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Video above has mildly NSFW for language and a stabbing depiction, so if you're sensitive...

Last night, the first season of A&E's Bates Motel came to a close. The show is a Psycho prequel that takes place in present day and thus is insane in concept even before you get to the unstable characters, the Chinese sex slave subplot, the fields of marijuana, the girl with cystic fibrosis whose gorgeousness can't be obscured by an oxygen tube, the taxidermy and the dog that became roadkill before our very eyes. Fun show!

And then there are the performances. Vera Farmiga is a very good actor. Bates Motel is not a very good show, but it is a consistently entertaining one due in no small part to Farmiga's willingness to throw herself around, howl and spit out lines like, "I killed the crap out of him" with stunning conviction. Because she is playing Norman Bates' crazy mom, it is hard to say whether her foaming at the mouth is justified or over-the-top, but it did make me laugh throughout the season. The only thing that has come close in recent memory is Jessica Lange on the first season of American Horror Story. There's something about macabre television that brings the best-worst out of its women.