwards disappeared, presumed dead, two years before. But wait, Norman saw … oh shit!
Dylan returns with a partial bottle of meds to keep Norman going and meets Madeline on the steps to the house. She's looking for Sam. Dylan turns her away, saying that Norman is fragile. It is the first Madeline has heard about Norman's problems and she looks suitably shocked.
Dylan gives Norman the pills and asks him to take one in front of him. Norma breaks her promise and takes over. “I can only ever be a real mother to one person,” she says, smashing Dylan over the head with a glass and knocking him to the floor. Dazed, Dylan watches Norman fight with himself, but in Norman's mind his mother, for the life of his brother. When Norman wins he rushes to the phone and calls 911. He confesses to killing Sam Loomis, ensuring Dylan will live to see another sunrise.
Episode 8
Norman is taken into custody. Sheriff Green isn't sure he's killed anyone. She seems to think he's looking for attention. Afraid that Norman cannot be trusted to act in their best interests, Norma/n makes him vomit up the meds and knocks him out on the toilet bowl, taking over for the rest of the episode to “protect” him.
Dylan hires a lawyer, Julia, for Norman. Norma/n asks for reasons someone might claim to kill a person and between them Julia and Norma/n decide to play it as if they've been protecting the real murderer. This new ploy, however, convinces Sheriff Green that Norman isn't the innocent she'd imagined. When she speaks to Madeline about her husband, we get the distinctive feel that she doesn't think the wife did it. If anything the “infatuation” with Sam's wife makes it more plausible to Green that Norman committed the murder.
Romero takes his gun back and searches the Bates house for Norman, seeing golden hallucinations of Norma smiling and painting her lips. Poor guy. Norman isn't there, of course, he's at the police station. Who said it would be that easy, Alex? Instead he finds Chick, typing out his true crime novel in the basement. In a move that shocked me, Romero shoots Chick in the head. It feels like a declaration of intent from the ex sheriff. He will kill Norman even if it costs him his life. In fact one wonders whether that would be Romero's preferred conclusion at this point.
In the final scene, police find the well and pull Sam's body out of it. I had wondered for a moment whether they might have found Norma's shallow grave first.
Summary
With two episodes left everything feels as though it is escalating fast. Dylan knows Norman killed his and Emma's mothers, but still feels the need to protect his little brother. Sam's body is found and with or without Norman's confession the physical evidence is overwhelming. Romero is on a murder rampage. Will he allow the law to rob him of his personal vengeance? We don't know how this will end and that's gloriously exciting.