This season continues to show that it’s going to defy your expectations by Norman already visiting Romero in prison and not wasting any time to distinguish his bullshit. Norman proves that he’s not afraid or fucking around here. Interestingly enough, Norman’s aggressive approach here might even end up pushing Romero to do something about all of this and retaliate somehow. He’s certainly losing it in prison, with a particularly brutal skirmish in there being proof of how Romero is slowly changing while in this cage. While it looks like Romero isn’t any closer to getting out this week, I’m still vying for a showdown between him and Norman to be in the cards by the end of the season.

As Norman continues to try and get through his days, the episode keeps pushing forward a narrative decision that I’m not exactly crazy about where Norma is actually alive and just faking her death as she camps out in the Motel. Elements like Norma boning up on her French while she waits in the wings feel a little silly. In fact, the whole “now I need to hide so people continue to believe I’m dead” angle is super sitcom-y. I felt like Mr. Roper was about to come in at any minute.

In spite of all of this, it’s appreciated that the premiere at least confirmed that Norma’s dead by showing her preserved corpse, rather than the series attempting to weave a sloppy double narrative (an angle that it’s gone with in the past). I get that this is meant to represent Norman’s tumultuous mental state and a rationalization for what’s going on, but the show doesn’t have to lean so heavily into it. If Norma was just gone when Chick rang the doorbell I’d have accepted it just as much as several sentences of dialogue explaining why she needs to hide. Once these pretenses are over the season will hopefully slide into an even more comfortable position. That being said, I suppose this show is all about a killer who doesn’t realize he’s a crazy killer, not some murderer who eventually learns to embrace who he is. It’s necessary that Norman’s psyche jumps through these hoops.

On the topic of Chick, he and Norman get into some sort of taxidermy relationship together this week that naturally has him investigating and becoming curious over what Norman’s keeping in his freezer. There’s also some pretty clever innuendo about Norman being a fan of “preserving architectural history” that becomes perfectly twisted when framing it around his mother.

A real highlight from this week—albeit a somewhat confusing one—involves a scene that’s cross-edited between Highmore and Farmiga where Norman is Norma in a bar, as “she” complains about her “son.” It’s a scene that works purely to show you how far Norman has fallen at this point. However, it’s also significant as Chick is seemingly turning all of this into some novel of his? I’d sincerely love it if Chick turned out to be Robert Bloch, with the scribblings that he’s putting down actually turning into his novel, Psycho, by the end of the series. It’d be completely insane and something nobody ever expected, but if Chick is going to be codifying all of this, that might as well be where they take this. This is a show that’s crazy enough to go through with such a thing.