Under the Dome: The Fall review

This Under the Dome review contains spoilers.

We begin this week’s episode of Under the Dome with Barbie returning to Chester’s Mill after last week’s finding of the red door and the escape from his father in neighboring Zenith. Lyle is still missing, Sam is back at his Unabomber cabin praying that Junior doesn’t find out he murdered Angie, and Pauline is back at home, reunited with Jim.

Let’s begin there. “Big” Jim does not like to lose control. He likes to be in charge of everything. Having his wife return, a woman he thought dead, really threw a wrench in the works of Jim’s carefully constructed reality. Having his familial obligations renewed, Jim grew determined to take control of the situation, find the egg, give it to Barbie’s father and his mysterious black clad soldiers, and save his family and the town.

I’m not sure where this loving husband and protector thing came from as Jim too readily accepts the fact that Pauline faked her own death to escape Chester’s Mill so she would not be trapped by the coming dome. Pauline’s fits of hysteria are more annoying than disturbing. She is connected to the egg in some mysterious way, and when the egg is threatened she goes into convulsions and hysterics and starts painting precognizant pictures. It’s all a bit much and just besieges the viewer with noise instead of providing hints and clues to where everything is going.

So, Mama Pauline: annoying. Junior: not annoying, as he really stepped up this episode and gave Uncle Sam a whuppin’. The visions of Angie that Junior were visited with created a nice bridge from last season. Ghost Angie  (and with ghost Melanie running around, who knows if Angie is a dome ghost or a vision) stopped Junior from killing Sam, saying he never loved her and just wanted to possess her. Junior was forced to face what he once was and deal with the fact that his love for Angie was the obsession of a sociopath rather than the real love of a man for a woman. Now that Angie is gone, Junior has true tender feelings for her, and those feelings stopped him from killing Sam. It’s good to see such character growth in a show that has been preoccupied with its own cleverness.

While Junior won a cathartic victory, boy, did daddy Jim F up. Jim took it upon himself to steal the egg…

Wait, can I stop here? Give me one second. Attention creative folks behind Under the Dome…

If you are going to spend an entire season making this egg the central plot point of the show, you have to tell the audience what it does! Mysteries do not serve “A” plots. They convolute them.

Okay, I’m done now, thank you for the indulgence. Back to our regularly scheduled review.

Despite Barbie and Julia’s plan, Jim stole the egg from Joe and Norrie and threatened to kill Joe if the two didn’t cooperate. Jim tossed the egg off the cliff and all hell broke loose in Chester’s Mill.

Let’s back up a bit. Barbie and Julia came up with a plan to free everyone. Julia was going to go to Zenith first by jumping off the mystery cliff, and tell Barbie’s gazillionaire daddy that he would get his egg when all off Chester’s Mill was freed. Good plan, until Jim ganked the egg.

Hey, you know what? Jim and his big head looked like that baby from the Looney Tunes episode “Easter Yeggs.” The whole episode he was all like, “I want the mystery egg! I want the mystery egg!” Well, he got it, and he screwed up the chance for everyone to escape the dome.

One good thing that came out of Jim’s mistake was the final and poetic demise of stupid Phil Bushey. Phil, who, if you remember, was locked up a few weeks ago for trying to bomb Chester Mill’s food supply, overheard Joe, Norrie, and new guy Hunter discuss the warp zone located under Chester’s Mill. So when Jim tossed the egg, and the quake hit, Phil tried to take the leap of faith and escape. All he found was the portal had closed and some very sharp rocks. So long Phil! You and your stupid hair won’t be missed.

The biggest revelation this week was made regarding that mysterious flashback meeting we saw between a young Barbie and Melanie back in 1988. Turns out, Barbie and Melanie are brother and sister as Barbie’s dad knocked up Melanie’s mom in his pre-marital years. This revelation makes Melanie an integral part of the tapestry that is Chester’s Mill and it will be interesting to see what happens with Melanie now that the egg is gone.

So Phil is dead, Jim screwed up royally, the warp zone is closed, Junior found a measure of redemption, Barbie has a sister and Chester’s Mill is undergoing a climate change according to Rebecca and is also running out of food.

And new guy Hunter? He seems to be a bit more than a wide eyed hacker. He warrants watching.

The first half of the episode was really annoying, vague, and borderline hysterical, but the end saved it as once the egg went off the cliff, things became pretty gripping.

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