James finds that sexy while using the pod goo is
super-awesome – but Christine becomes more worried by the purple crystals in
the tunnels are going out. She asks for James’s unquestioning loyalty and, of
course, the man who has so many issues about never being his own person and
constantly being dominated by his father agrees. Why wouldn’t he?
In the worst character pairing of all time (I will call
this Team JUST DIE ALREADY) Jim is telling Julia all about the infection and
trying to convince Julia about the camera with the damning evidence about
Christine on it. Except it’s missing and Julia, actually showing sense, isn’t
willing to take his word. I think this is because she psychically knows that
trusting him would be the right decision so does the opposite (looking back on
the last three seasons this explanation makes way more sense than Julia
actually making an actual reasonable decision).
She still goes along with his plan involving traps and
diversions. This allows Julia to snoop and steal a file called “Alaska”. Well
try to. She gets captured until Jim rescues her. With a gun to evil guy’s head
she makes him show the camera footage (now all fuzzy).
They question the guy and find that his company has found
a broken egg before – one with a vast amount of clean, safe energy. Well clean –
except for it infecting the scientists with pod-people alien cells making them
act as a group and commit suicide together all at the behest of the leader.
They need to find that leader who will be chief podperson
Julia points out pod-person in chief is their employee,
Christine, and they learn she’s an anthropologist and she and Eva just
disappeared. Evil guy also claims he wants to help her. Uh-huh. But he claims
they are working on a treatment, a cure. Nor does he know what the leader will
do or whether it’s even safer to split them up.
All this gun pointing seems to have put them all on the
same team. Well, sort of – gun pointing still happens and they still want to
know where the egg is.
Barbie and Eva, meanwhile are all couply and Barbie tells
Eva that silly paranoid Julia thinks Eva and Christine are lying. Eva, however,
would utterly fail as a professional poker player though and completely fails
to reassure him. Instead saying she just can’t answer that. Romance tip – if your
lover asks you “are you lying about who you are?” and you answer “I can’t
answer that” then you’re going to need way more than an Agony Aunt to fix that
It’s nice to see them free but I have to say them lazing
around and being all couply feels sweet but also hella lazy. I mean people are
struggling to survive and patch things together and they taking a time out? I
do like their loyalty oath to each other – Norrie takes it a bit far by
throwing in that she’d rather be die than become a “glazed-eye freak!”
See, last episode a builder said “don’t remove that beam,
it’s load bearing.” While James, who was a builder in the Dometrix, said it
totally wasn’t and Christine supported her minion and they removed the beam.
Turns out ACTUAL builder was right (shocking) and part of the roof has
collapsed, hurting several people. Actual builder Pete rightly blames
Christine.
Christine decides to dish out orders on how to fix it but
Pete is really not willing to take more inept orders from her. Barbie decides
to calm him down (which is uncalled for – he should be angry at her) and
Christine angrily orders Barbie to kick Pete out – but Barbie’s pod-peopleness
is also damaged and while he’s calm about it, he’s also clear he’s not taking
orders from her. And he goes to Peter to ask the actual builder advice on what
to do. Christine is not a happy bunny. Barbie and Pete bond over mutual
mistrust of Christine and their army history. With a side order of sexism, of
course.
They plan to coup against Christine but all doesn’t go
smoothly – as Barbie finds evidence of deliberate sabotage in the roof. Alas,
he shares his suspicions with Christine – who decides that Pete needs to be “dealt
with”
Sam also comes to the ruin and asks James what happened –
and again we see the pod-peopleness fading in those who disobey her orders, he’s
shocked that Christine would back James up on what to do when she has no idea
about construction.
Christine tries to ask Eva why Barbie isn’t on the team
any more but, instead, Eva wants, again, to know why they’re lying. Christine’s
patronising attempt to silence her doesn’t win Eva over – Christine offers to
explain everything in the cavern
She catches up on Sam and finds he’s been drinking, she
actually has the audacity to blame him for people standing around when the
ceiling collapsed. She easily throws that one back in her face and joins the
rebellion – walking away from Christine despite her protests.
Christine is not accepting all this authority – and goes
to Abbie to do the best she can to tear Abbie down and her self-esteem over her
daughter (damaged from Abbie’s drinking while pregnant). Christine cruelly
exploits Abbie’s pain and vulnerability to push her towards suicide.
Step 2 is for Christine to meet Eva in the caves and tell
her she has been implanted with Egg-life to make her a doubleplusgood podperson
and be a mother to Barbie’s child. Eva doesn’t like this sale’s pitch – but Christine
has James capture her so she can be forcibly covered in podpeople goo. Eva becomes
a good little podperson, like James: and James has apparently become just like
her. Unfortunately for Christine, they don’t have enough goo for everyone
She orders Hunter to go fetch Joe and Norrie. Neither of
whom want to be herded like cattle (Norrie’s speech is pretty snarkily epic).
When Hunter tries to physically drag her off the roof where she and Joe are, he
ends up falling off onto the brick path.
Sam returns to Abbie to find her dead from suicide.
Christine then goes to Pete and warns him that the big
bad Barbie is out to get him, even though she pleaded with him not to (I also
think Christine was behind the sabotage). She tries to turn Pete against Barbie
to kill him first (which would force Pete to act in self-defence).
Barbie is called in to get Hunter and they bring in to
the town hall on a stretcher – he’s live but can’t feel his legs. Hunter claims
Norrie pushed him even while Joe and Norrie deny that happened. James rallies
the pod people against them – and Norrie and Joe try to run surrounded by pod
people who wall them in.
Julia has returned to her damn fool ways and decides to
camp in Christine’s office, with a gun, and confront Christine. Kidnapping her
and taking het to the lake, the plan is to force Christine to take the cure –
and Christine is open and gloating about ending humanity
Barbie gabs Eva for medical help for Hunter – while she’s
staring pod-person-like at the skies. But when they run back a bomb knocks them
down. Pete has been wound up and is aimed at Barbie. He attacks Barbie with a
baseball bat demanding to claim, among other things, “Barbie’s girl”. He also
hits Eva. Of course Barbie kills him and then Barbie and Eva kiss and declare
their devotion
At the island it turns out that Evil guy is shockingly,
evil. They capture Rennie – and threaten Jim’s dog to try and make him
co-operate. Jim confesses that he broke the egg for the sake of his dog. Am I
supposed to find it sweet that he’s so devoted to this dog after being so
abusive to humans? Evil guy intends to experiment on Jim.
I think the rebellion against Christine is interesting in
some ways because it’s really a battle of authenticity vs content. Sam, Norrie,
Peter and Barbie are not, on the whole, nice people. They’re probably much
nicer and even much happier when they are/if they would become joyful
podpeople. But instead their defiance is one of authenticity – being who they
are, who they really are, even if that doesn’t mean me happiness or being a
pleasant people. This even applies to Sam whose self-assessment is clearly
destructive, an inaccurate summation of addiction and his own self-sabotage
self-assessment. But it is still HIS self-assessment – hopeless, inaccurate,
highly damaging, but still his.
But it’s also very gendered. Sure there are women who
have freed themselves from pod-peopleness, but most of the overt defiance of
Christine comes from men bucking against a woman who dares to give them orders:
Sam, Barbie and Pete.
Even Christine’s lash back seems to hit women first (though
not entirely – viciously attacking Abbie through her addiction and her disabled
child to drive her to suicide. Forcibly kidnapping Eva to have her enslaved
with goo. Even Hunter’s fall focuses on Norrie. This is who she intends to get
these rebellious men back in order – through the women they care about. Even
Peter and Barbie being set against each other involves Eva
I think it says everything that not only was I not surprised by Carolyn not leaping from her plot box to fight for her daughter, but I even forgot Carolyn was in this show to do so until after the episode ended
So Under the Dome has settled on a plot – alien invasion it seems
