Random Domey-ness causes a bright light to cover the sky
which disturbs a new character in a cabin somewhere, and makes everyone freak
out a little on the gallows where they plan to kill Barbie (especially Junior
who is kind of always freaked out a little anyway). It comes with a strange
noise and all the church bells ringing -
and a bell is torn out of the tower to hit the Dome (the wrecked tower nearly
splats Joe, Norrie and Angie (it misses.
Which I’m sure we’re all happy about)
By the lake, Julia has just made it to shore when she notices someone struggling in the middle (rather than get back into the boat she’s just got out of, she swims). At the hanging a bunch of people in the crowd pass out.
Junior decides he can’t hang Barbie because the Dome has
spoken. Big Jim the arsehole doesn’t really care what the Dome has to say – but
Linda agrees and she has a gun so Big Jim kind of has to listen to her.
Julia performs CPR on the woman she rescued from the lake
and is joined by New Stranger character who helps. CPR works like it always
does in television (like the touch of a benevolent healing deity) and she lives
– they take her to New Guy’s cabin. New Guy is called Sam Verdreaux and was an
EMT (except for the that drinking issue) and could probably have been really
useful all last season when he managed to avoid the entire new town. The girl
they saved is all silent, but awake.
Meanwhile, Barbie, Linda and Junior go to the Dome to receive it’s wisdom and see a lot of metal objects stuck to it. Magnetic Dome rips away all of their weapons, metal tags and drags Barbie (really unrealistically – it’s bodily dragging him but he has enough space to stand up?) to it until Linda uncuffs him managing to push him away from the Dome before the car being dragged to it splats him
It splats her instead. Linda, you’ve gone to a better
place (this would not be difficult, the bar is set low).
Big Jim blames Junior, because giving Junior complexes is
his hobby. There’s a brief argument
where Barbie both accuses Jim of framing him then tells Junior it doesn’t
matter (Junior apparently finds THIS protestation of innocence believable,
unlike Barbie’s previous protestations of innocence). Barbie is focused on
protecting the rest of the town from magnetic chaos and when Jim tries to grab
him, Barbie punches him and knocks him to the floor. Barbie goes to find Julia,
leaving Junior to realise his dad is a murderer and not expect his terrible “hard
choices” excuse.
Meanwhile at the cabin, Sam has a sad past of sadness.
Even the Dome doesn’t care and throws out some more bright light (I will hereby
call this “Screw your damn Manpain” light)
Barbie breaks a car window which rather annoys the owner
and she has a shotgun (new character, Linda died so a new POC token arises to
take her place! She may or may not be
surrounded by lightning and yell about the Quickening) She recognises him
as a murderer but he takes the gun off her and give it back, proving he could
have murdered her but totally didn’t. He’s just a car thief. She has been
studying the Dome, timing the weird noises (which she, without even cracking a
smile, compares to a pregnant woman’s contractions). She’s Rebecca Pine, a
science teacher and she thinks all those sleepy people may die soon. They
realise that people living close to the Dome are probably having the most
trouble
Cut to Joe, Angie and Norrie (who still haven’t been
splattered by anything) they realise that Carolyn is still inside and they rush
in to find her unconscious on the floor, they try to help her while dodging
flying metal stuff. No more squishing, but Joe does get his hand nailed to a
table. The magnet forces the nail right through Joe’s hand. Ouch. Rebecca and
Barbie arrive in time to rescue everyone and get them out of the house just
before it collapses entirely
With all this rampant magnetism flying around, Jim
decides the best place to go is his metal lined bunker full of metal guns with
its metal bunk beds and metal door and metal shelves and metal lights. He is
trapped inside. With Dodee’s ghost. Yes ghost. Or maybe hallucination. He
struggles to get out but the whole magnetic movement of death thing seems to
have stopped.
The gang we’re not supposed to want dead all gather in
the school where Rebecca has built a model and Carolyn still doesn’t wake up
(she’s in the Domey coma), apparently the electromagnetic pulses have been
happening a lot and that’s what caused the whole butterfly thing. Anyway, the
school is the safest place being the dead centre of the Dome so everyone should
go there and they need to counter the Domey magnetism by building their own big
magnet. Angela has a better solution – the Domey visions said kill Jim, so they
kill Jim and the Dome stops its tantrum. Barbie decides that killing people
based on hallucinations is a bad plan
I’d agree, but you have plenty of non-hallucination reasons to kill Jim as well.
Back to Noone Cares Cabin where Julia decides she needs
to get back to town and Sam decides the silent girl on his sofa is actually his
dead-by-suicide sister who is now not dead. She’s also no longer on his sofa, having
wandered off into town.
Angie runs into Junior and they decide that Jim is evil and to get a gun from the police station
Meanwhile Jim rigs a grenade to blow the door off the bunker – the magnetism flying around enough to trap him inside but not enough to have him pulped by the many metal things inside. Ghostly Dodee says ominous things about sacrifice and if Jim keeps trying to use the Dome to become king then badness will happen to Junior
The next magnet wave hits and nearly everyone collapses except Barbie – who is joined by the awake Julia. Tearful kissing reunion among all the unconscious people!
This calls for a random Junior dream sequence, hallucinating
his mother and the only other guy awake in town (Jim. Of course) runs around
looking for him, he finds his unconscious body and is all sad, appealing to the
Dome. He now gets to see Hallucination Linda who taunts his selfishness and the
harm it causes and encourage him to sacrifice. Which is when the noose on the
gallows starts swinging. Just in case Jim missed the hint.
He gets on the scaffold, puts the noose round his neck –
and Julia and Barbie arrive. Gah, couldn’t you have made it 15 minutes later?
He can’t pull the lever and asks if they want to (in my mind they both jump up
and down and yell “me! Me!”) and Julia quickly hurries forward. Barbie’s still
the only member of Team Let Jim Live. Julia then bottles it so Jim stomps his
foot on the trapdoor to make it open. It does – but as he falls Julia cuts the
rope with the knife Sam gave her (that knife must be incredibly sharp)
Jim lives. Damn it. Stop teasing Under the Dome!
The Dome is super happy because they ended the killing
(you couldn’t have been super happy about ending the killing before you killed
Linda, Dome?) and everyone wakes up. Saving Jim saves the world? Bah
Spooky silent girl uncovers Linda’s body and says “sorry”
before closing her eyes. Well the apology makes it all better Domey Girl – but hey
she was killed so you could teach people not to kill. Probably not the best
learning moment ever.
The townsfolk all celebrate and destroy the scaffold.
While Barbie and Julia are fully behind mystical Dome giving life lessons
through near mass slaughter, Rebecca things her giant magnet worked.
Phill is the only one who remembers that Barbie was
actually being hanged for the murder of Dodee and, therefore, letting him go
isn’t actually ok. But Jim says Barbie is innocent and all is good – which Phill
seems to accept (at least he objects to the “we got through it alive” so
someone remembers Linda is dead) and Jim makes him sheriff.
Jim also offers Joe, Carolyn, Angie and Norrie to stay
with him – Carolyn accepts, so she can keep an eye on him.
Rebecca is eager to start on the next town problem. And
Angie makes it clear she would have loved to see Jim hang – at last, someone I
agree with. Then she’s all friendly with Junior… AARGH. Sam arrives in town and apparently he’s
Junior’s uncle. Jim doesn’t like him. What a shock.
Jim tries to make peace with Junior but since he won’t
believe Junior’s hallucinations, Junior storms off and gets sick of being
called “Junior” as well, insisting on “James”.
I think Sam and Barbie are going to have the jealousy glares over Julia
Cut to Junior’s mother who is still painting. She’s
outside the Dome.
That night Angie follows Domey Girl into the school and sees
her put something in a locker. Domey Girl runs off – just as someone appears
and seems to hit Angie with something – there’s a stream of blood.
Yeah… I can’t same I’m excited by the show’s return.
Barbie didn’t die! Well I am shocked – an attractive
cishet white male protagonist living through his almost certain death? I didn’t
see that coming! Not at all! It was a good thing it was such an unpredictable
and worrying thing, otherwise
the entire cliffhanger the last season ended on would have been ridiculously pointless
and rather dull.
…
Why does Junior suddenly believe something that is no
more or less clear now than it was before? Beyond “PLOT DEMANDS IT!”
Jim didn’t die and we made a big thing about his almost
death. Linda did die – completely randomly and pointlessly and pretty much
everyone forgot about it 5 seconds after it happened (oh wait, Domey Girl said “sorry”
well that’s just wonderful).
And her body’s not even cold before the replacement WOC shows up. Linda died and in the great Television universe, when your last main POC character dies another is spawned to take their place so the Token Chain remains intact. This is the T-Dog Chain and it must not be broken! The last person who broke it was unable to be properly smug when their show was called racist.
Hey, with Alice, Linda and Dodee the Dome has a trifecta of randomly dead minority women to haunt the survivors!
Carolyn being carried around unconscious most of the
episode actually gives her greater participation in this episode than about
half of the episodes of season 1. YAY IMPROVEMENT!
Hey, does everyone remember WHY Angie hates Jim? Angie
hates Jim because Junior kidnapped and imprisoned her to try and make her love
him and Jim tried to make her keep quiet about it. Yes she should hate Jim. It
makes no sense for her to make friends with an ally with Junior on the matter.
I wonder if the Dome is some kind of random experiment on
people where some alien scientist throws random shit at people and sees how
they react. Like rats in a maze or people on facebook. At the moment it makes
as much sense as anything else.
