'Bates Motel' Season 2: Why You Will Never Look at Norma the Same Way Again!

You might think of “Bates Motel” matriarch Norma Bates as a bit of a “mommie dearest,” but actress Vera Farmiga doesn't see her that way. With the Season 2 premiere right around the corner, Farmiga is talking up the wild woman she plays on A&E.

Here are Vera's five reasons she thinks fans should cut Norman's mom a little slack…

1. “I admire her tenacious love for her child. She goes to extreme lengths to give her child the life that she imagines for him. And that is really valiant to me.”

2. She has a “generous heart” and “she's really disarmingly honest.”

'Bates Motel' Season 2 Secrets and Spoilers!

3. “Her hardware is working. Her software is a bit faulty.”

4. “She doesn't wrap Norman in bubble wrap all the time.”

5. “This is a story after all about family dysfunction… I have to work so hard to get an audience to identify with her, and to defend her and to admire her… for me, the name of the game is to present to you a woman who lives every day in the trenches of maternity… and also in the trenches of her own stubbornness and denial.”