Thursday, July 3, 2014

Under the Dome, Season 2, Episode 1: Heads Will Roll



Random Domey-ness causes a bright light to cover the sky which disturbs a new character in a cabin somewhere, and makes everyone freak out a little on the gallows where they plan to kill Barbie (especially Junior who is kind of always freaked out a little anyway). It comes with a strange noise and all the church bells ringing  - and a bell is torn out of the tower to hit the Dome (the wrecked tower nearly splats  Joe, Norrie and Angie (it misses. Which I’m sure we’re all happy about)

By the lake, Julia has just made it to shore when she notices someone struggling in the middle (rather than get back into the boat she’s just got out of, she swims). At the hanging a bunch of people in the crowd pass out.

Junior decides he can’t hang Barbie because the Dome has spoken. Big Jim the arsehole doesn’t really care what the Dome has to say – but Linda agrees and she has a gun so Big Jim kind of has to listen to her.

Julia performs CPR on the woman she rescued from the lake and is joined by New Stranger character who helps. CPR works like it always does in television (like the touch of a benevolent healing deity) and she lives – they take her to New Guy’s cabin. New Guy is called Sam Verdreaux and was an EMT (except for the that drinking issue) and could probably have been really useful all last season when he managed to avoid the entire new town. The girl they saved is all silent, but awake.

Meanwhile, Barbie, Linda and Junior go to the Dome to receive it’s wisdom and see a lot of metal objects stuck to it. Magnetic Dome rips away all of their weapons, metal tags and drags Barbie (really unrealistically – it’s bodily dragging him but he has enough space to stand up?) to it until Linda uncuffs him managing to push him away from the Dome before the car being dragged to it splats him

It splats her instead. Linda, you’ve gone to a better place (this would not be difficult, the bar is set low).

Big Jim blames Junior, because giving Junior complexes is his hobby. There’s a brief  argument where Barbie both accuses Jim of framing him then tells Junior it doesn’t matter (Junior apparently finds THIS protestation of innocence believable, unlike Barbie’s previous protestations of innocence). Barbie is focused on protecting the rest of the town from magnetic chaos and when Jim tries to grab him, Barbie punches him and knocks him to the floor. Barbie goes to find Julia, leaving Junior to realise his dad is a murderer and not expect his terrible “hard choices” excuse.

Meanwhile at the cabin, Sam has a sad past of sadness. Even the Dome doesn’t care and throws out some more bright light (I will hereby call this “Screw your damn Manpain” light)


Barbie breaks a car window which rather annoys the owner and she has a shotgun (new character, Linda died so a new POC token arises to take her place! She may or may not be surrounded by lightning and yell about the Quickening) She recognises him as a murderer but he takes the gun off her and give it back, proving he could have murdered her but totally didn’t. He’s just a car thief. She has been studying the Dome, timing the weird noises (which she, without even cracking a smile, compares to a pregnant woman’s contractions). She’s Rebecca Pine, a science teacher and she thinks all those sleepy people may die soon. They realise that people living close to the Dome are probably having the most trouble

Cut to Joe, Angie and Norrie (who still haven’t been splattered by anything) they realise that Carolyn is still inside and they rush in to find her unconscious on the floor, they try to help her while dodging flying metal stuff. No more squishing, but Joe does get his hand nailed to a table. The magnet forces the nail right through Joe’s hand. Ouch. Rebecca and Barbie arrive in time to rescue everyone and get them out of the house just before it collapses entirely

With all this rampant magnetism flying around, Jim decides the best place to go is his metal lined bunker full of metal guns with its metal bunk beds and metal door and metal shelves and metal lights. He is trapped inside. With Dodee’s ghost. Yes ghost. Or maybe hallucination. He struggles to get out but the whole magnetic movement of death thing seems to have stopped.

The gang we’re not supposed to want dead all gather in the school where Rebecca has built a model and Carolyn still doesn’t wake up (she’s in the Domey coma), apparently the electromagnetic pulses have been happening a lot and that’s what caused the whole butterfly thing. Anyway, the school is the safest place being the dead centre of the Dome so everyone should go there and they need to counter the Domey magnetism by building their own big magnet. Angela has a better solution – the Domey visions said kill Jim, so they kill Jim and the Dome stops its tantrum. Barbie decides that killing people based on hallucinations is a bad plan

I’d agree, but you have plenty of non-hallucination reasons to kill Jim as well.

Back to Noone Cares Cabin where Julia decides she needs to get back to town and Sam decides the silent girl on his sofa is actually his dead-by-suicide sister who is now not dead. She’s also no longer on his sofa, having wandered off into town.

Angie runs into Junior and they decide that Jim is evil and to get a gun from the police station

Meanwhile Jim rigs a grenade to blow the door off the bunker – the magnetism flying around enough to trap him inside but not enough to have him pulped by the many metal things inside. Ghostly Dodee says ominous things about sacrifice and if Jim keeps trying to use the Dome to become king then badness will happen to Junior

The next magnet wave hits and nearly everyone collapses except Barbie – who is joined by the awake Julia. Tearful kissing reunion among all the unconscious people!

This calls for a random Junior dream sequence, hallucinating his mother and the only other guy awake in town (Jim. Of course) runs around looking for him, he finds his unconscious body and is all sad, appealing to the Dome. He now gets to see Hallucination Linda who taunts his selfishness and the harm it causes and encourage him to sacrifice. Which is when the noose on the gallows starts swinging. Just in case Jim missed the hint.

He gets on the scaffold, puts the noose round his neck – and Julia and Barbie arrive. Gah, couldn’t you have made it 15 minutes later? He can’t pull the lever and asks if they want to (in my mind they both jump up and down and yell “me! Me!”) and Julia quickly hurries forward. Barbie’s still the only member of Team Let Jim Live. Julia then bottles it so Jim stomps his foot on the trapdoor to make it open. It does – but as he falls Julia cuts the rope with the knife Sam gave her (that knife must be incredibly sharp)

Jim lives. Damn it. Stop teasing Under the Dome!

The Dome is super happy because they ended the killing (you couldn’t have been super happy about ending the killing before you killed Linda, Dome?) and everyone wakes up. Saving Jim saves the world? Bah

Spooky silent girl uncovers Linda’s body and says “sorry” before closing her eyes. Well the apology makes it all better Domey Girl – but hey she was killed so you could teach people not to kill. Probably not the best learning moment ever.

The townsfolk all celebrate and destroy the scaffold. While Barbie and Julia are fully behind mystical Dome giving life lessons through near mass slaughter, Rebecca things her giant magnet worked.

Phill is the only one who remembers that Barbie was actually being hanged for the murder of Dodee and, therefore, letting him go isn’t actually ok. But Jim says Barbie is innocent and all is good – which Phill seems to accept (at least he objects to the “we got through it alive” so someone remembers Linda is dead) and Jim makes him sheriff.

Jim also offers Joe, Carolyn, Angie and Norrie to stay with him – Carolyn accepts, so she can keep an eye on him.

Rebecca is eager to start on the next town problem. And Angie makes it clear she would have loved to see Jim hang – at last, someone I agree with. Then she’s all friendly with Junior… AARGH.  Sam arrives in town and apparently he’s Junior’s uncle. Jim doesn’t like him. What a shock.

Jim tries to make peace with Junior but since he won’t believe Junior’s hallucinations, Junior storms off and gets sick of being called “Junior” as well, insisting on “James”.

I think Sam and Barbie are going to have the jealousy glares over Julia

Cut to Junior’s mother who is still painting. She’s outside the Dome.

That night Angie follows Domey Girl into the school and sees her put something in a locker. Domey Girl runs off – just as someone appears and seems to hit Angie with something – there’s a stream of blood.



Yeah… I can’t same I’m excited by the show’s return.

Barbie didn’t die! Well I am shocked – an attractive cishet white male protagonist living through his almost certain death? I didn’t see that coming! Not at all! It was a good thing it was such an unpredictable and worrying thing, otherwise the entire cliffhanger the last season ended on would have been ridiculously pointless and rather dull.


Why does Junior suddenly believe something that is no more or less clear now than it was before? Beyond “PLOT DEMANDS IT!”

Jim didn’t die and we made a big thing about his almost death. Linda did die – completely randomly and pointlessly and pretty much everyone forgot about it 5 seconds after it happened (oh wait, Domey Girl said “sorry” well that’s just wonderful).

And her body’s not even cold before the replacement WOC shows up. Linda died and in the great Television universe, when your last main POC character dies another is spawned to take their place so the Token Chain remains intact. This is the T-Dog Chain and it must not be broken! The last person who broke it was unable to be properly smug when their show was called racist.

Hey, with Alice, Linda and Dodee the Dome has a trifecta of randomly dead minority women to haunt the survivors!

Carolyn being carried around unconscious most of the episode actually gives her greater participation in this episode than about half of the episodes of season 1. YAY IMPROVEMENT!

Hey, does everyone remember WHY Angie hates Jim? Angie hates Jim because Junior kidnapped and imprisoned her to try and make her love him and Jim tried to make her keep quiet about it. Yes she should hate Jim. It makes no sense for her to make friends with an ally with Junior on the matter.

I wonder if the Dome is some kind of random experiment on people where some alien scientist throws random shit at people and sees how they react. Like rats in a maze or people on facebook. At the moment it makes as much sense as anything else.