TOOBNOTES: "BATES MOTEL"

So 'Bates Motel' premiered Monday night on A&E. I recorded it, but I don't know when - or if - I might get around to watching it. But I can make a determination about its placement in the TV Universe without having seen it.....

'Bates Motel' has to take place in some other TV dimension than Earth Prime-Time. The main Toobworld already has its own televersion of the Norman Bates story with the TV movie "Psycho IV: The Beginning" which starred the one true Norman Bates, Anthony Perkins, with Henry Thomas as his younger self and Olivia Hussy as his mother, Norma Bates. Because of Perkins' involvement, the first three "Psycho" movies can be absorbed into the TV universe.

This doesn't mean that those movies can't also exist in Earth Prime-Time as simply movies. Any references to the "Psycho" movies as movies (like the murder that took place on the Universal set in an episode of 'Murder, She Wrote') only mean that the movies are based on the real life events depicted in those movies.

("Psycho IV: The Beginning" also exists in the Borderlands, that blend of fictional universes like TV & movies, TV & comic books, TV & literature. Just to confuse the issue.....)

Another version of the story, which had Bud Cort as Norman's "heir apparent", has to be set in another dimension because a different actor played Norman. And then there's Skitlandia which had the real Norman Bates, but in a sketch comedy setting as he did a TV commercial for the Norman Bates School of Hotel and Motel Management. (As seen on 'Saturday Night Live')

This new version of the story, a prequel, is set in the modern day, so there can be no connection to the original three movies.

I suppose it could share the same TV dimension as other remakes like 'The Fugitive', '87th Precinct', 'Battlestar Galactica', and 'The New Addams Family'.

So that's the pronouncement from this particular Caretaker. The Caretakers for other shared universes can make their own decisions.....

BCnU!