Under The Dome season 2 episode 13 review: Go Now

Under The Dome concludes its second season with an action and nonsense-crammed finale. Here's Frances' review...

This review contains spoilers.

2.13 Go Now

Farewell Big Jim, hello Big Bad Jim. Those fit-to-burst shirts of Dean Norris’ have been anticipating a Hulk-style eruption for two seasons now, and this week, it finally happened.

Pauline’s assisted-death sent Jim Rennie over the edge in the season two finale, which saw him have the last word in his and Rebeca’s ongoing faith vs. science debate via the blunt end of a hammer. “Rationalise that, science lady”, Dean Norris’ furious eyes seemed to say. At least Rebecca died doing what she loved – being a paper-thin avatar for the single, ultimately quashed, challenge to Under The Dome’s dominant theism.

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From there, Jim went on to set fire to Pauline’s corpse, put a bullet in the head of food-hoarding bit-player Andrea and attempt to murder Julia before Godzilla-stomping around the woods, waging war on every man, woman and child in Chester’s Mill (though mostly the women). If Under The Dome returns, surely there are no more second chances for Big Jim’s character now. After killing more women than Medieval childbirth between this season and the last, he can’t possibly be forgiven his sins, no matter how much fuel he siphons out of disused speedboat tanks.

That said, Chester’s Mill’s Latin town motto does roughly translate as “We forget dead gals and forgive their killers”, so perhaps there’s hope for Rennie Sr. Go Now showed axe-murdering paramedic Sam appeased by the community, while nobody’s even lit a candle for Dodie, Angie or Sheriff Linda in the past fortnight.

They’ve had more pressing matters to attend to, including dodging lightning bolts and spelunking, both of which featured in this action-crammed finale. Investigating the crater that served as last week’s cliff-hanger (“It’s nothing but a giant killer suck-hole” said Norrie, in a rare moment of meta self-commentary for Under The Dome) and stopping Pauline bleeding to death were at the top of their To-Do list – problems that were double bubble for the characters by requiring the use of both Julia’s Prius and Joe’s Surface Tablet.

The tantalising Zenith/Aktaion Energy/Barbie’s dad premise seeming to have cast aside, a new set of tunnels had opened up underneath the town (tunnels that differed from the original set by dint of some glow-y purple space moss and an integrated butterfly-based Sat Nav system). Where did they lead? To an 1980s Sade video feat. Melanie, who told them all to follow her, they were going home.

Thanks to its unrelenting action and Big Bad Jim being the star of his own mini-slasher movie, Go Now was one of Under The Dome’s more enjoyable episodes. It was still dumb as a box of Julia’s luxurious hair (“Barbie went ahead, he’ll come back for us. Then we’ll figure out a way across” Julia told Junior, not ten feet away from a forest full of gap-bridging logs), but its senseless mania felt exhilarating instead of exasperating for once. Perhaps it was the detoxifying effect of knowing it was soon to end.

We’re left with two questions: will it return? And, if it does, will any us us be able to resist it?

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Read Frances’ review of the previous episode, Turn, here.

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