Maybe they should have called this one “Barbie and the Chamber of Secrets.” Lots of spontaneous cave-crawling, lots of telling us things we already know, again, and the first, last, and almost incidental arrival of an airy fairy Threat of the Week: Tornadome!

But let’s start with that narration. It keeps saying, “Two weeks ago…” But in this season alone at least a week of game-time has passed. It’s not two weeks anymore. It’s like, what, a month, maybe? (Oh, and they’re still not fighting to get out. They don’t even talk about that.)
How weird is it that the big ‘reveal’ from last week – the (yes, we know how stupid it is) tunnel entrance in the kid’s locker – isn’t even in the opening recap. Bet after its use tonight, it’ll never get mentioned again. Like the virus. And the island in the lake. And the beloved dead Sheriff and his Deputy.
Some of these lines (mostly Melanie’s, poor thing) are so awful they have to be celebrated: “Why am I here?” she asks. “Because I’m connected to some egg?” You gotta love this crap. Or you’d be watching Longmire.

And today’s threat of the week: BIG DUSTY WIND, right out of nowhere. Remember the drinking game: new Dome powers, or new characters, or big character reversals … drink! So here’s your first shot: Tornadome!
Dwight Yoakam must still be on tour or something. They talk about him endlessly, but he’s nowhere to be seen. At least he had time to set a few convenient booby-traps before he left. Such a thoughtful replacement-evangelical nutbar!
So in this version of the Dome, wind either passes through without interruption or is just spontaneously whipped up and easily damped down. So gas, and maybe water some time, and light but not radio waves, and not sound, but … oh, God, we’re getting a headache
Man, there is a whole lot of talk about a character we haven’t seen in three weeks and then only saw for two episodes. But now, that Lyle guy is a murderer, a mad genius, and apparenlty the source of all evil. Not so much the Lex Luthor of Chester’s Mill (that’s Rebecca’s job!); more like the Dungeon Mater.
Okay, so the air is…super-dry. Even though there’s a big lake inside the Dome. And somehow this dry, dry wind is connected to the red rain from a couple weeks ago, and…and topsoil and … hell, Lexi Luthor even says the dome is “semi-permeable,” but apparently dirt can clog it, so…where’s this wind coming from? Why is it dry? What would a big misting device…ohhh, never mind.
Uncle Sam gets the other shudderrific lines this week: “I’m sick of you calling me a liar!” And just because I am a liar, I .. um … uh…
The town hates Big Jim! Then loves him! Them hats him again! Then..loves him ’cause he gave a kid his inhaler! Then…
More bad words for Sam: “I left the love of my life in a hole, like garbage. And now she’s back.” Of course, I either didn’t recognize her when I first saw her because the writers hadn’t thought this stuff up yet, or I am a really good actor – no, that’s not it, and I haven’t even really tried to talk to her or even find her and watch her from a distance since her return. Oh, and LYLE pushed her, not ME! Seriously!
The rehabilitation of Lexi Luthor, Evil Genius High School teacher, continues. Now she’s a prickly woman who helped her dying father and was all wrong about Big Jim. Or, to put it another way, she has no real personality at all and is just a big wad of Silly Putty that writers use for whatever purpose they need this week. And this week: she can build bombs! DRINK!
The dust cleared up from the big wind-driven sprtizer! Which is really lucky, ’cause those huge clouds of CGI dust can be really tough, especially when the high-speed wind ISN’ EVEN MOVING THE PERFECTLY MOTIONLESS TREES IN THE BACKGROUND.
Even the writers are seeing the cracks. Julia says to Evil Scientist, “How many ways do you know to kill people?” and when the reconstituted Four are fooling around in the lake, Joe the Wimp angrily says “So Angie’s replaceable now?” and Not-So-Bad-For-a-Psychotic Junior says, “Nobody can replace Angie! But…” But yeeah, Melanie the Amnesia girl is really just a replacement for Dead Angie now. What, did Britt Robertson ask for more money or something? Get a sitcom on Fox? What’s the deal? (oooh, she’s in that new Brad Bird sf adventure Tomorrowland with George Clooney and Hugh Laurie and Judy Greer. Never mind.)
Even Barbie gets some of the stinky dialog this week: “You look for what makes going on worth it. Take Julia. Being with her…that’s a chance for me to be good.” Ah, God…Stephen, man, we understand you may have some affection for this show, but doesn’t this make you cringe, too? You would never write a line like that. The Baarbie/Uncle Sam dialogue in the locker-tunnel is just…awful.
Oops, Uncle Sam and Barbie’s big broconciliation is interrupted by the inconvenient fact that Uncle Sam’s a, you know, murderer of innocent teenagers, as we’ve known for a while now. But wait a second: turns out Uncle Sam is the one who thinks killing the Four will bring down the Dome, and once he has completed his unholy mission, he will kill himself. Promise. Okay. Okay. If that has been his plan all along, he’s had like, what, a thousand changes to kill Joe, Norrie, and Junior, individually or separately, since his magical appearance at the beginning of Season Two (why he didn’t decide to do this in Season One, since he’s known all about the coming of the Dome for twenty friggin’ years is never explained, much less address, but still). Especially Junior. And except for one half-assed attempt as smotheration on Psycho Boy a week or two ago, he hasn’t even tried tokill him – a least not since he axed Angie, which he so totally did.What is this guy, the Hamlet of Chester’s Mill? Or just the worse serial killer ever?