The mysterious egg’s mysterious origin mysteriously revealed, and it explains absolutely…nothing. That and more teases, characters reversals, and coinky-dinks than we deserve as episode four spreads. Virally even.

To catch you up: for the first fifteen minutes, Big Jim’s a remorseful good guy who thinks he’s been chosen by the Dome, then an affectless stumblebum pushed around by a girl for the next thirty minutes, then a beloved leader actually worshiped by the town in Minute 48 who is hauled away as a failed mass murder of that selfsame town – without protest!– in Minute 49. Oh, and Genius High School Science Teacher Rebecca really is a ruthless bitch – like we’ve said all along, the Lex Luthor of Chester’s Mill. Maybe she’s always been like this, but how would we Know? She’s a newbie, after.

So the kids keep Amnesia Girl’s “secret origin” from Barbie because…why? And didn’t bother to run across town to tell him the e-mails worked yesterday? Of course, the secret doesn’t hold for two minutes: Amnesia Girl spills the beans herself before the opening titles even roll.

So the pigs now have swine flu? And that can spread to humans? (Actually, variant animal viruses spreading to humans is really rare. But fah! Science.)

The big develoment, courtesy Dwight Yoakam, our stand-in-crazy-ass-preacher-barber: Junior’s Mom, Big Jim’s Wife, knew the Dome was coming for, like, twenty years. That’s why she left – or ‘escaped,’ as Dwight calls it. And he was the only one who could help her. (Wow, must have been tough: We’re talking 1994 or so. Middle of an economic boom, high employment, plentiful food and civil rights. SO hard for a gtown woman to get iin her car and drive out of a tiny Maine town to escape all be her lonesome. Those were tough times, dude. So thank you, Dwight!)

Wait: “She thought the Dome would follow her?” What the hell?

Perfect idea, though: even though you know this extraordinary thing is going to happen, abandon your infant son and communicate with your one true friend in town, who’s still in danger, by sending him wordless, handmade postcard painted with enigmatic, disjointed and unexplained images that only make sense after the event depicted has actually occurred. Now that’s precognition, baby!

Norrie is the only good thing in this show: ”Don’t undermine my feelings of jealousy and abandonment! But since were chatting…how are you and Julia?” Gotta love that girl.

Followed immediately by some of the worst dialogue ever: Joe: “The dome came out of nowhere and changed our lives forever! Angie was killed; I might never know why. This is a chance to find an answer – one damn answer! – even if it’s not for me.” What, are they splitting up the scenes 50-50 between professionals, who wrote the last scene, and high school emo wannabeez, who wrote this scene? Please.

It’s nice that Julia still has time to condition her hair and do full make-up every morning, what with the impending doom and all.

“I’m been monitoring the pigs for weeks,” Lexi Luthor says. Wait – they’ve only been under the dome for two weeks, right? So she started her E-Vil Plan before the dome ever showed? Beteen high school science classes? Never mind: Bottom line is Chester Mills’ own diabolical genius has engineered a virus that will kill a quarter of the population (why a quarter? How a quarter? Just the weakest?) and is ready to be released. Oh, and the virus didn’t get inside the Dome. It’s always been here in ChesMi, she says. Though Big Jim says no: the dome made this happen. He’s all spiritual now. Just like Jesus with a big ol’ belly. And a lethal bio-weapon.

It’s actually kind of amusing to see Barbie so adamant that Amnesia Girl can’t possibly be from 1988. That’s just silly. Said by a guy living under a huge invisible dome that came out of nowhere, flips off magnetic fields, makes exploding purple eggs and blood-red acid rain. Yeah: of course he’d be skeptical.

So the virus is this week’s monster of the week, like the rain was last week and the magnetic field the week before. This is what we’re reduced to.

Meaningless origin time! The egg, it seems, fell from space twenty years ago. Amnesia Girl and young versions of Dwight Yoakam, Uncle Sam and Junior’s Previously Dead Mom all found it together, but Amnesia Girl made the mistake of trying to leave the impact crater (such a pretty little impact crater! That nobody else in town even heard being made!), forcing the others to shove her to death. We learn this through some of the worst-acted exposition in the history of the show. And tha’s saying something.

But if a younger version of Uncle Sam was one of the original Amnesia Girl’s murderers, how come he didn’t recognize his resurrected girlfriend/victim in earlier episodes? Maybe he’s hiding something! Maybe he has amnesia, too! Or maybe the writers are doubling back ’cause when they wrote those scene earlier they had no idea that this is what they were going to do? Hey, this is the Dome, baby. Anything is possible (though it’s probably the third choice. Seriously.}

So Uncle Sam and Julia are clearly deductive geniuses. They come across some dead pigs and a whiney farmer, and immediately infer, in one massive just, that Big Jim and Lexi Luthor have cultivated a weaponized version of the virus and will be spreading through the drinking water (why drinking water? What led them there?) this very night. Do not pass Go, do not collect an ounce of sense. Oh, and they further deduce that that the virus is a ‘herd-thinning’ strategy that’s too strong, and will kill way more people than intended. Wow, they are great. Take THAT, Elementary! See you in the fall!

So wait: the town meeting and some kidnd of big church service are taking place at the same time? How could/why would that be?

So even though they get caught, and even though they are clearly remorseless would-be mass murderers are nabbed with the virus in their hands, Lexi Luthor has the gall to say she wasn’t going to do it. And OMG, THEY BELIEVE HER. For Chrissake, we were there.when she overheard that the pigs were all dead and deduced the virus was too strong and would kill the healthy as well as the weak. THAT’S what stopped her. Not a crisis of conscience! Not suddenly realizing that “no on can play God”! We saw that wasn’t true in just the previous scene. STOP MOVING AROUND, YOU PEOPLE! STAY IN ONE PLACE!

…and we end with the blossoming romance between Julia and Uncle Sam. And sweet Jesus, they’re still doing awkward exposition up ’til the lat couple of minutes of the show. And just to stretch things out a teeny bit longer…when Barbie and Julia finally see each other, she moves immediately towards resolving their issues quickly, cleanly, and naturally…by refusing to speak to him. That’ll teach him. Instead, she has tea with Uncle Sam. And we see in the last few seconds the scratches on his shoulder. Oh, so he killed poor Angie! BUM-bum-bummmmmmm!

Has everyone lost their minds? Did all the writers leave during hiatus and not come back? Why has this show fallen into a nonsensical “threat of the week” mode that doesn’t do anything but confuse us? And why is the dialogue so bad?

Tune in next week for more unanswered questions, ominous looks, and awkward exposition…if you dare.