Jump to conclusions and go down the rabbit hole – literally – in the newest, least consequential and actually least interesting UtD ever!
You know, in the opening sequence, Barbie as Narrator says, “we will never stop fighting to find a way out.” But in fact…nobody in Chester’s Mill has ever tried to find a way out. We haven’t seen anybody digging a tunnel, or trying to drill through the dome, or experimenting with acid or radio waves or home-made lasers, not even the Evil Genius Science Teacher. And the rest of the world simply does not exist: the army pulled out last season for Reasons Unknown and Never Explained (and rarely even mentioned), and they’ve never darkened the Dome again. So the inconsistency in this show starts at the very top: even the narration can’t get it right, and clearly doesn’t care.
But let’s say something nice for a change: Norrie, played with a bottomless well of hostility by newcomer Mackenzie Lintz is the best bitch ever. She has the best lines every week, including this episode: “First you were alive. Then you were dead. Now you’re alive again. Two out of three ain’t bad.” LOVE her!
This week is all about character reversals and jumping to ridiculous conclusions because…you know, who cares? Character Reversal Number One: Junior, who was a near-homicidal maniac in Season One, obsessed with Angie and more than happy to lock her in a flooding bomb shelter for days, is now a soft-bodied little schmoob that Evil Uncle Sam pulls around by his nose. (And did you notice he doesn’t even react to his father’s attempted mass murder or imprisonment? Like at all?) Character Reversal Number Two: Phil the DJ, a kookie member of the lively Chester’s Mill counter-culture last season (who worked at a radio station that apparently died with its o-and-o in the Season One Finale), first became a cop – a cop? – and now ends his time (we think) as a surly, grim, violent and amoral Villain of the Week, as well as Big Jim’s best friend – a character who bears no resemblance to DJ Phil Season One. Character Reversal Number Three: The population of CM itself, that glorious nameless mob, who used to think Big Jim was an asshole, then thought he was Jesus, then hated him for trying to poison him, and now welcomes him back into the bosom of their bounty twenty-four hours after he tried to mass murder them. (That’s not so much a character reversal en masse as just severe bipolar disorder.) And Character Reversal Number Four: Rebecca Pine, the mad scientist high school teacher who’s been lording it over everybody with her “science” the last few weeks, folds like a deck of cards when she sees a total stranger shot, gets also mousy and uncertain, betrays Big Jim, and joins the Good Guys. (Maybe it’s time to start using your super-brain to BREAK THE FRIGGING DOME, Becky!)
One of the weirder disappearances: Dwight Yoakam as the psycho-evangelist-barber (you’d think we were making this stuff up, wouldn’t you) must have had a concert gig. He done run off, though his absence is now the basis for tons of mindless speculation.
If Norrie gets hte best lines, Melanie the Amnesia Girl gets the worst: “I just found out I died. I can’t just sit around and do nothing.” I dunno, you were doing that pretty well for, like twenty years.
Julia’s big leadership initiative: A voluntary food share program. Weird that nobody thought of that for the first, like, fifteen days Under the Dome, even back when there wasn’t enough water go go around.
Evil Uncle Sam’s got some balls. He’s actually mad that Junior’s Mom kept her non-death a secret – this from a guy who co-killed a girl twenty years earlier, kept it a secret ever since, then killed Angie and is keeping that a secret. How dare people not be honest with him?
This show has twisted itself into so many notes that even the characters are pointing it out now. How come Evil Uncle Sam didn’ admit he knew Amnesia Girl? Why do you want me to be Sheriff when two hours ago you thought I was Big Jim’s butt-buddy? Where are you getting all this food? Even these guys don’t believe this anymore. Though they do seem to think that just pointing these things out are as good as explaining them.
To be fair, the long-standing question of the “loaves and fishes” diner is explained this week. Sort of. Minor character Andrea, who’s been helping out at the diner since last ‘year’, has been smuggling food in from her dead husband Lloyd’s survivalist basement. And so much food: enough “to feed the entire town for two months”. Now that is a damn survivalist! Thanks, Lloyd!
It’s a bad week for the drinking game. Remember, every new character we’ve never seen before, one drink, every new power from a character or the dome, one drink? This week … nothing so far. Unless you count character reversals. Then we are trashed.
Tonight’s biggest disappointment: the long-awaited cat fight between Norrie the Bitch and Amneisa Girl, but…aww, damn, it ends in one shove into a bramble bush? That’s it?
Crap, episodes of Passions had better plotting than this.
Okay, so Phil snuck out all the food and left empty boxes in the VOLUNTARY, GOD DAMN IT FOOD BANK. Then he blew it up so he could blame Julia for bad planning. So…nobody would look through the wreckage, to see if any food could be salvaged? And nobody would notice that all those cardboard boxes were empty – no shattered glass, no scattered food? No? Well…no.
This thing is just a mass of jumped conclusions. Dwight Yoakam disappears, therefore he’s going to kill the Four Protectors (who we’ve heard precious little about since last season). The food bank blows up, therefor Julia’s a poor leader. The best way to discover Amnesia Girl’s “secret of rebirth” is … a blood test? Are you guys not even trying to make sense anymore?
One lesson learned tonight: don’t ever trust a DJ with a gun. Period.
If we hadn’t signed on to the bitter end with this show, now would be the moment. Big Jim and Rebecca the Mad Scientist tried to poison the whole town just twenty four hours ago, and got caught doing it red-handed. But Julia’s big solution to this, after announcing a high-minded plan for arraignment and trial just hours earlier, is to LET BIG JIM AND REBECCA GO, and have free run of the town. Wow, guess that guy that Phil the DJ shot died for absolutely nothing, eh? And we’re talking Big Jim here. Mass murder. Manipulation. Kidnapping. Murder. AND JULIA LETS HIM GO (unilaterally, mind you. No jury, no council, no vote. Must be good to be queen.) And her reasoning? “What he did was inexcusable…but not unforgivable.” Whaa…t? Say again?
And by the way, if you’re trying to keep Andrea’s huge food supply a secret, to avoid another, you know explosion or fire or something, bringing out a shitload of food and then loudly “thanking Andrea” is not the best way to do it. Face it: Julia’s got the worst political instincts ever.
And we end with, we kid you not, a secret tunnel hidden in a high school locker. A school that’s been in full operation for decades. A locker that’s been there the whole time. A tunnel that seems as if it was put there twenty years ago, when the meteorite fell. And nobody found it before.
