By reason of insanity.
Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.
Bates Motel took us deep into its final act with "Visiting Hours," an emotional episode that saw Norman remain in his "Mother" persona while both Dylan and Emma reeled from recent events and new, harrowing discoveries.
Given how heavily the series, during its first few years, focused on what seemed to be a budding romance between Emma and Norman, it was an extremely sad moment when Emma went to go meet with Norman and didn't find him. His body was there, but his mind was someone else - someone who Emma had never quite encountered before. And in that moment, she realized how sick Norman was and how the boy she was once so close to wasn't the one who killed her mother. It didn't help her grieving process, per se, but it did shake her out of the abject lack of sympathy she had for Norman earlier in the episode.
As all the secrets come out now -- the true nature of Norman's insanity and the body count that comes with it -- the guilt piled up and landed on Emma and Dylan like a bag of bricks. For Emma, it all came as a stark and cold shock because she had no suspicions at all. She didn't know Dylan whisked her away from what he deemed to be a dysfunctional and dangerous family situation with Norman and his mother.
For Dylan though, the guilt is more crushing because he didn't do anything when he probably should have. He knew Norman needed help, and he had an inkling as to some of the dark deeds his brother might have done, but he chose to rescue himself, more or less. To create his own life and his own family. Obviously, he never predicted things would get as warped as they did.
So here's Dylan now, having to face the anger of those who Norman hurt (one of them being his own wife!), and not knowing which side to take. His moment with Madeline was rather sobering, as she berated him for letting Norman's sickness prevail right under his nose. All the while, the viewer's wondering if we'll ever see Norman as Norman again. Mother's in control and she basically had to knock Norman out to take over. "Norman's sleeping" as she told Emma. In Psycho, the story ends with Norman getting lost completely in his Mother personality, so could that be where this is all headed?
One thing's for sure though, Norman won't spend the finale in jail. The Season 5 wild card that is Alex Romero made sure of that as we ended this penultimate series chapter in a very surprising way. Romero is beyond beyond the point of no return now. All season, people have been warning him to stop and turn around. That it wasn't too late to do the right thing. Now he just seems doomed. But he was a huge catalyst here, breaking Norman out of his trappings so that he could be out and about for the big finale.
The Verdict
Aside from the very end, Bates Motel's penultimate episode felt like a calm front before a storm, with both Dylan and Emma having to come to terms with the full breadth of Norman's mental illness. It was a shake up so big that their marriage might not even survive the story (that is, if both of them survive the story as individuals). With Norman in jail for most of the episode, the haunting "Visiting Hours" had us guessing as to what the actual endgame might hold and whether or not we'd ever see Norman as himself again.
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