The Perils of the Fast Lane Dystopia

We have now watched rather a lot of Dystopian shows. Sometimes dystopians where the whole world is being destroyed and now lives in terrible straits. Sometimes it’s dystopia in a microcosms where the world is ending… but only for specific people behind a fence/wall/whatever.

And there’s one question we have to keep asking - how did these people function in the world?

I mean, I get it, they’re in a terrible, scary situation… but they start panicking within literal hours! Look, I know humans are inclined to panicked over-reaction - but there’s a number of times we have people losing their shit in utter terror on these shows when barely any time has passed, people making terrible, soul wrenching choices… they really don’t have to make yet and folks suffering under terrible privation when their store cupboards should still be quite full.

Here we have the fast forward dystopia, the end of the world in 16x speed. Letting us get past all that pesky development, world building and slowly dawning tension and horror with people grasping their new reality; so we can get right to the nitty gritty of showing young girls the flowers and having to decide who dies so you can preserve your girl scout cookie stash.

After watching many dystopian shows in which the key element is humanity trapped or cut off from the rest of civilization (please stop making these btw), the one thing necessary for these shows to work is a sense of panic. The quickest way to achieve that, of course, is shortages of basic life sustaining items like food, water, or medicine.  Here’s the thing, even the smallest towns these days have a Walmart, drug store, hospital; shit even walk in clinic and yet somehow, people are cut off from the rest of civilization are dying of starvation two days later. Yes, I’m looking directly at you Between.  

What makes Between particularly bad in this area is the starving baby and the fact that all of the adult population has died off. This means that supplies can go even further because a significant percentage of the population is DEAD. Well, you wouldn’t know this from watching Between because the kids begin to go hungry almost immediately. Jason is the only infant in the town and somehow they don’t have any formula. Who the hell consumed the formula if there’s only one infant?  And no, the formula didn’t go bad because formula has a shelf life of at least six months and Jason is one baby and it hasn’t been six months since they’ve been trapped in Pretty Lake. Sure, I know a starving baby adds to the drama but if they cannot even do it in a believable fashion, then why the hell do it? In fact, I think that we should just can the entire idea of starving isolated people as plot advancement until the characters are stuck for at least a couple of months. Most towns could withstand that (even without an entire dairy herd to slaughter). Hell, how many people have a couple of months food in their larders alone?  

Then we have Under the Dome, which almost immediately jumped from “hey we’re trapped” to “let’s have underground fighting rings!” Let’s not forget that within the Dome were FARMS.  Yes FARMS, and still somehow survival was only possible because one character started hoarding. If anything, Under the Dome is even worse than Between, because they had so many more supplies on hand which, while not allowing the gluttonous wasteful food fiesta that we enjoy today, would not have left the characters so desperate at the drop of hat as portrayed. Clearly, the authors didn’t think that dropping a Dome down on a town of unsuspecting people provided enough of a mystery and or plot point so they went with starving people, who shouldn’t even have been hungry.

Containment continues the theme - we need desperate food drops and criminal gangs barricading the local corner shop because, despite a huge segment of the population dying, again there’s no food. They’re not trapped in for months - they’re not even trapped for a month, yet you’d think they’d been desperately confined for years with nothing but bread, water and poutine to live on.

It’s not only shortages that lead to simply odd behaviour. On Revolution, the power suddenly goes out which means no INTERNET people. Why, whatever did people do before the internet? Well, the answer is an agrarian society folks. Without all of the modern conveniences of Internet, electricity, ATM’s, people on Revolution packed up their shit and headed for Beverly right quick. They packed anything valuable and they immediately started hoarding food.  They don’t even wait for the government to attempt to create some kind of order, they pack up their shit and move to the nearest farmland that they can find. Do these people even realise how long it takes for canned food to bad? They had months before they had to worry about getting to farmland for survival and yet it only took Julia six weeks to suggest to Neville that they should leave the city. No one even stopped to think about whether or not farmer Brown wanted their company, even if they could sing B-I-N-G-O. It’s a ridiculous over reaction to show immediate conflict in the story. Look, losing all electricity forever is ridiculous but an entire population shifting out of urban areas rapidly after losing said power is even more ridiculous. I can’t imagine the traffic jams everytime a fuse burns out! I don’t recall anyone in the great northeast blackout of 2003 running for the nearest farm. Sure, we whined about no air conditioning and having to bbq all the meat as quickly as possibly, but it’s funny how in the real world, people were fine just waiting for the power to come back on. We were even happy to be able to see the stars for a little while.

Written-By-Numbers Drinking Game: Madlib Mystery Shows

It’s been a long time since our previous games, but it’s time for another written-by-the-numbers drinking game!

Yet again we are putting both our drinks cabinets and livers in severe jeopardy, now we’ve properly recovered it’s time to tackle another sobriety busting challenge: Madlib Mystery shows

Those shows which decide to keep us all in the dark as they tell an ever more evolving story without ever answering any questions. Lost, Leftovers, Under the Dome, 12 Monkeys, Alcatraz, Helix, Between, Fringe - and so many others. There are no shortages

While drinking copious amounts of vodka will not help you understand their plot lines, at least you have a legitimate reason for not understanding and it may convince you that shit isn’t just being thrown against a wall.

• Overarching Plot:
• +1 drink per episode where no new information is added to the Main Mystery
• Empty the glass if you reach the end of the first season with no new information
• Empty the bottle if you finish the second season and still have no new information
• Grab another bottle and empty it if you reach the end of the third season and still have no new information
• Open a brewery and proceed to drain it if you go beyond the fourth season and STILL HAVE NO FECKING ANSWERS
• +1 drink per blatant filler episode
• +1 drink per episode where the protagonist makes no effort to find any answer
• +1 drink per inexplicable action a character takes to make the mystery harder to solve
• Empty the damn glass if their action is never explained and they’re not an antagonist
• Refill the glass and empty again if they’re actually the protagonist trying to find answers

• Antagonists:
• + 1 drink if the motives of the antagonists is unknown after 5 episodes
• +1 additional drink for every episode after 5 where the antagonists still seem to be acting at random
• Empty the glass if you reach the end of the first season and still don’t have a clue why the antagonists are doing what they’re doing
• +1 drink if the the motivation is hopelessly vague (power without definition. Or Freedom”
• Empty the glass if the antagonists blatantly HAVE that already (so a super rich organisation that has a global conspiracy looking for power)
• Refill the glass and empty again if they literally couldn’t be antagonists without this quality they already have
• Empty the glass if you reach the midseason finale and still don’t know who the antagonists are
• Refill the glass and empty again if you reach the end of the first season and you’re still referring to the antagonists as “shadowy unknowns”
• +1 drink if you learn the antagonists names and someone has clearly sat down and TRIED to think of a sinister name
• +1 drink if “Shadowy Unknowns” would actually be a better name
• Empty the glass if major figures among the antagonists never get a damn name so you have to refer to them by descriptions all the time
• Empty the damn bottle if these masters of shadowy secrets STILL feel the name to exposition their entire plan and raise d’etre to the protagonist!
• Refill the bottle and empty again if they don’t even reasonably try to kill the protagonist quickly and easily
• + 1 drink if the antagonist is a shadowy secret organisation
• +1 drink per element that is ridiculous for a secret organisation
• +1 drink per huge, expensive, showy base
• +1 drink per celebrity member
• +1-3 drinks per ostentatious displays of wealth
• +1 drink per very public fight scene
• +1 drink per public landmark destroyed
• +1 drink per involvement in an industry that should have heavy government oversight

Mystery Shows - Madlibs as Plot

A number of the shows we’ve been following defy genre. When we start watching them we can’t be sure if they’re sci-fi, urban fantasy, horror or even something completely different.

Is this because they are so nuanced, so complex or so groundbreaking that they can’t be so easily categorised?

Usually no - they’re just so lacking in information or definition that there’s no way of knowing what genre they are. Ultimately they are tagged as “Mystery” because that becomes their sole defining feature, mystery. Lots of questions with few if any answers and little real coherent world building - and this will go on for episode after episode, season after season.

Of course, a mystery isn’t necessarily a bad - but all too often this “mystery” is an excuse for some horrendously lazy writing. Sometimes I think the writers just paste story ideas on a board and then throw darts at them at random to see what plot line they’re going to pull out of nowhere next. We end up with a long string of “monster of the week” episodes, without even the excuse of monsters to justify it!

This is a different trope from shows which use random ill-explained and completely unjustified decisions or events within a show to drive the plot forward (for example, Falling Skies) because those shows do have a plot - it’s just a terribly executed plot that the writers should be forever shame for inflicting on the public. No, a Mystery doesn’t even have that - Something happens for Reasons and now everyone needs to deal with the Something and next week something else completely random will happen, also without explanation

As the mystery drags without any kind of answers the plot grows steadily more irritatingly empty and pointless - but always teasing the possibility of answers to try and keep fans engaged. Eventually when the writers finally do get round to providing answers they’ve written themselves into a corner - their episodes have been so random and so lacking in coherence that their big reveal can’t possibly answer all of the mysteries they’ve raised

Lost really started the trend of writers including mysteries into a series with viewers watching each week desperately looking for hidden clues. Lost was so popular in part because they convinced viewers that they had a grand narrative which would play out over time and have a spectacular end. From the moment we found that the survivors landed on an island and were not alone, the mystery began. Writers included: Hurley’s obsession with the numbers 4 8 15 16 23 42, polar bears on a tropical island, a plane filled with drugs crash landed on the island.  Who was Jacob and what was his purpose? Who could forget the Dharma Initiative? Both the flashbacks and the flashforwards were absolutely meant to give the viewer a sense that the writers were falling a strict plan. Viewers made excuses for the slow pace of the show claiming that the authors were forced to keep drawing it out because they had no end date.  What started as a very popular show found that it steadily lost viewership for the simple fact that the writers kept asking questions. In fact questions inside of questions would be a more accurate statement.  In the end, it turned out just as viewers had always feared, the writers were making it up as they went along.  As a viewer I can think of no greater slap in the face.  Just throwing things against a wall for funsies while having people spend hours contemplating the meaning of your supposedly deep and detailed show is just plain and simple an asshole thing to do. Well done Lost.

Under the Dome, Season 3, Episode 13: The Enemy Within

The new Queen is rallying her troops (and is totally disrespecting the last Queen). Step 2 is bringing down the Dome. Step 1 is defeating the enemy within.

Joe, Norrie and Jim are looking at bringing down the Dome though Norrie has angst – which is all irrelevant because lots of Drones with guns appear

Meanwhile Barbie and Julia are burying the body of doctor-don’t-pretend-you-remember-her-name-she-had-like-4-lines-before-she-was-killed-and-no-I’m-not-looking-it-up because it proves they’re better than the Kinship (it also proves they’re vastly less practical since they’re low on time and resources and taking a time out to get all tired grave digging). Julie tries to talk about feelings and Barbie’s last hope to cure his daughter – when a crowd of Drones arrive (they’re both far too exhausted to fight because grave digging and bad decisions), led by Daughter Queen. Daddy-daughter reunion!

Then we have a smoking crater and a stunned, bleeding Junior staggering to his feet. He’s just discovered the truth about Christine

Anyway, the Resistance is all put in a gaol cell and Queen – Dawn – has no time for Barbie’s attempt at sympathy or emotion with Barbie. She has no place for love or parents, people only exist to serve a purpose. Their purpose, as Jim points out, is to be leverage to make Joe obey

She goes to Joe to threaten him and Joe decides to hold his ground and co-operate so long, as Dawn “doesn’t hurt them until the Dome comes down” uh, Joe, can we talk about the time limit you decided to put on that condition?

Anyway since Joe was podded, Dawn points out he’s also Kinship, even if he’s asymptomatic. For now.

In prison Barbie realises they’re doomed because either a) the Dome stays up and they all die or b) they unleash Alien awfulness on the world. Julia suggests murdering Dawn and Barbie has a “no my daughter!” moment. Somehow missing the fact that, as a Black woman, Dawn already has a count-down to death clock ticking away on Under the Dome.

Dawn decides to release everyone but the uninfected– Jim and Julia. And Barbie is still determined to connect to the non-existent humanity in his daughter.

Junior returns – and Sam tries to convince Dawn that he is the super Alpha. She’s not convinced so he warns her that the Dome is surrounded by troops who will swoop in and destroy every last one of them except those who get to be experimented on. Something Christine neglected to mention. Sam tells her about the cement factory tunnels which they can use to escape – and kisses him. Junior watches and jealousy begins

Under the Dome, Season 3, Episode 12: Incandescence

Under the Dome has had considerable luck this season – at any other time it would be the worst show I’ve been watching, except Falling Skies has also been inflicted on us.

Now Falling Skies has been cancelled, Under the Dome can claim the title of Worst Ever.

So we begin after last episode when everyone used not one scrap of intelligence and practically doomed the whole of humanity, with Junior escaping from inept capture. While Barbie and Julia argue over baby evil queen who Barbie has fully accepted as his daughter and deeply regrets not dying trying to bring the demon child with him

I regret him not killing the demon child with fire. And Julia.

Barbie decides he has to go back and find the baby – while Barbie continues to deny that his alien progeny is evil. Julia desperately tries to talk sense into him (and when Julia is the one talking sense we’re reached a terrible terrible state of affairs). Julia declares that their next move has to be smart

They’re doomed.

Julia manages to convince Barbie to wait to try the cure – since neither of them know the cure doesn’t actually work.

At team resistance, Lily talks to Jim about his mass murderer solution – and she tries to talk Jim out of it by appealing to his better nature. This is the lady who worked surveillance on the dome but still thinks Jim has a better nature. She wants him to convince Hector to be all good. He agrees – but only to get her co-operation. He wants her to erase the spy footage of him since it shows him doing all kinds of murdering.

Barbie and Julia return to the group and Hector gets to meet Barbie who promptly turns all his daddy issues on Hector (he thought the head of the evil company Acteon was his dad when Hector was really in command). Hector decides to apologise since being apologetic and guilty seems to be his thing (and is totally setting him up for inevitable death possibly involving self-sacrifice)

Which is when they tell Barbie that the cure fails – but a bonus possibility is that the umbilical call of evil demon baby may have stem cells that can help make the cure. While they’re hopeful, Hector would rather mass poison all the infected – but Jim tells Hector about the calcification so they need the aliens to free them. His excuse for not worrying about the aliens escaping (hey, someone finally cares about this!) is that there’s an armed perimeter around the Dome. They’re also pinning their

Hector pours away his poison. Alas, another good idea is banished.

Julia and Barbie go looking for alien baby – and find Eva’s body, to Barbie’s grief and confusion. They realise Eva was murdered because Christine only keeps people who are useful (and has been made abundantly clear, Eva only served one purpose to the writers Christine). Barbie still wants to save his evil demon baby – but they do get the umbilical cord

 Over to the Kinship and an ailing Christine is draining more energy from the Dome – speeding the Calcification – in order to power up Demon Baby. But the whole Dome is now starting to calcify far far far too fast. Everyone will die.

Remember this is a bad thing. Apparently.

They go back to base and Junior tells them all about the attempted cure. They recap each other and Junior is now all jealous of Sam while Christine is still aging.

And people are starting to suffer oxygen deprivation. But only some of them for REASONS. Anyway the Dome needs to come down as soon as possible. So she wants an answer from Joe right now because, yes, again, Joe is the one who absolutely must save them all: though Joe remembers the death threats Christine has happily dished out in the past.

Junior comes up with the idea of killing off the elderly – getting Sam and Junior to do it with the promise that the new Queen may pick one of them to be her “Alpha.” She continues to leave ominous messages for the new Queen to face “the others.”

Sam and Junior take a line of old people and have them march into the lake.

Norrie checks with Joe and he tries to get her to leave as soon as the Dome comes down but Norrie, having something similar to common sense, doesn’t trust Christine not to just kill Joe.

She passes the knowledge to the Resistance who get the umbilical cord to Jim – who throws it away. Because he’s Jim. And this is Under the Dome and no-one has a brain. Barbie and Julia head to the cement factory because they can see lots of activity there

Christine is with the newly cocooned queen evil demon baby transferring the last of her life into the new queen. She’s joined by Barbie and Julia (there’s only one guard, of course there is) who interrupts, breaking open the cocoon – and a blurred form rushes out of it. Barbie runs after his evil demon daughter, leaving Julia with a weeping Christine. For a brief second, Barbie even looks like he’s going to shoot his demon daughter before he loses her and returns to Christine and Julia. He doesn’t quite grasp that the blurring thing probably was his daughter because he still thinks she’s human despite immense evidence to the contrary.

Barbie gets all angry at Christine but Julia goes all wet and fluffy and protests at evil alien abuse. Christine weeps and apologises. She’s apparently cured, she’s human so she doesn’t get murdered. Also she transferred all her knowledge to the new Queen so she doesn’t even know much about the master plans… but she does belatedly remember the lake and the massacre she ordered there.

At the lake all of the old people have already been killed – and Junior has decided on stage 2, kill the children as well. Without the Queen he’s decided he’s in charge. Thankfully, Barbie, Julia and de-aliend Christine arrive and Christine plays queen again to tell them that murdering children is not a good plan. They manage to save the children, but Junior notices that Christine is no longer alien

He tries to kill her but, sadly, Barbie decides to attack – only Junior is now all super-aliened and not easily beaten and Barbie has to be saved by Julia. Oh the shame Barbie, the shame. More shame. Can they at least hit Junior a few more times to see if he’s dead?

Back at the Resistance, Hector’s assistant Dava is not all that thrilled by Hector’s plan of mass poisoning and he pulls a gun on her to stop her telling Julia. See, Julia is the source of all the world’s problems! Lily finds Dava’s body with Hector stood over her. That pretty much destroys any chance of a cure. Lily is outraged and thinks when the Dome is down all these poor sick people will be quarantined. Hector doesn’t think a gentle quarantine is in the future of people infected by an alien invader. She then sees Hector’s plan – not kill the town, kill Joe, stop the Dome coming down and save the world from the aliens.

While Hector ties Lily up she manages to tell Hunter and Norrie Hector’s plan – who in turn tells Jim who is busy packing lots of money to run away.  Jim is quite annoyed by the whole thing and decides to go save Joe so they can actually get out.

Hector and his forces attack the burned down radio station where Joe is setting up his Dome breaker but before the soldier can kill Joe, Norrie shoots the soldier repeatedly. They turn to run and run into a gun wielding Hector. And he is shot by Big Jim. He protests that he’s saving the world and Jim shoots him in the head.

The Resistance all gathers – and Barbie and Julia bring back Christine because it’s not like an alien has pretended to be human to gain information and their location before, right Sam? They also realise with Dava’s dead then they’re utterly screwed. But hey they have Christine, I guess.

They leave Barbie and Julia to angst and Barbie to blame himself because he doesn’t want to blame Christine – he’s decided it was all his fault for being infected and now his poor poor evil demon child is suffering for it. But then he blinks and realises she’s a monster

About damn time! Kill it with fire!!!!!

And Christine is captured – by the new queen! She plasters Christine to the Dome and reduces her to sparklies. Apparently the old queen has to die.

Shall I all shenanigans at the whole idea of everyone running out of oxygen? The Dome has been there for FOUR WEEKS – it says right there in the opening. It’s also HUGE covering a vast area and a huge amount of air – and it has only been calficying for a few days (and only to the point of it being notable for 2 or 3 days at most). There is no way they’re going to run out of oxygen that quickly. I can see them easily having months of air in that space – certainly they’re not going to run out mere hours after Christine calcifies the Dome

I think Hector may be the most compelling character on this show. Hi desperate guilt and torment, his need to make it right because of his assumed responsibility.  His story could be immensely more interesting than Julia’s. Or Jim’s. Or Barbie’s.

But no, he dies. Something I have been predicting ever since he appeared because this is Under the Dome and Black people die under this dome, it is known. Julia (who has made so many bad decisions by now that she should die from her brain melting if nothing else).

Under the Dome, Season 3, Episode 11: Love is a Battlefield

Julia and Norrie make it back to the safe point, with Jim lecturing Norrie on being careless (though, really, as Julia almost points out, Norrie needed to be put them at risk to save Julia from another of her terrible ideas. Because Julia.) She also warns them that Eva is now super pregnant and ready to give birth to new evil alien baby at any moment, powered by girl sacrifice.

Jim suggests killing Eva and her evil baby and Julia is outraged that the solution to evil kind controlling aliens invading the planet may include violence

Damn it Julia, stop making me agree with Jim.

No, she’s going for the cure (particularly since Barbie kissed Eva which is obviously an ulterior motive). So they need Christine’s DNA and a test subject (not Hunter because he’s not in the full throes of the infection).

Hunter shows Norrie the footage he found including Lily’s now white-staticy father (the sign of the possessed). Norrie’s also kind of edgy after killing someone.

Julia manages to find Christine’s hair from the barn where Eva was kept – please note that there were 12 girls sacrificed in this barn and who knows how many more attendants and guards. It’s also filled with straw. But Julia found not just a hair, but a hair she KNOWS is Christine’s. Even a CSI writer would be calling bullshit.

Jim has also caught on to the fact Julia is all pro-cure and suddenly not quite sure about love conquering all the minute Barbie goes back to Eva, though Julia does have the excuse that they need the cure before the dome calcifies and kills them all.

Which is when they’re found by Junior and some Kinship extras – and the Acteon guards happily kill the extras leaving Junior as their prisoner. And guinea pig for cure testing. He gets tied up to a stretcher while science happens and Jim clumsily tries to reach out to his son. Maybe they could connect through mutual awfulness? It’s the one thing they have in common! Junior ominously declares they will need the Kinship to survive.

While they’re doing that Hunter and Norrie show Julia that Partrick, Lily’s father, a possessed man, is still alive. In classic Julia fashion she storms in, calls off the cure and accuses Hector of lying. All in front of Lily as well. While Lily goes to watch the video Hector described what happened to Patrick (basically became possessed energy). Jim is worried that could happen to Junior – hey no loss there!

Jim agrees to try the cure. Hector doesn’t have to pry it out of Julia’s cold dead hand. Alas.

Under the Dome, Season 3, Episode 10: Legacy

Barbie is back on the side of the… “good” guys I guess. All by the power of Julia’s very predictable love and he’s so happy she never gave up on him and didn’t let all the death threats put her off. YAY ROMANCE.

Meanwhile, at the funeral home, due to a lot of very bad decisions (are there any other kind on this show?) the Kinship is laying siege to the Resistance.

They are rescued by Hector Martin – head of Acteon, and a large squad of heavily armed men.

This clearly requires relationship discussions. Sure guys, work on your issues, mind controlling aliens are totally not the priority now. Barbie is concerned that Eva is still pregnant with his daughter and he can’t abandon her; Julia kindly lets him know that his daughter is an evil queen-to-be. While talking about this they find the burned out funeral home, empty except for bodies.

Barbie decides to go undercover as a drone to find out if Jim & co have been captured – Julia is concerned about him seeing Eva but Barbie is not ready to fall into a romantic trap when he was used and manipulated by Christine into fathering a child. Happy reconciliation thoughts are not high on his mind.

Jim & co end up in one of Jim’s safehouses with Acteon. Jim is, of course, an arsehole and tries to Assert his Authority with the large number of well armed guys. Hector is not amused- and also wants to know where his doctor is who Jim said was alive (that would be the guy Jim killed). Hector is quick to assert his much more believable authority. Nothing gives you authority like an army

Meanwhile one of the Acteon soldiers is teaching Norrie how to use a gun. Thankfully, he manages to short cut my rant about firing a gun in a safe house by showing Norrie how to use it but stopping short of pulling the trigger. We get the obligatory “killing someone is terribad” which every show needs to include at some point. Meanwhile Hunter catches up with Lily and he questions why she sent him the super hidden info, though she claims she didn’t know it was there. She keeps dodging but the intelligence drain of the Dome hasn’t worked on Hunter yet and he wants to know who was chasing her; she apparently wants to tell him but can’t in an ominous whisper.

Jim tries to pass of the doctor as dead in the old safe site and it seems work: Hector believes that the doctor and the samples he had are gone. Which is apparently a bad thing – as we get a flashback of Hector and one of his minions putting a broken egg back together again. The newly pieced together egg reactivates, produces lots of energy – then unleashes mind control mojo which got his minion, Patrick, to touch the egg and Bad Things Happened to him. Hector sent the dead doctor here to try and find a cure. Thankfully he finished his exposition before realising that Jim is probably lying because he’s Jim and he’s behind the doctor’s death. Jim quickly deals for his life and Hector, again, makes it clear who is in charge

Under the Dome, Season 3, Episode 9: Plan B

It’s another episode of Under the Dome, the series that proves to us, week by week, that there is no god – because any merciful and/or wrathful deity would have wiped us all out long before now.

So war has been declared, Barbie is leading his merry pod-people to kill the rest of the Resistance (and, while they’re evil, their goals including killing Julia and Jim so they can’t be all bad). But they don’t know where the Resistance is hiding in a funeral home. Barbie has the house they were staying in burned down in a tantrum – and Christine seems quite panicky that her enemies didn’t stand still to be killed. In between her tantrum she also collapses in pain, clutching her stomach. Eva ruses in confused at the strange star mark on Christine’s stomach – but Christine is far more excited that her amethyst has declared that Eva is pregnant.

Apparently she’s carrying the new Queen. Eva tells Barbie who is all thrilled and shiny about it. Christine has also ensured there are guards to protect her – which, of course, makes Barbie all the more gung-ho.

Christine is having to adjust her plans – including now needing Joe alive. Sam has also vanished but Christine’s main concern is the Dome. She has Junior take her there where the dome is calcifying, meaning it will no longer let in air (I wonder if the plant life within would be sufficient for oxygen?) which will kill everyone unless she can get Joe to bring it down (yes Joes is involved for reasons.) This is, of course, all due to the broken amethysts and the Dome not having enough power – the same thing that is causing Christine to be faint and weak.

Until she has sex with Junior. Sex hormones helps heal aliens, apparently – though she does point out she is dying still and Junior totally needs to have sex with many people. I’d ask why but, really, this show is past why now.

So it’s time to pick out women for Junior – but in doing so Christine earmarks 12 girls that she needs for undefined purposes. Sadly unsurprisingly, the one time Junior has ever argued with Christine is in claiming one girl he is determined will be his.

Christine picks out one girl, Harriet, to be Eva’s midwife (no, Eva does not get a say). She’s also sending Eva off with said midwife, bulldozing over Eva’s objections.

Under the Dome, Season 3, Episode 8: Breaking Point

Under the Dome used to air just a day apart from The Messengers with it’s opening line “prove that humanity is still worth saving.” It amused me that that would be said after the renewal of Under the Dome proved that no, we are not worth saving and even the most merciful god would put us out of our misery and bring on the apocalypse.

So we open with the reminder that the “resistance” include Jim who is the worst person ever who reminds us of this by calling Hunter a “cripple” and contemplating killing everyone

Though, to be fair, if I lived in Chester’s Mill I’d contemplate that as well.

Hunter and Jim stay behind to try and crack Christine’s convenient confession log – because every supervillain needs to record her guilt for the good guys to find.

In the caves Christine emerges from her Pod where James is holding Sam and she’s still convinced she can get Sam on side. She plans to lock him up and reprogram him, but not everything has gone her way. She isn’t fully healed  and drained most of the happy drug and energy to heal herself.

Barbie and Eva celebrate the end of Maine the world with sex. In the mirror, Eva still looks like a CGI pointillist painting while Barbie looks his normal self. By Eva’s disappointment I think this means he isn’t a pod person  - especially when he’s distracted by a weird light effect, the Dome is flashing, changing from opaque and cloudy (the sky blocked out by the clouds of dust and dirt) to a normal blue sky.

Julia and her sidekicks, Norrie and Joe also see this and realise that the Dome is flashing from a fake image to a real one (looks like Maine the world didn’t end last episode). They follow happy pod people to where they pull a healed Christine from the tunnels and she confesses that the potentially interesting apocalypse was all an illusion and sensible people who shouldn’t all be strangled in their sleep still exist out there. It also proves the pod people are completely mesmerised including Barbie and Carolyn (yes! She still exists!) Christine is using her minions to bring up the glowy amethysts

Julia remembers Christine’s weird schematic in her office of conveniently-discarded-incriminating-evidence and realises the crystals are part of it. She sends the minions off to go get that design while she keeps spying.

Christine elaborates on how she used the illusion of Mainedeath to bring the town together tells Barbie and Eva that she’s bringing the amethysts to the surface to try and charge them up. Barbie seems completely fine with this as a pod person – or as a person who learns that the unpowered Dome calcifies and stops letting air pass through (would that make it brittle and breakable?) though he also demands Christine arm herself for her own protection. Christine is also super happy Barbie and Eva have had sex – but Eva isn’t convince Barbie is 100% podded.

Under the Dome, Season 3, Episode 7: Ejecta

In the caves James is all fretting watching the gooey pods put Christine back together again.

Perhaps in response to this, the pod people start jumping out of high windows, much to Barbie and Eva’s consternation. This is apparently what pod people do without “someone to guide us”

Ok if Barbie doesn’t clue in by now there’s no hope for him, hanging around with Julia has killed his last brain cell. But he seems more interested in the shooting stars than he pod people

Meanwhile Julia and Big Jim continue to be the people in the world I most want to see savaged by angry baby tapirs (a fate both gruesome and overwhelmingly cute). They continue to be annoying –before they finally see the pink stars falling and crashing like a unicorn bombardment.

Being bombarded by pink explosions apparently makes pod people very mellow and Eva and Barbie conclude the pod people need Christine. I wish to point out again that Barbie is not asking questions about the whole pod-people thing or that, maybe, Julia had a point (though, to be fair, the words “Julia may have a point” would be impossible for anyone who has actually met the woman to say). They worry that the pink meteors may break through the Dome (the fact they’re bombarding Julia and Jim suggests yes).

To find out they decide to go to a tower, Under the Dome actually has a nice moment when Barbie is surprised at Eva going into danger and she shuts him down – if it’s safe enough for him then it’s safe enough for her. From the tower Eva concludes the Dome hasn’t been breached – but that the shattered meteorites are being thrown into the atmosphere in such quantities as to black out the sun and cause “an extinction level event” if the meteors are falling everywhere. She’s convinced this is the end of the world – the entire world destroyed except for those safe beneath the Dome.

Aren’t they making a pretty big assumption here? The Meteors may not be falling all over

Anyway, having assumed this, Barbie realises the Dome is the only place of safety so they have to go to Bird Island and talk the to Acteon people since they can communicate with the outside and tell people to use the Red Door to safety.

I think Eva disapproves of this plan because they key to get them out of the tower has mysteriously disappeared. She doesn’t want the people who are the strongest, most selfish and most vicious to make it through the Red Door (since a scrabble for the door and safety would cause this). Hilariously, she lists Julia as one of those people. And, no, Barbie still hasn’t question whether Julia may be right (blasphemy though that is) in the face of suicidal pod people.