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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
46
Mixed:
12
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews
Mar 14, 2013
Feb 21, 2017
Season 5 Review:
The show satisfyingly keeps up that ultra-creepy vibe. [24 Feb/3 Mar 2017, p.90]
TV Guide MagazineFeb 24, 2017
Season 5 Review:
The most merrily macabre yet. [27 Feb - 5 Mar 2017, p.17]
Mar 9, 2015
Season 3 Review:
There is, periodically, a kind of daringly reckless, Lucille Ball-like slapstick physicality that Farmiga brings to the role, and it contributes a welcome lightness to the show’s often grim proceedings. By contrast, Highmore’s exceedingly subtle, adroit work is slowly filling in the portrait of psycho-Norman at a perfect pace for a weekly television series.
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Mar 7, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Expect a slow(ish) rollout for Bates Motel, as the first couple of episodes establish character and location, before things take an uptick during episode three. But there’s more than enough intrigue and entertainment--on top of Farmiga’s outstanding turn--to keep viewers wanting more of this new-style nonhomage to Psycho.
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Feb 19, 2014
Season 2 Review:
Their [Vera Farmiga and Freddie Highmore as Norma and Norman Bates] scenes together vibrate with awkward energy and pent-up rage, even in seemingly simpler moments, like an afternoon driving lesson--what could possibly go wrong?!--and an audition for a local musical. The scenes without them, though, can be serial momentum killers.
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Mar 3, 2014
Season 2 Review:
There’s not a lot going on in Bates Motel--a couple of murder mysteries, the slowly evolving picture of Norman’s true nature--and there’s no guarantee that the show will be able to keep its delicate balance of humor and spookiness, without pushing Norma and Norman into caricature. For now, though, it’s inherited the “Dexter” mantle as the serial-killer show to watch.
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Mar 18, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Bates Motel takes a few episodes to get going as the writers build the world of White Pine Bay, and the story appears poised to really kick into a higher gear with a revelation at the end of the third episode. Up to this point Bates Motel is an OK character drama, but in building the broader world it inhabits the show begins to come into sharper focus.
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Mar 6, 2015
Season 3 Review:
The season arc isn't clear, but the love between mother and son is--undeniably, disturbingly so. [13 Mar 2015, p.64]
Mar 18, 2013
Season 1 Review:
The lead performances, and the way that relationship is written, are all excellent enough to stick around a little while longer in the hopes that Bates Motel as a whole becomes something more interesting. But a lot of that may also depend on what exactly Cuse and Ehrin want Norman Bates to turn into, and how quickly.
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Mar 9, 2015
Season 3 Review:
If discovering the sinister particulars of how they'll get there [the film Psycho] is the driving force of Bates Motel, the surfeit of subplots might be seen as a series of speed bumps or potholes, slowing an otherwise ferociously entertaining two-hander at every turn.
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Mar 18, 2013
Mar 18, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Bates Motel has a talented cast and a memorable back story that guides, but doesn’t limit, the narrative, and at its best it’s intriguing and enjoyably grim. But even more than Norman, the series itself has a split personality, a Hitchcock classic grafted onto a much more mundane brand of suspense. Each new twist moves it further from “Psycho” and closer to Nancy Drew.
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Mar 15, 2013
Season 1 Review:
The show is overworked and overthought. [25 Mar 2013, p.43]
Mar 7, 2013
Season 1 Review:
To their credit, the producers do keep things interesting, for the most part without resorting to the cheap tricks that have characterized the vastly overrated “American Horror Story.” Nevertheless, the premise becomes its own creative prison, fostering a hurry-up-and-wait attitude as the story metes out its examples of the things that make this duo, well, different.
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