So last week everyone escaped the Dome Matrix and two
apparently imaginary people came out as well.
So all the soggy people emerge – to find that they’re
still trapped behind the Dome. This doesn’t do a lot for morale. The rest of
the world breathes a sigh of relief that these silly silly people are still
locked up.
Barbie explains the wonderful beautiful world they had, a
world where Julia and Big Jim were both dead. Oh it was magical. She tells him
that Melanie killed Barbie’s dad (and Melanie’s dad).
Big Jim and James have a reunion where James reminds his
dad of all his abuse (and mixes in the time he was locked in a bomb shelter to
stop him kidnapping) and Big Jim hits him and says how weak and feeble he is.
Alas, they’re not both randomly killed by a new Dome shenanigan, because the
Dome loves to make me suffer.
Christine and Eva did, apparently, have a history before
the Dome. In fact, they found the egg 3 weeks ago (when the Dome went up) and
were transported to the Dometrix. They were anthropologists – and working for
Acteon to find the egg. They also have some ominous purple rock. Eva’s also
dealing with the trauma of thinking she was pregnant and now dealing with
Barbie being here and with Julia.
To Hunter, Norrie and Joe with the weird revelation that
Hunter now doesn’t need glasses and the budding love triangle. Oh we need a
love triangle, really. Joe angsts about his relationship with Norrie since she
feels different and moved on in the Dometrix.
Melanie, meanwhile, is in her tunnels and all sad about
her dead butterflies. Christine visits to tell her how terribad she has been at
her one job – leave everyone cocooned so the egg could “enthuse them with life
force” which sounds a lot better than it probably is. It also intended to turn
the whole town into a collective by means of drugged goo. They were chosen
because they found the egg first – Melanie was first but she clumsily died
while the egg tried to copy its whole agenda into her brain so, instead,
Christine got it all. Nice, could they download that agenda for the rest of us?
It would help convince us the writers aren’t winging it every week.
So plan B, Christine is going to the town meeting to
judge the town while Melanie gets ready to murder Julia if necessary (it’s
necessary!)
At the town hall meeting, Jim tries to take over again
and his first agenda is to find Melanie. Barbie decides to attack Big Jim – I approve.
But, alas, Christine and Eva arrives to stop the murdering. Damn it, Eva. Christine
spins her story of them both being hiking and entering the cocoons 3 weeks ago –
she also keeps her cover story from the Dometrix: she’s a therapist. Julia
still hates Big Jim, the one good decision she’s made.
The town, for some bizarre reason, is angry at Barbie for
breaking the Dometrix, because fake families was better than reality. Christine
and Julia help organise the town to work together – and Christine is actually
pretty good at getting the town to rally. I think getting murderer Sam to work
a support group is not the best plan though
Instead, Sam goes and finds James and stops him
committing suicide. Damn it, Dome, stop teasing me! Sam decides to throw a
whole lot of AA Rock Bottom philosophy at him and drags him to the support
group which he leads to help people. James leaves and runs into Christine who
gives more advice – which seems to be “kill Jim and burn your house down” I
approve.
Eva isn’t entirely thrilled to lie to everyone (or having
an anthropologist play therapist) but Christine insists – and sends her out to
find the “one thing that could expose us.” Uh-huh because people ACTUALLY talk
like that. This clumsy dialogue is comic. Of course Evil Jim overheard
He follows Eva (still followed by the dog-with-no-taste)
to where she digs up a camera in the woods. He grabs it from where she hides it
in her hotel room. Because that is way better hiding place than buried in the
woods. Good job Eva
The camera has done quite well for 3 weeks buried in the
woods and Jim is able to play back Christine finding the egg and it zapping
her. He’s interrupted by James burning down their house to help move on – he’s
also acting very woozy as his tells Jim he doesn’t exist. I suspect there’s
something personality warping in the cocoon goo beyond simple hormones. Or
possible James is just an odd person
So what’s the next important topic? Barbie was with Eva
and Julia isn’t happy… yeah Barbie in a shocking moment of being sensible,
tells Julia they’ve actually got more important things to deal with. They go
into the tunnels where Melanie has disappeared; Barbie is still having trouble
accepting that Melanie is evil and Julia refuses to not talk about Barbie’s
cocoon relationship with Eva.
They split up and Barbie finds Ben’ body where he
was killed after his Marginalised Swan
Song. He hurries in a panic to save Julia – to prevent Melanie from killing
Julia. Barbie now believes that Melanie is evil – because a bruised neck counts
way more than Julia’s testimony. He can now talk about Eva to Julia – including
how he fell in love and how they were together, yesterday while Julia was
mourned months ago.
As they leave the pit, Melanie separates them and dumps
Barbie back down without the ladder. Julia
and Melanie fight (personally I would have backed Julia
in that fight but her leg goes from 100% perfect to collapsing every 5 seconds).
Melanie may also have super strength. She starts strangling Julia but Christine
arrives and stabs her. Damn it Dom, you teased Julia’s death twice in 2
episodes. STOP!
Barbie crawls out of the bit and Christine fakes being upset about stabbing someone. As Barbie points out after they bury the bodies, now they’ll never know the answers from Melanie.
Norrie, Joe and Hunter keep love triangling and Norrie
has a good scene of grief where she misses the life she had in the cocoon –
which Hunter takes as chance for more flirting. And Joe being more mopey and
actually has a point about how Norrie and Joe just moved a body to get at the
goods and party is all kinds of disrespectful.
Joe also fails at gathering food – freeing the pig he
managed to catch in his snare only to watch Norrie shoot it and be all sad
panda about it.
Big Jim decides to load up a boat and head to the island –
he tells Julia that everyone who was cocooned has been changed. I think he’s
right. I also think he’s right – which is a terrible terrible thing to have to
feel. Julia, of course, disagrees – because she’s never right. Jim is also
joined by his stalky dog.
That night, Christine uses her purple rock to summon the
entire town who attend like weird zombie people though she notes others need
more work and others needs to be killed. Notably Eva is also one of the pod
people.
This entire season is just going to be one long tease isn’t
it? I’m constantly going to see characters I loathe (that would be almost all
of them) almost die but then juuuust pull back.
Do you know what makes the terrible, random, ill-thought
our and generally awful plot of Under the
Dome even worse? LOVE TRIANGLES! Love triangles everywhere! Please spare
me.
So now we have Dometrix and pod people. I swear the
writers just have a huge wall of random sci-fi horror tropes they throw darts
at while blinded folded and hen just run with it “tryphids?! Sure, the Dome now
makes plants eat people!”
This show may actually be in the running for being the worst
show we watch – I would say definitely but I also watched Olympus today
Olympus and Under the Dome. I want a damn medal.
