Does anything really important happen this week? Not really. A little of the old in-out, maybe, but mostly just a lot of people running around bumping into each other. Like a Moliere farce, but boring. Q: Is this what horror and science fiction on the major TV networks has come to? A: Yes.
So Barbie, son of Corporate Overlord Barbie (our favorite doll!) is not in the custod of the NotArmy, some kind of black-shirted shadow-gov group. The whole scene is so painfully familiar it’s almost (but not quite) funny: your standard paranoid proto-fascist militarist vs. and your standard cocky rogue agent who gets punched in the kidney a lot but just doesn’t care, man.
Here’s something important to remember – temporarily. Big Jim doesn’t even know his wife is alive and his been hiding in (apparently nearby) Zenith for years. He’s like the only guy who doesn’t know his wife is alive.
Wow, Julia’s the worst Monarch ever: she’s ready to give up the egg for Barbie just like that. Wasn’t she supposed to be its protector, right up there with the Magical Quartet? (And no, not the Beatles.)
So let’s be clear, now that they’re beating us over the head with it: Barbie’s Dad is an Evil Corporate Overlord. We kind’a sort’a knew that already, so no, no drink yet. Sorry, you’ll have to face this talky-talk-talk dead sober.
Is it just us, or is there a weird sense of aimlessness in this episode? Lots of people recapping stuff we already know to each other, lots of rushing around to do things the have already been done or don’t need to be?
Corporate Overloard Barbie Dad says to the hacker, “My computer has a remote interface.” Or, as we non Evil Masterminds would refer to it ..wi-fi.Bum-bum-BUMMM….
Joe says, “It makes me think whoever’s sending this e-mail is controlling the signal.” Whoa, Joe, slow down. What was your first clue, Sherlock?
Another worst-ever idea: that playhouse in the Zenith playground. Yeah, great idea to build a tiny little kid-sized playhouse in a public place with a locking door and no windows. Nothing weird there. Somebody get Pawnee’s Parks & Recreation Department on the line. They would know what to do.
Whew, march of the incompetents this week: the interrogator-guy with Sinister Dad’s ‘security company’ (who seems to be the only one of them who can talk) knows just how dangerous Barbie Boy is, but still gets close enough to him to get whackedwhile carrying the keys to his handcuffs.
And the Amazing, Ever-Flexible Lexi Luthor, the high school teacher/superscientist, just can’t quit Big Jim. She loves him, she hates him, she loves him and then … makes no difference what group she’s in. This week, she betrays Joe to Big Jim for, basically, no reason at all. Good stratgy, Lexi: give mass-murderer-in-training Big Jim anything he wants, including access to the Egg.
Ooh, here we are: Junior’s Mom explains the harbinger of her visions, and a rully, rully important thing never mentioned before: her vision of a spiral. A never-revealed symbol right up there with the, whatchacallit, Obelisk of Zenith. FIRST DRINK!
“Julia,” Lexi says as she seems to turn on Big Fim. “I know you don’t trust me. You can waste time trying to make up your mind about me, but you can just accept my help.” Or in other words…completely ignore my consistently inconsistent and unconvincing behavior, just go with it. Kind of the whole philosophy of Under the Dome, Season 2. Bet they have it on the wall of the writer’s room.
Oh, for: the love of God. The one person that Junior’s Mom just happens to think of, to go when running from the security cops,just happens to be Hunter, the instantly visible hacker we met last week, who just happens to have been her best student when she…um…taught art at Zenith High. What? And he introduces us to a second hacker, whose name is Trevor or something but whom we shall call Cannon Fodder. Wow, what an amazing, not to mention lazy and totally unconvincing coincidence!
Big Jim has a pretty hilarious whiteboard conversation through the Dome with the never-before seen leader of the Security Team. He starts it by holdilng up a note to a random soldier: “I NEED TO TALK TO THE MAN IN CHARGE.” Wow, that’s all it took? How come he, big-time leader/chosen savior of the town, working to get his people out, never thought of hat before? A sign. Genius. Anyway the converstion itself makes little sense: I CAN GET YOU WANT YOU WANT [Egg sketch. Maybe. Drawing is clearly not Big Jim’s strong suit.] … YOU DEAL WITH NO ONE BUT ME … I HAVE TO BRING EVERYONE … OKAY NEVER MIND, JUST ME AND MY SON. Bring them…where? When? You mean you have a way out? And you the military doesn’t want the innocent, clueless people of Chester’s Mill to escape? No? Why? What…
Junior’s Mom seems barely miffed by the fact that her brother killed an innocent teenager girl because he thought she might, somehow, but connected to his complicity in murder thirty years earlier. But to be fair, he had a good excuse: Uncle Sam blamedthe journal for his murder in cold blood. [They should really stop calling it a journal; apparently all she did was draw pictures she didn’t quite understand and can’t quite recall – because the writers haven’t told her yet. So it’s more a journal in graphic novel form, with postcard sequels.) No matter, she buys it: “you killed that girl because of what I drew.” Even though she seems to have no idea what she drew, or why he would interpret it (or the journal or SOMETHING) as a goood reason to kill somebody.
Yeah, Junior says, “My Dad’s done a lot of good for Chester’s Mill” just before he spills the beans about the whereabouts of the egg. Really? Which was the good part? The attempted mass murder, the incitement to riot, the manipulated theft of their food supply? He horrible evil oppressive man you were ready to kill a couple days ago? Never mind; he’s throwing in with him, and the replacement-Angie Amnesia Girl is up for it. Now what kind of… Oh, screw it: DRINK.
At least Dean Norris gets to to the Super-Villan Chair Spin, and he does it goooood. And now Big Jim bases all his craziness – murder, attempted genocide, manipulation – on the fact that his wife died and he had to tell his kid about it. Awww, poor Jim!
We apologize for jumping to conclusions: Apparently Dumb Security Guy intended for Barbie to overcome him. That explains everything! And Cannon Fodder performed his one and only nearly dialogue-less duty: a diversion so Barbie and Team Zenith can get to the red door that Barbie just remembered from when he was a kid, because he just now happened to glance at the Last Magic Postcard where he just happened to see the telltale imprint o a yellow hand on the door! Thank god nobody here is allergic to coincidence; we’d all be swollen up and choking by now.
Wait, what? Barbie “re-entering the Dome” vision shows he met Amnesia Girl as a little boy, and had him mark the red door and he didn’t remember that until this second?
Okay, now they have a way OUT of the Dome and a way back INTO the Dome, so…alert the populace! Lead them out! RUN RUN, TELL…oh, what? No? Tell no one? Let ’em get their own exit? Okay.
And Poor friggin Lyle gets lost in the transition again. Have fun on tour, Dwight!
Hilarious. Angie’s repalcement Michelle sits on the bed where Angie was imprisoned just days before and says, “It’s so peaceful here.” And Junior takes off his belt to lay down with her. Gosh, nice to see he’s such a sweet guy…when he’s not stalking teenage girls, threatening rape, and imprisoning them in bomb-shelters for days on end. In Chester’s Mill, everybody gets to commit a major felony like and then keep going like nothing happened. It’s such a forgiving town.
And the big final reveal: Junior’s Dead Mom comes face to face with her abusive-husband-turned-messiah-turned-traitor-turned-who-remembers…Big Jim! AND NOTING WILL BE THE SAME! (primarily because nothing’s been the same from week to week since Season Two began, and today’s big “twists” are just more of the same.
