Bates Motel: Season 3 - TV Reviews (2024)

"Unconscious" is an excellent finale to a exceptional third season of Bates Motel. This seems like a conclusion to the show we knew, and the beginning of a show where everyone realizes they are doomed.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Dec 15, 2017

Season 3 finale "Unconscious" put a major nail in the coffin

Full Review | Dec 15, 2017

The series is not waiting around to develop Norman any further - he's ready, and so are we. As Norman says to Emma, "it's just time."

Full Review | Dec 15, 2017

It's totally, completely Psycho.

Full Review | Dec 15, 2017

I'm going to call this season of Bates Motel "the one where everything that you thought would happen didn't happen."

Full Review | Dec 15, 2017

The show that would make even Oedipus cringe is back for its third season, and in the first of ten new episodes, Bates Motel looks like it's off to a great start.

Full Review | Dec 15, 2017

"Bates Motel" is consistently entertaining, with flashes of dark humor, and a surprising amount of suspense, considering we all know how this story ultimately ends.

Full Review | Dec 15, 2017

Bates Motel's third season premiere isn't its best episode, but it's a strong, focused start to a season that has all the elements of being their strongest. Farmiga and Highmore continue to put out wonderful work here.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 15, 2017

For all the criminal complications, the focus is on the psychology of the characters, from a clingy and jealous Norman uncomfortably intimate with his mother to Norma's manic personality...

Full Review | Feb 12, 2016

It's a strong work of psychologically minded, character-driven fiction.

Full Review | May 8, 2015

Tthe more the show can bring Kenny Johnson into the same scenes as Farmiga and Highmore, the more crazily intense Bates Motel will be, and that's a good thing.

Full Review | Mar 12, 2015

The Norman we saw here was an unsettling mixed of creepy and clingy. And very different from the boy we first met a few years ago in the series premiere. And it actually makes for some really cool TV.

Full Review | Original Score: 7.7/10 | Mar 10, 2015

In what is definitely the strangest "will they/won't they" relationship on TV right now, Norman and Norma continue to be equal parts disturbing and fascinating as a duo.

Full Review | Mar 10, 2015

Bates Motel is a slow-moving show... But it tells emotional stories so well that it's easy to not care when the overarching plot is mostly standing still.

Full Review | Mar 10, 2015

Bates Motel has always been a compelling series, but I'm looking forward to watching Norma and Norman do an intricate dance for relationship domination.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.7/5 | Mar 10, 2015

It seems likely that we may not get as much high-camp humor as in seasons past, but if the dark tone set by this episode is any indication, there may be plenty of gallows humor to fill the void.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Mar 10, 2015

Let me be clear: this is a good thing, that Bates Motel actually has it's own good little mood going on.

Full Review | Mar 10, 2015

When a suspense drama can deliver nervous or even audible giggles along with the shivers, the potential for a ghoulish good time being had by all is almost guaranteed. And so it goes with the third deliciously deranged season of A&E's Bates Motel,

Full Review | Mar 9, 2015

The series is set to double down on the madcap delights that made it one of last year's most improved series.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 8, 2015

As it starts Season 3 on Monday night, it has evolved into a deftly acted story of small-town dysfunction, creepy when it needs to be yet far more wide ranging than the movie that inspired it.

Full Review | Mar 6, 2015