Season One Talk: Come Enjoy Half a BBQ Cow!

[Snookums]

Actionmage, thank you! And really, yes, Stephen King's main strength, as written about by Sars many times, is his ability to take random, ordinary people, put them in crazy/extreme circumstances, and point out that the circumstances don't change them, that they only become more of what they already are. That's not a bad stance to take, at all, but on a TV show, where conflict is the main goal and character traits serve that goal, it deteriorates into what in any real life situation would become unworkable chaos with a quickness. And becomes violently irritating/unable to take seriously even faster.
 
Anyway, here we go with part Two and hopefully part Three of Thicker Than Water,  but I've got tickets to Rifftrax Sharknado tonight, bitches, so we'll see how far we get. Ahoy and onward!
 
 
Okay, so we're in Big Jim's office and he's telling Linda and Barbie about how Ollie's a big stupidhead and won't share. "If he thinks he  can toy with this town just to satisfy his own power hungry whims, he's sorely mistaken," says the man whose doing of JUST THAT is what has driven Ollie to the position of "Opposite Of Big Jim Is Awesome" in the first place. For some reason the Dome doesn't send a bolt of lightning directly onto Jim's big shiny head. Linda asks about negotiation but that chance sailed off into the Ollie Hates Big Jim Sunset, so Jim's going with eminent domain. 
 
He pulls out the town bylaws (well thumbed--you can tell Jim has sat up for thousands of nights, whiskey girlfriend in hand, reading these things like it was the latest Clancy thriller; there's a reason he's been where he is so long) and says that that means the government can confiscate private property...Barbie interrupts and says yeah, he knows what it is, but exactly how does Big Jim think Ollie and his shotgun toting buddies are going to react? (My guess: BADLY.) 
 
Jim, however, still smarting from Ollie's sneers, is in no mood for a debate on civil liberties vs. the greater good and snaps that that's why they're bringing the police (um, yes, the mighty and intimidating force that is the Chester's Mill's current Blue Wall? Okay) and to round up Carter and Junior and meet him in front of City Hall in an hour and we'll make this work. Because he say so. Far be it from me to doubt Big Jim Rennie's powers but I have a bad feeling about this.
 
Cut to Joe, Angie and Julia unloading supplies from the diner back at their house. Okay, speaking of eminent domain, that's a lot of food that needs to be inventoried for the greater good, especially if it's coming from the diner which is still owned by Jim Rennie. Joe asks Angie is she's "moving back in" and Angie says yep, get used to me being your legal guardian! Ha ha! Wait, what? So Angie doesn't live there? Our first introduction to her was in her bedroom in this house, giving Junior a good time/dumping him, and after she escaped him, she ran right here, yelling for her family members. But she doesn't live here???? The hell?
 
Oh well, never mind. Here's Dorrie, clearly not having moved from her seat in the living room since they left. Joe asks if Unseen and Unheard Carolyn has come out of her room yet and Dorrie croaks, in a voice hoarse with unshed tears, nope, she's still up there. Sitting next the corpse of her dead wife. Ugh, I'm sorry, not to be crude, but a dead body, especially one not embalmed, is going to start deteriorating pretty rapidly and there's no sign that this group has buried Alice. For practical, still being able to occupy this house reasons, they've got to get moving on the funeral. 
 
Dorrie, having moved on from denial, has shifted over to blame, and informs Joe that this is all his fault. He's the one who wanted to search for and find Baby Dome/Disco Egg, and that Alice had the heart attack right when they touched it. So as soon as Carolyn's ready they're going to find someplace else to stay, bad things happen when they're together.
 
Joe, who is just a kid and dealing with a ton of stuff way above his pay grade, protests, but Norrie snaps she wants to be alone and verbally drives him out of the room. The living room of his house. I know this poor girl is guilt stricken, grieving and alone and allowances must be made but an ADULT NEEDS TO STEP IN HERE. 
 
Cut to the Can't Fail Plan of Three Cops And Big Jim Come To Claim The Well pulling up to the farm, which seems awfully quiet. Barbie wonders as to Ollie's whereabouts and Jim puffs that he musta decided discretion was the better part of valor, just like he thought. For somebody who relies so heavily on his foresight Big Jim is basing a fuckton of his decisions on past history today.
 
"Carter!" he bellows. "Secure the well!" Yes, one guy with no training in tactics or police work or anything, who is just a civilian pressed into a service he can't handle through no fault of his own against neighbors he's known all his life, go over there ALONE and secure the well! What could possibly go wrong?
 
Well, this, for one! Several pickup trucks full of Wrong pull up, surrounding our little band of Knights of the Eminent Domain and pointing shotguns at them. Wow, who woulda thought it, hmmm? Besides ANYONE WITH A WORKING BRAIN WHO LIVES IN THE WORLD. 
 
Ollie struts up, full of piss and vinegar and we have the expected "who's authority? Chester's Mill You mean YOURS" convo blah blah, and Ollie says he's afraid he doesn't recognize it, or "yours either, sweetheart [ARRRRRGH SWEETHEART ARRRGH] if you decide to stand with Big Jim Rennie." When now that you've condescended to her in such a delightful manner I'm sure she'll leap at the chance to listen to your Brave New World outline, asshole. 
 
Ollie oils on about how anybody who chooses Big Jim in the Chester's Mill Future raffle can look forward to hard times, since he and his farming buddies don't plan to give any food grown with their water to any of those jerks. Ah, blackmailing through food and water, the best way to win the hearts of the people! 
 
This is really starting to rub my fur up. Both these sides are fighting the small fight without ever expressing the actual good point each of them have. Farming is a hard, skilled job. To produce a viable crop that can feed a large number of people and control hundreds of factors involved--land nutrients, planting enough variety to provide adequate nutrition, harvesting and using crops properly, animal husbandry--isn't something just anybody can step in and do. The farmers have perfectly defensible position and they are not mentioning it at all. They're all just playing Ollie's At Long Last Vengeance game without a peep.
 
Big Jim also has a perfectly good stance. Trying to starve a populace, especially one that's angry, scared, and armed, is a terrible idea. No matter how many friends with guns Ollie has he is not going to outnumber a mob once they realize this is all a private vendetta for him and burn his stupid farm to the ground in a short sighted rampage. He does not have the history with the town, the oratory skills or the charisma to control large groups of people. Big Jim does, and right now he's still hanging on to the shreds of his version of himself as Big James Rennie, councilperson and unthanked savior of Chester's Mill. Once he turns those against Ollie Ollie is finished and he should know that. 
 
I know this is a TV show and not a symposium on social working within a group, but this show is asking me to watch an experiment with a town under a bell jar and is totally sidestepping the actual issues that would come up in favor of manufactured conflict, on the assumption that the audience will find the bitchfest between two old and angry men far more fascinating the the experiment that it set up in the first place! It is not impossible to blend the two! Anyway! Back to it!
 
Ollie tells Carter The Previously Barely There Character to step away from the well before somebody gets hurt. Carter, who looks about twenty years old, gulps but stays put. This can only end well with tea and cookies for everybody!
 
Ollie rolls his eyes, gazes to the heavens and says "Wendell, kneecap." Wendell, who, I am supposed to believe, was not previously a sociopath with a thing for wounding, promptly shoots Carter! (And Carter doesn't even try to get out of the way!) 
 
As Carter moans and rolls about, probably thinking what a bitch it's going to be to file for workman's comp to cover this, Linda pulls her gun and Ollie's Rebels all do the same. Barbie, who's had experience with being on the wrong side of a numbers game, tells Linda to drop her weapon and Ollie gloats away like a peacock on Ecstasy who just got the latest Forever 21 sequined tank top, saying any attempts to commandeer his well will be met with most serious consequences. "Now get off my land", he crows, having clearly wanted to say this exact line for years and years and years.
 
Well, Big Jim's day hasn't been out of the shitter so far and it just took another flush as Junior, who's been watching this back and forth, suddenly strides towards Ollie. Ignoring his father's snarl, he asks if Ollie needs any help. Ollie smirks that he should go take that gun off his daddy and Junior does so, all the actors ignoring the howls of Revenant Freud, who is flinging copies of "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality" across the set.
 
Junior takes his dad's penis/gun from its holster and heads back to his new father figure, smirking in triumph all the while. At last, he's a real boy! Big Jim hasn't had a day this crappy in while, which is saying something, but he is also, deep down, too practical not to recognize when it's time to retreat and regroup (he may cling to his versions of people, but not to unworkable plans) and we fade out.

 

Back to the still empty Grave of Alice, being gazed into by a pensive Joe. Julia, in her role as the only adult around here who seems to be keeping track of a horrendously sensitive situation, asks if he's okay. Joe says Norrie blames him for her mom's death and Julia reassures him, no, she doesn't, and "I'll let you in on a little secret, women say a lot of things they don't mean, especially at that age." Women, hmmm? You don't mean people? Norrie's behavior has nothing to do with her gender and everything to do with her circumstances and Julia, you should know that. This isn't a cutesy lover's spat where you need to give perspective on how a girl at that age might think, this is dealing with grief and shock. 

 

Joe says he's never met anyone like her before and it's kind of amazing to feel that connected, it was especially intense at the egg...whoopsie. 

 

The egg? queries Julia, her reporter instincts surging forth (say, is anybody still dealing with the paper?) and says Joe can trust her (HEE HEE, trusting a reporter!) and that if it's something to do with the dome they all have a right to know. Joe gives her the deets and Julia says he needs to take her to it now. Well, why not? Somebody's gotta get something done around here.

 

Back to City Hall and Barbie pointing out that Big Jim considerably underestimated his enemy's strength and support. Big Jim doesn't dwell on past mistakes that got a guy shot and turned his son against him, though, and says the important thing is the well, that's the center of the farmers' allegiance, and when they go back there... WHOAAAAH, says Barbie, back? We just dropped Carter off at the clinic (where I'm guessing his kneecap will be put back together with a cobweb poultice and some chickenbane) and your kid is hanging off of his new daddy's neck asking if they can go out for ice cream. Jim, long practiced in tuning out whatever is annoying or inconvenient to him, says they'll just muster up some extra men. Oh, good, more inexperienced in armed conflict trigger happy paranoid angry guys with guns! That'll do the trick!

 

Linda points this out, saying this plan will only escalate the situation and there has to be a diplomatic solution. Diplomacy is a luxury for times when deputies don't get shot, snaps Jim, and we'll meet at the diner in an hour. He storms off. 

 

Linda and Barbie, knowing this is going to end in tears, shake their heads and Barbie thinks he's got another idea. 

 

Cut to the map on Jim's office wall, with Barbie pointing out that the empty wells and reservoir and Linda expositing that all of them were drained by Ollie's family back in the day into their current One Well To Rule Them All.Ya don't say?? And nobody brought that up before now? Say, to a bunch of farmers who might not be aware that Ollie's family has ripped off their water rights? Oh well, live and learn.

 

Anyhoodle, Barbie says a couple of well placed explosives should open up the whole water deal and get it flowing back into those  wells and reservoir. Um, okay, I would think seventy five years would leave a less than pristine return channel for said water and the chances are quite high that it might just soak uselessly into the ground (AND BY THE BY IS NOBODY GOING TO PROPOSE FIXING THE WATER TOWER PIPE AS A VIABLE SOLUTION????) but hey, it's better then a pile of dead bodies. 

 

Barbie says a bomb should be easy to put together, that the farmers must have fertilizer and Linda says she knows Ollie's got blasting caps and such for planting season (say wha? This farm's three generations old and Ollie's still blasting the land clear?) so this is dangerous... "but it's gotta be done", says Multi Skill Set Barbie. They head off to tell Jim the good news.

 

Alas, Jim's version of "good news" is pretty much "good news, I've found a way to put a lot of civilians in danger on shaky ethical grounds!" and he's already giving a rousing speech to a group of guys who clearly have been longing for a situation that involves them starring in their own private action movie for quite a while (The actors manfully ignore Revenant Sigmund as he passes out free copies of Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego to the extras in back.) Standing before Dead Rose's menu, painted on a nice wooden version of Old Glory, Jim makes a rousing speech for Food, Water, and the Chester Mill Way! 

 

Linda and Barbie enter and Linda notes DJ Phil among the crowd, She asks if he knows how to shoot a gun and he says his dad and uncle were both in the Marines, and he's been handling weapons since he was a kid. Of course, that's not exactly the same as pointing a loaded weapon at a friend and neighbor with the intent to fire, but at least one of these chuckleheads won't blow his own foot off in the ensuing melee. 

 

Big Jim greets Linda and Barbie with all the gruff bravado of Patton planning a D Day assault, but Barbie's all slow down there, big fella, we may have another way. He breaks out the bomb idea, but Big Jim's not too down with it. He does make the perfectly good point that the chances are high that they could end up simply contaminating the last remaining water supply (not if you look into FIXING THE WATER TOWER PIPE) and yeah, a few people may get popped but it's a damn sight better then everyone dying of thirst. Plus, it's Barbie's idea and not his and his ideas are always best so there. He grinds out that the objective is the well, the obstacle is Ollie and once they achieve control of A and eliminate B EVERYTHING WILL BE LEAFY VEGETABLES AND GOODNESS. Big Jim's habit of seeing anybody who opposes him as a descrete obstacle is one of his less endearing qualities.

 

Jim stomps off and Barbie takes matters into his own hands. Linda says she'll do her best to hold them off. Better hurry, Barbs.

 

Cut to Ollie and Junior having a tea party. Well, Ollie's pouring warm iced tea into glasses and asking what's up with Junior's switching teams. Junior requests he not be called "son" and Ollie says fine. Junior outlines his basic version of Dad Kicked Me Out (the one that doesn't involve all that pesky abduction business), and Ollie says yep, Big Jim can't be easy to live with, especially after your mom kicked off.

 

Yeah, says Junior, unaware he's being led right to Emotional Manipulation Creek for a nice long drink, he took it hard. It was a tragic accident.

 

Accident, says Ollie, is that what he told you?

 

Long scene of revelations about Junior's mom being a crazy pants who killed herself in a car crash and Junior takes it about as well as can be expected (NOT WELL) and Ollie slimes about how after this is over the town will be well rid of Big Jim Rennie. He hands Junior a big ol' rifle (Revenant Freud swoops by on a broom, cackling) and says pretty soon you'll shoot your dad with this here symbol of manhood and everything'll be crackers! "I'll give you a moment," says Ollie. "Sometimes a man needs to be alone with his thoughts." Okay, this isn't subtext anymore, that was flat out THIS GUN IS A DICK. Junior looks rightly uncomfortable but says Ollie, don't kill my dad, 'cause I wanna do it with my penis gun. Errrrrgggggghhhhllllllmmmph, gross.

 

Cut Joe and Julia walking through the woods. Joe's doing one of his darling little speeches about how the Dome is here for a reason, maybe to bring people together, but Julia's not really listening since her bare legs are being slashed with twigs and bitten by every insect in a fifteen mile radius. Much as I love that shift dress it's not a hiking outfit. She tunes in, though, when Joe says it gave her and Barbie a real convenient opening (zing!) "Me and Barbie?" asks Julia, who is apparently surprised that somebody has noticed her constant and public companionship with the new guy in town. She's spared any further enquires, though, because here they are at Baby Dome's house!

 

Joe and Julia approach, as Joe with his passion for the non-pressingly important detail says "It's pink!" He's got a point, though, Disco Egg is definitely warming up its light show. Julia kneels before it, reaches out, and places her hand on Baby Dome's surface. She gets the usual zap but places her other hand on it. 

 

"The monarch will be crowned", says Joe in an odd distorted voice. She looks up, asking what? But Joe's on the other side of her saying what, what? She looks back and there's Other Joe, repeating "The monarch will be crowned." Julia jerks her hands back and Joe asks what she saw. "You", says Julia, and Joe realizes this isn't a good thing. 

 

They head back through the trees as Joe presses for details and Julia frets she might be losing it. She says she saw Joe and he spoke to her and Joe says when they saw Alice she didn't say anything. Alice? says Julia. When and where? YOU MIGHT HAVE MENTIONED THIS BEFORE, JOE. 

 

Julia fills Joe in on monarchs and crowns and that they've got to figure out what's going on. She trots ahead as Joe anxiously wonders if something bad's going to happen to him too. Not to harsh your vibe too much, Joe, but....prrrrrobably.

 

Okay, that's all for now, part three coming up: Ding Dong Dell, Crazies in the Well!

 

 

[Snookums]

And the wrapup of Thicker Than Water and then we can get to the important stuff; by which I of course mean NATALIE ZEA.

 

Okay, time for some bombs, misunderstanding, and family togetherness.

 

We're at Ollie's Compound. Barbie (who I swear must have been a combination of Brock Samson and James Bond in Iraq) sneaks effortlessly past a few farmers on "patrol". He gets into the barn and proceeds to assemble (with prudently brought along 2 liter soda bottles) your basic homegrown boom booms. I admit, I wondered at first why the hell he was doing this in Ollie's barn (the other farms are clearly deserted right now and isn't he worried about being caught?) but I guess he knows the supplies he needs are right there and once they're finished he can run right out to Last Well and explode it posthaste, since time is a factor in preventing this completely stupid gunfight. Plus, these farmers aren't what you'd call professional soldiers. Nobody is coming anywhere near the barn; Big Jim was right about that, all they care about is the well. This is what happens when you base your friendships on control of local water, guys, they get shallow.

 

Cut to Snowglobe of Significance. That is, that NY one Junior was emotionally masturbating all over right before he and Angie didn't get vaporized by the thermobaric bomb (remember? Doesn't that seem like a million years ago?). Only this time it's Dorrie, turning and staring at the tiny Assembled By A Preschooler In China city sealed within the glass bubble. Oh, The Significance. She's lying on Angie's bed (Angie's bed in Angie's room in the house she did or didn't live in: seriously, that line MADE NO SENSE) and Angie walks in, having decided to, at long last, change her clothes. Yeah, considering you've been wearing that shirt through your parley with Big Jim, burying a dead body, cleaning the entire diner, coming home, witnessing the death of a strange woman in your house after a premature baby was born there, got up the next morning, went foraging for supplies/made the last pot of coffee at the diner and came home again, I'd say it's time.

 

Angie apologizes for the intrusion but Dorrie sulks that it's her room, Dorrie's just crashing here. Awkward silence while Angie rummages her closet, then asks what Dorrie and her shrinking family (WHERE IS CAROLYN? Mourning or not this is getting creepy) are doing in Chester's Mill anyway. Dorrie monotones she was being sent to this "camp for reprogramming" and boom, connection, as Angie knows exactly what Dorrie's on about. " Beckon(?) Horizons," she says, "I know it well." 

 

( I rewound this three times and I think she said Beckon Horizons but that doesn't track very well--are the horizons doing the beckoning? Are you supposed to beckon your own personal horizon? I may be overthinking this but BeckonING Horizons would have been more grammatically correct.) Dorrie's surprised but Angie's all yep, pretty much had my own engraved cot for a bit and look at me now! Dorrie, keeping to the Kubler-Ross timetable, has moved on to Anger: she says it was her mom's stupid idea, and if they'd stayed in LA Alice would still be alive. It's her own fault she's dead. She glances at Angie for a reaction but Angie, being a fellow Bad Girl, isn't falling for that. She merely asks Dorrie if she's ever been to New York.

 

Yeah, lots of times, says Dorrie, you? Nope, Angie's a small town girl on a perpetual Saturday night. She's always been dying to leave Chester's Mill and see new places, so whenever any of her friends took a trip they brought her a snow globe and it became a thing. That seems like a rather cruel and mocking thing, frankly. Angie's got a good two dozen of these things from not only NY but as far away as freaking Paris. Chester's Mill-ians are damn well traveled bunch, no wonder it chafed her to work in the diner and listen to people showing friends selfies on their smartphones from Nepal.

 

Angie says she promised herself she'd go to every one of these places, and Dorrie points out now she's in a snow globe herself. Ahhh, those alien experimenters sure have a sense of irony. Angie thinks a minute, then turns to Dorrie. "You know what would make me feel better?" she asks.

 

And they're out next to the Dome wall with a cardboard box filled with souvenirs. "So long, New York," says Angie. "I Never cared for musicals anyway." Aw, come on, I heard Once was really good! But Angie hurls the thing at the Dome and it explodes with a pop! Dorrie follows suit with Paris and the two of them gleefully hurl away, watching the small versions of another life burst against their prison wall. 

 

Getting towards the bottom of the box, Dorrie grabs--"Los Angeles", she reads. She stands for a moment, then collapses, sobbing. "It's my fault," she wails. "She died because of me!" She tosses the snow globe to the ground as Angie cradles her. This is really sad, you guys. You know what would help? Carolyn getting it together to comfort her daughter. I know, I'm sorry I keep nagging on this but Carolyn's complete absence (plus the fact that they still have not buried Alice) is getting grating. 

 

But enough real human emotion in the face of nonunderstandable cruelties; off to the farm for a completely avoidable conflict because two guys have been having a love/hate relationship for the past twenty years!  It's very dark (seriously, hours must have passed since the meeting at the diner--what was Big Jim waiting on?) and groups of frankly completely unprepared men slip through the grass towards Ollie's house. Jim and Linda fetch up behind the tractor and an extra runs up to report on the location of the enemy and no, nobody's seen Junior. Okay, says Big Jim, with the bulletproof self assurance that lets him think patently crazy schemes have a solid chance just because he thought them up that is his trademark, let's get ready to attack!

 

"Attack?" says Linda. "Maybe we shouldn't rush this." LINDA, WHY DO YOU THINK YOU ARE OUT HERE? Jim shares my eyerolling and says the longer they wait, the jumpier everybody gets. "These are our neighbors!" says Linda, apparently under the delusion that they are preparing to start a firefight on Sesame Street. Jim hiss snarls that they aren't his neighbors and Junior is a traitorous jerk and COME ON ALREADY, He orders DJ Phil over to the fence as Linda has a realization that she's not in charge of jack shit. That must sting.

 

Okay, we've gotta run an errand, so I will post the rest of this after we get back, promise! Explosions and shit coming up!

[Snookums]

AAnnnnd we're back! 

 

Barbie, having assembled his problem solvers (and I'm not going to rag on how much time it took because when assembling bomb, slow and steady wins the race. The prize is not blowing your own hands off) is sneaking towards the well. Jim, meanwhile, is looking around for Barbie and asking Linda where he is. Jim, Barbie hasn't been hanging with your little militia for HOURS and you just now noticed he's gone? Way to keep track of your platoon, Patton.

 

Linda fumbles a bit for an explanation but lucky for her, Big Jim is more interested in listening to his own voice and cursing Barbie and his splinter group of one person. "He thinks he's gonna be a hero?" fumes Jim. "He's gonna jeopardize my whole plan!"  So I guess he magically figured out what Barbie's doing because Linda hasn't said a word. Jim rallies his troops to move out and the bullets start to fly.

 

Barbie's flinching from the sound of shots and frantically twisting wires as bullets shatter windows and a glasses and Dockers type takes a hit. He finishes up but just as he's grabbing his backpack he hears the Cliche-O-Matic click in and an extra moves in saying "What do we have here?" Yes, really. He really said that. 

 

Extra takes Barbie's backpack and gun, then tells him to toss the detonator he's holding. Barbie's all sure, that'll leave both my hands free FOR KICKING YOUR ASS and breaks out his patented Barbie Style Get Rid Of An Enemy Smackdown. The guy fights back and gets in a few licks but Barbie isn't a GI Joe Doll come to life for nothing.

 

Big Jim's group is still moving towards the house and bullets are still flying. A few more people get shot, including DJ Phil! No! Linda agrees with me and runs to him, taking the shooter down as she does so. See, THIS is why you need training if you're going to be handling guns/getting in firefights! Linda reaches Phil's side as Big Jim moves towards the house.

 

Barbie lays out his extra, flings himself towards the detonator, and presses. BOOM.

 

Everybody stops and watches their now former goal/object of protection blow sky high, and Big Jim gets a closeup to grit "Dammit, Barbie!" How's he gonna control everybody now? His whiskey girlfriends can't come up with new plans every five minutes, people!

 

As the debris rains down, the farmers, who were only in this for the well anyway, say "Well, outie five thousand" and take off running, along with most of Big Jim's team. Seriously, gunfight parties are no fun without a well, I can't blame them a bit. Big Jim bellows for them to stand their ground but they probably couldn't hear him over his BEING SLAMMED IN THE HEAD with Junior's penis rifle! Big Jim collapses, narrowly missing Revenant Freud, who is dancing around wearing a toga he stapled together out of the pages of his paper A Special Type of Choice of Object made by Men. He's a party animal, that guy.

 

Fade in to Big Jim getting hauled into Ollie's living room and and dumped on his carpet. Ollie's quite put out and snaps he guesses it wasn't enough for Jim to blow up that propane truck (Oh, and Platt, too, not that anybody mentions the roasted alive guy, now or ever) but he had to dynamite his well too? Jim rouses himself enough to say it wasn't him.Ollie doesn't care for that and backhands Jim back down on the rug, snarling "see how he lies?" to Junior, who's standing there looking like somebody whose last hard choice was how many incompletes to take in his classes. 

 

Big Jim's escort, not wanting to get in the middle of this creepy quagmire, head to the door. "Where you scurrying off to?" asks Ollie. "Well's blown. You thought we were fightin' for you?" says one of them as they head out, probably to swing by Ollie's barn and steal some tools on the way home. Hey, they didn't get paid.

 

"Fair weather friends," snorts Jim, and Ollie turns on him furiously, trying to launch his eyebrows at his throat and strangle him, but he's interrupted by Junior asking "what now?"  Junior has all the timing of a kid who just broke a lamp asking to be taken swimming.

 

Ollie thinks so too and turns to him croaking "what now?" He'll tell him what now--he pushes the penis gun into Junior's chest and says "He's all yours. Just like you wanted" and leaves. So, uh...you want Junior to shoot Jim right here? In your living room? That's not going to be the easiest thing to clean up...but hey, maybe Ollie was planning on redecorating anyway. This whole room is currently done in Early Great Aunt. Junior stands above his bleeding father, wondering where that whispering in that Germanic accent is coming from as we cut to--

 

Joe and Julia still hiking through the woods! What the hell, did they take the scenic route? How the hell long have they been out here? 

 

Joe's so preoccupied pondering his possible demises by Dome (and when did he get ahead of Julia?) that he doesn't notice that he's not only walked into the road, but practically in front of Linda's car until she nearly runs him down. Linda gets out and yells at him, and Julia notices Phil and his newly ventilated shoulder in the back seat. "Is he okay?" asks Julia and Linda growls he's fine and stay out of the road. She takes off. So much for getting a ride, I guess. 

 

Daddy Issues, A Play In One Act Starring The Rennies is proceeding apace at Ollie's. Jim's trying, naturally, to convince Junior that blowing his head off with a pump action shotgun isn't going to fulfill him and Junior's not to down with that. He's more concerned with that whole "My Mom Died On Purpose And You Lied" thing, and after a bit of back and forth he raises the rifle and demands the truth. It takes a few minutes, but finally Jim spills: she'd been acting weird for a while, they argued, she ran out...long and the short of it she deliberately rammed her car into a tree, and Jim, with Duke's help, paid off the witnesses to say it was an accident and avoid all the publicity and the courts.

 

"Why did you lie to me," Junior asks. Jim tries to say he doesn't know but Penis Gun changes his mind, and, finally having to say this to his son's face, he begins to weep and says he couldn't bear Junior knowing that she chose to leave him, leave both of them.

 

Ollie, having watched this from the doorway, plays first night critic to the max and with a snapped "Nah!" stomps into the scene with his own gun cocked (hee) as Junior, deaf to everything but what he's just heard (and, presumably, realized is the truth after being lied to by everyone he knows all his life) asks his dad if that's the truth and Jim apologizes to him. Ollie's not down with his ace in the hole being negated, and standing above Jim's sobbing form, asks Junior if he's got a problem with this. "Cause if you do," he says, racking his weapon and pointing it at his old nemesis's head, the man who, in Ollie's mind, cheated him all his life, "Allow me!"

 

BAM! There's a shot but it's not from Ollie! Junior had his gun up before he knew it and in the blink of an eye, takes out the replacement father figure before his real father can be defeated for good. Junior stands over Jim, both of them wide eyed, and says "I believe you." he reaches into his belt, pulls out Jim's pistol, and drops it at his kneeling father's feet. In the audience, Revenant Freud applauds wildly, shouting whatever "BRAVO!" is in German.

 

Arrrgh, gotta go to work! Am absolutely positively going to finish this damn thing when I get home!

Edited July 11, 2014 by Snookums

[bmoore4026]

Keep it up, Snookums!  You're doing great!

[Snookums]

Last installment for Thicker Than Water I SWEAR. 

 

Okay, back to Joe and Julia strolling up to the house, only to encounter Dorrie staring at the empty grave (STILL HAVE NOT BURIED ALICE. I'm sorry show, I've really gotta call time on this one) looking as forlorn as someone who just cruelly lost a parent at a terribly young age can. Joe nervously asks Jules if he should tell Dorrie what happened, but Julia says no, just be her friend, it'll be all right and you will too. Julia continues to be the only responsible adult in this terrible situation for a group of people she is not related too or had even met a week ago. I think Julia might be helping Skater Boi co-found his religious movement.

 

Joe approaches Dorrie warily--she wasn't too keen on his face the last time he saw her--but Dorrie turns to him and without a word runs to his arms, clinging to him and weepily apologizing for her earlier outburst. Joe is kind and understanding and Dorrie, taking a deep breath, says she's ready to bury her mom. Okay, good. Thank you, show, I'm glad we had this talk. Dorrie says they waited for him, Angie said they should, and expresses Misunderstood Young Female bonding that only two young women who have shattered an entire box of snow globes together can share by saying "She's all right, your sister." Hand in hand, the two children walk beneath the Dome and the stars to the house. 

 

Moving on to other coping mechanisms, we cut to a hand pouring a very generous portion of whiskey. Guess who it is? Yep. I'm starting to wonder if Big Jim Rennie has his own still someplace. Seriously, Chester's Mill may be scrabbling for scraps of food and blowing up artesian wells in battles that have laid bare the festering, inevitable wreckage that trails humanity's every social interaction with a foul dross but they are SET UP for propane and booze. 

 

Jim is telling his Whiskey Girlfriend that nobody understands him and generally contemplating how things are going (not his way) as the camera circles the Ironically Placed Copy Of The Chester's Mill Bylaws on the table in the foreground when a door opens and in walks Barbie, the new (if inadvertent) Alpha Dog on the block. Jim offers him a drink but Barbie merely states that five people died today in that little Pig War. Only five? That's honestly lower then I'd expected. Is that counting Ollie?

 

Jim says that because of him, there is no more "theirs" and "ours" but Barbie's still all hung up on five people being dead who would have been alive if Jim ever listened to anything but his fears, his ego, and his liquid companion. "It worked," Barbie states. "Town's got a reservoir again." Damn, already? That was quick! I guess seventy five years is but a day when it comes to clearing the paths for the naturally occurring waters around here! 

 

Jim beams that that's great news and Barbie says yeah, but not for you so much since you were totes looking forward to controlling the well and the town, yes? Jim says he's not going to dignify that with a response (which is basically EgoSpeak for YES ABSOLUTELY TOTALLY YES) and says Barbie doesn't want to make an enemy of him. Barbie, having seen many a petty asshole tyrant in his day (he was in the freakin' army, for crying out loud) says that goes both ways. He leaves Jim alone with his thoughts and his girlfriend, who is probably pretty tired of this crap and wishes Jim would sneak her in to the movies in a hip flask like the good old days.

 

Linda is walking down the laughably unused row of cells to find Junior hanging out in one, staring at the ceiling. I guess it's nice in times of stress to re-enact the mental landscape of your childhood. Junior, just hangin', informs her in that flat seriously creepy tone of his that Ollie's dead, that he was going to shoot Junior's father so Junior shot him. 

 

Linda, immured to the insanity at this point, merely says "I thought you joined his team?" and Junior's all nah, Trojan horse dealie, pretty cool, huh? Not really a bad face save and I wonder if Junior came up with it on his own or if he and Jim discussed logistics on the way back from the former Well of Contentions. "Why don't you go home, Junior?" asks Linda and Junior stretches out on the cot and says simply " 'Cause I don't have a home." He stares at the ceiling as Linda moves away instead of slamming the cell door shut and sparing everybody a lot of probable craziness. 

 

Abode of Julia. Jules is sitting up in bed wearing a very fetching black teddy and looking coolly stunning (Again, I cannot say enough about this woman's devotion to personal grooming. You would never guess that she's spent the last forty eight hours carrying a pregnant woman for miles [has anybody checked in on Harriet and the baby, by the by?], assisting at the birth, witnessing a death, doing teen counselling, hiking for miles through the woods and getting revelations from Disco Egg  from looking at her. Plus finally burying Alice. That husband of hers was a damn fool, I can tell you that). She looks up as Barbie enters and deadpans, "so how was your day, honey?"

 

Barbie, who's had quite a time himself, contains it to "I've had better" and sits down to take off his boots and rest his weary bones, asking what Julia's been up to. Well, says Julia, scooting over, I've seen some weird ass shit. "What do you think of when I say, The Monarch Will Be Crowned?" she asks, and Barbie is all I may be Amazing Guy but that one's off my page, and Julia's all me too. These two are so cute. 

 

Cut to a very familiar butterfly tat as Angie stares from her porch to Joe and Dorrie sitting by Alice's grave. She stares at them with an odd smile.

 

Back to Julia, repeating "The Monarch Will Be Crowned." That couldn't be a hint at all. Nope, not at all.

 

 

Okay we are FIIIIIIIIINALLY DONE with this one. Sorry it took so long but I have to work these around boring shit like work and marriage and stuff, so that's the main reason the posts are kinda random and different lengths. Also, due to upcoming family obligations I'm going to be offline in a few days, so I will attempt to do as much of The Fourth Hand (WITH NATALIE ZEA!) as possible beforehand, but it might be a while for the whole thing to go up. Thanks so much for your patience. These really are fun to do, and please comment as much as possible so discussions can get going--I know these posts can hog up the thread a bit!

[Snookums]

Okay, guys, sorry about this.

 

I'm going to be offline the next few days, so The Fourth Hand and such will have to wait. I REGRET EVERYTHING. Well, not everything. But sorry to those of you who wait with baited breath for these recaps! You really should listen to the nice doctor and up your meds.

 

I'll be back soon, promise!

[Desperately Random]

Hope you're offline because you're going camping or something else fun and not because you are now also..... Under The Dome.

Haha, that was lame I know but couldn't resist since this weeks episode had going online (and Microsoft Surface tablets!) as major plot points.

Edited July 19, 2014 by Desperately Random

[Snookums]

I'm baaa-aaack!

 

Guess where I was? Maine! Yep, the very state Under The Dome is set in, and while I didn't run into any alien experiments being conducted, I can tell ya that if I was a said alien, Maine's collection of insane governors, bizarre little towns and crusty old coots would certainly tempt me into plunking down my Dome there. So I might be throwing in one or two highly biased and shallow observations, but it's out of love, honestly. (Plus it really is gorgeous and there was a family of loons on the pond right outside the rustic inlaw-owned cottage we stayed in. JEALOUS MUCH?)

 

Okay, so having finished off Thicker Than Water (finally) it is now time for Under The Dome to shoot, as promised to me by Desperately Random, fully and gloriously off the rails with the arrival of Natalie Zea (NATALIE ZEAAAAAA!) and oh man, was DR ever right. Let's gear up the ol' DVD and get cracking on The Fourth Hand!

 

We open with Julia in nicely coordinated jeans and light hoodie outfit, dressed up with a long necklace (guess she learned her lesson about walking through the woods barelegged; she's lucky she's not covered with ticks) leading Barbie towards Disco Egg. Barbie's asking about the whole egg/mini dome thing and Julia says "you've asked me twenty times." Barbie points out that it's pretty hard to believe and Julia agrees. In normal, non trapped under a giant dome and the attendant chaos circumstances I might agree, but honestly you could tell me much weirder stuff at this point and I'd be all "...and?" 

 

Julia and Barbie exposit about how Joe thinks Disco Egg is powering the Dome somehow, and Barbie theorizes that the egg is projecting the dome, the way a planetarium projects stars. Julia tears herself away from fantasizing about making out with Barbie at a planetarium while The Last Question plays overhead and says that he'll get to test that theory (how, exactly?) 'cause here it is, and triumphantly presents--a perfectly round scooped out empty hole. 

 

"I don't see an egg", says Barbie, as Julia insists that she's not crazy (and a helluva tracker--she was out there once in the dark and led Barbie right back to it) and that something was clearly right here. Whatever Barbie was going to say next is drowned out by Linda's voice on his walkie talkie (damn, those things have hella range) asking if he's around. Barbie refrains from saying he's not exactly going anywhere beyond a certain point, is he, and merely says yeah, go ahead.

 

Shots fired, says Linda, at Gobbledygook Boulevard and she needs him there now. Well, okay, it's probably going to be a good hour for him to get out of the woods and to a car but whatever, I'm sure whoever's firing a gun in a suburban development will wait for him. Barbie says okay, he's coming to Linda and to Julia pretty much the same. Julia says she's gotta find this thing and Barbie says when she does, come find him. He heads off to find his way out of the woods and to a street he's never been to. I'm all for Julia doing her own thing but expedience might dictate she drive, since she lives here?

 

Let's ask these chickens! They cluck about as Joe informs Dorrie that there's only one rule about catching a chicken, "It ain't easy." Since they're descended from dinosaurs I'm willing to concede this point to Joe. Dorrie is a bit squeamish about having to kill the chicken and that they're kind of cute, but Joe is too busy utterly failing to catch one of the feathery beasts to answer. Dorrie laughs as he falls about, then asks what he thinks the whole "Monarch will be crowned" thing means.

 

"Guess someone in here gets to be king", answers Joe, circling the flock like The Littlest Velociraptor, or maybe it's got to do with that flock of butterflies hanging off the Dome a few days ago. The chickens flutter away and laugh at his efforts. Pretty soon they'll be taking his lunch money. Dorrie posits that they should head back out to Mini Dome and try again with their Magic Touch and get some answers. "After we catch dinner", says Joe, landing on his face once again as the chickens gather out of his reach, flick switchblade combs and lean against their motorcycles while turning up the collars of their leather jackets and sneering. 

 

Cut to the diner, still looking quite put together considering that crowd of wanna be Rambo Walter Mittys that was in here yesterday. Big Jim Rennie, who's got quite a spring in his step considering his circumstances when we last saw him, struts right in and says "Good mornin'!" to Angie (who is still wearing the green tank top she changed into yesterday before The Great Snow Globe Hurling; I am not getting this girl's clothing schedule AT ALL) who says "Very good, judging by that smile" in the kind of weary/bemused/cynical tone you'd most probably use with your abductor's father in the diner he secretly owned to help out the woman who was like a second mother to you whom you saw get murdered and had to bury, all within the last five days. 

 

"Well, things are lookin' up in this town", crows Jim, and Angie says yeah, she heard that Barbie got the water flowing again.

 

(Say, props to Barbie and all, but what's going on with this water thing? Did Barbie also manage to magically hook up the newly filled reservoir to the existing water/sewer system? What's being used for filtration?* What is Angie doing for water at the diner? For that matter, does anybody in town have running water or are they all heading out to the reservoir with bottles and barrels, or what's going on? And where is everyone peeing/shitting? Because if the sewer system isn't working the denizens of Chester's Mill might all as well sit back and wait to perish in the cholera and dysentery epidemics that will soon be ravaging the place.)

 

"Lotsa people made that happen", gruffs Jim, who isn't there to cover Barbie with glory. He's more interested in bragging in having hammered out a food deal with the farmers; bartering goods and services in exchange for crops. Considering not twenty four hours ago this man was leading a militia against said farmers that resulted in five deaths, that really is quite impressive. Say what you will about Big Jim Rennie, the man is a helluva car salesman.

 

"Good," says Angie, "because I wanna keep this place open." Um, okay. I mean, she's still got customers--the best part of this scene is the couple having a lovely breakfast in the background like this is just a regular day--but, why?

 

Big Jim echoes my thoughts and Angie, pouring coffee (wait, there's still more coffee? I thought Julia got the last of it!) says yeah, she knows she can't run it as well as Rose (Ang, Rose had to keep borrowing money from Jim to keep the place open and finally he took possession of the place. As far as business matters went, Rose was an excellent cook) but she thinks it's important. Whatever, everybody's going to need something to do to pass the time.

 

Big Jim thinks this is cute and says she's gone from waitress to management, but Angie corrects him; "From waitress to owner." Possession of the diner free and clear is what she wants for not mentioning that Junior is a crackerballs nutjob who is having all manner of psychotic breaks. Hilariously, though, she doesn't use that argument, but sounds much more like a bright eyed dreamer of an eighteen year old telling her parents it's always been her dream to go to photography school: "Sink or swim, it's for it to be on me!" 

 

"Let me give it some thought", says Jim. "You do that", says Angie, giving a "we understand each other, no?" smirk as she moves off. Jim, seriously, you're getting off cheap here. Give her the deed already, it's not like you've secretly dreamed of being a line cook or anything. Rose's diner is a central part of the town, sure, but haggling over it will only make you look desperate.

 

Cut to groups of scared people huddling around FAR TOO CLOSELY to that house where the shots were fired. Seriously, the first people on camera is a guy, his wife, and their two daughters. Dude, what the hell? Are you trying to subtly thin your personal herd or something? 

 

Barbie comes running out of the woods (so he ran the whole way through the WOODS to a street he's never been to before in like, ten minutes? Is this guy part homing pigeon?) and up to Linda, who's keeling beside a guy whose arm had a bit of tiff with a stray bullet--he's bleeding but okay. "Who fired the shot?" asks Barbie. "And why haven't you cleared these bystanders out of here?" he does not add. Apparently, it was the guy's neighbor, who's quite eager to explain himself. Seems he wasn't aiming at his understandably put out neighbor but only trying to keep "that freak" out of his house. He didn't succeed, however, because when Barbie inquires about said freak the guy says he's still inside. He's pretty calm about it, considering a minute ago he was shooting. He says the guy said he needed to hide from the voices coming from the Dome, that the damn thing started off killing people and now it's driving the rest of them crazy and they're all gonna die in here. Linda says to calm down, they're gonna get the guy out of his house, and Barbie, who's had quite the belly full of people getting shot, grumbles and follows. 

 

Cut to a day player giving a very nice rendition of your standard issue Freakout, raving and yelling (I swear to God, he says "STOP MOCKING ME, DOME!") and chucking a few lamps about as Linda and Barbie come in (and I think he says "GET OUT I NEED QUIET" here) and subdue him with commendable dispatch. "Please don't hurt me," the guy whimpers, "I just need to stop the voices!" Linda recognizes him as Larry, a local druggie, and Barbie seems tickled that for once it's just run of the mill chemical hallucinations and not Dome static driving someone over the edge. It seems almost quaint, really. 

 

"What is it this time, Larry?" asks Linda. "Meth, crack?" Jeezum Pete, you'd think every drug in this place would have been smoked, snorted or shot by now, especially while waiting for that thermobaric bomb to vaporize them. The drug addicts of Chester's Mill show more restraint then most professional athletes. 

 

"Raptuurrreee", purrs Larry, in a trance of crazy. "It's like every kind of high combined, Coggins promised I'd see heaven!"  "The preacher sold you drugs?" asks Barbie incredulously (Seriously, is this a surprise to anybody? Did NOBODY notice that Coggins and rationality broke up years ago, that Rationality threw all his shit out on the front lawn and changed the locks and got a restraining order?) 

 

"YES!" cries Day Player Larry, writhing with Acting and riding this bit part like a mule, "right there in his funeral home! I need more!" 

 

Time to cut from one crazy to another, and we cut back to the diner, where Junior "Seriously, My Head Is Made of Actual Cement" Rennie shows up for another little heart to raging fury with Angie. She snarls at him to GET THE HELL OUT and rightfully so and he once again is all will you be reasonable? I'm not gonna hurt you! (Guys, a tip: saying "I'm not going to hurt you" is the fastest way to have a woman run away/call the police/stab you. You might as well approach her in a ski mask and carrying a machete) I just wanted to--

 

Angie, rightly not caring what the fuck Junior wants, says NO, no, I don't want to hear it this is my place now and I reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. Um, that last bit was a little weak but she's still completely correct. Especially, she goes on, psychos who chain up their exes.

 

Junior again reiterates that he only did that because the Dome was making her sick and Angie, having heard this bullshit exactly ONE TOO MANY TIMES, says the only sick she is is OF HIS FACE and that the Dome has nothing to do with her. Wrongo, as one nanosecond later she drops a full plate of food (scrambled eggs, toast and sausage! Damn, so much for the last perfectly balanced breakfast in Chester's Mill) and collapses, rigid and staring, to the ground. Junior kneels beside her as she begins chanting that new number one hit, Pink Stars Are Falling In Lines.

 

You know, I may someday forgive the Dome a lot of things, but not for making Junior Rennie be even a teensy bit right. 

 

But never mind all that, because the very best part of anything ever is coming up! That's right; NATALIE ZEA! 

 

 

 

*Fun Maine fact: there's tons of arsenic in the ground water! I found this out from my MIL during our vacation:

 

Me (first morning): Okay, I'm going to go shower and brush my teeth and such.

 

MIL: Okay, be sure to use the filtered watah in the pitchah (Fabulous Maine accent) to brush your teeth, the well's got arsenic in it (said super calmly)

 

Me:....beg pardon?

 

MIL: Oh, yeah, it's in all the watah around heah. It's the granite.

 

Me: Ah! How interesting (drinks only store bought lemonade for rest of visit)

Edited July 23, 2014 by Snookums

[Snookums]

Geez, finally! I thought getting back in town would mean I'd be stepping up these posts but stupid life keeps getting in the way of my TV viewing.

 

But who cares? It's time, everybody! It's time for NATALIE ZEA! 

 

Okay, so we just left Angie and Junior at the diner, and have cut to to Big Jim Rennie, heading home to presumably dig up said diner deed and discuss the morning with his whiskey girlfriend, when...oops, that front door is slightly open. Friendly small town or not, Big Jim Rennie doesn't go out for a morning of plotting, skullduggery and malfeasance without locking up.

 

Jim reaches for his pistol (for which I totally support him), draws, and walks quietly in, gun pointed ahead, until he turns and sees a female figure, silhouetted against the light of the living room windows. "You've got one second to tell me why I shouldn't blow your damn head off", he snarls, taking aim.

 

"Because",  says NATALIE ZEA, stepping forward into the barrel cool as a cucumber, "You don't want to ruin this beautiful face?" Jim drops his gun, looking ten years older in ten seconds. "Hi, Jimmy," purrs Nat as we go to title card (6 minutes 49 seconds.) 

 

SHE'S HERE! SHE'S HERE! IT'S CHRISTMAS IN JULY! 

 

Fade back in to Angie, waking from her seizure in the back of -- Junior's cop car! It takes half a nanosecond for Angie to sit bolt upright, screaming "LET ME OUT!"  in true horror movie style and thrash wildly at the barred divider and unopenable doors as Junior tries to calm her in the most obsequious, smarmy-voiced manner possible. Gah, Junior rubs my fur every which way but loose, but never more then when he's trying to sound "grown up" and reasonable to the young woman he KIDNAPPED AND HELD HOSTAGE. It is just so fucking Goddamn annoying, way more annoying then creepy and it's plenty creepy too.

 

Angie's not falling for this either, and shrieks at his assertion that he put her back there to keep her safe "until what? You lock me in the fallout shelter again???" Junior, who's on the most level part of his moodswing arc, says no, she had a seizure and kept talking about the pink stars, and everything's fine, and look, he brought her to her home she does or does not live in. See? 

 

"You're really letting me go?" asks Angie, hoping against hope that this particular crazy has exited her life, a hope Junior destroys one moment later as he turns and purrs through the mesh, "I think I'll see you again." NOPE DONE HERE GUN  TIME Angie, I really really need you to renegotiate that armaments clause in your agreement with Jim.

 

(This is the THIRD FUCKING TIME my post has been erased, by the by. Damn server's gobbling my stuff like Shelob!)

 

Okay, cut to inside the house, Dorrie descending the stairs and incredulously questioning Julia's report of Disco Egg's disappearance. "You guys didn't move it, did you?" she asks, and Joe says no as Dorrie sits, wishing aloud her mom was there to help; she can't believe Alice was alive only two days ago. 

 

"How's Carolyn?" asks Julia and THANK YOU responsible adult for finally asking about what I've been bitching about for days. I'm not saying Carolyn isn't suffering; she lost her wife in horrible, terrible manner. But she is still a parent, Dorrie's parent, and this total radio silence/vanishing act was clearly grating on other nerves than mine.

 

Joe asks if Dorrie shouldn't stay with her, and Dorrie says they had a long talk and Carolyn just really needs some time alone. So Carolyn STILL is apparently persona non grata in time and space. I'm sure this was because the actress was unavailable for some reason on these shooting dates and really, I get that this was probably the best they could do given the tight shooting schedule and all, but it's still a little unnerving how everybody's just all "sure! Yeah, that's cool, she can discorporate or whatever, we'll just go mini dome hunting or binge watch Farscape or something."

 

"I need to do this," says Dorrie (meaning, I presume, hunting down Mini Dome) when Angie bursts in, gasping for breath like she's just fled a madman with a gun (Method Acting!) Spotting them, she says, in response to Joe's "Angie...you look like...crap" that she just had a seizure at the diner, in this bizarrely peppy, smiley way. It's like she's telling them that she just heard her dedication to her crush go out over the radio.

 

"Did you say the pink stars are falling?" queries Dorrie in her best Sullen Teen voice, and Angie's all how did you know? and Joe's all Dorrie and me were talking about pink stars BEFORE it was cool and why didn't you tell me and you're never around standard siblings on 7th Heaven blah blah blah.

 

Angie gasps and turns, taking off her hoodie and revealing her Tattoo of Portent as she tries to process the information that Junior may have been right about her state of health. Julia tries to get her to sit down but Angie charges off for a glass of water (straight from the reservoir! Pure, unfiltered! Full of amoebas and bird shit and spiders and God knows what!). Dorrie asks about the tat, Joe says yeah, their parents almost killed her when she got it. Julia points out the seizure thing and Dorrie  that maybe she's the Monarch that will be crowned.
 

"My sister?" asks Joe, in the tone of voice of one who's watched his rebellious older sibling sneaking ciggies, booze and bad boy dates for years. "No way." Anyway, he points out in his passion for the unimportant detail, monarchs are orange and Angie's is blue and yellow so shut up.

 

Julia, not in the mood to hear Little Brother versions of why Angie can't be the monarch all day, steers the convo back to finding Mini Dome. Dorrie brings up Dodie's Ghostbuster thingabobble and how it tracks energy sources, and Joe fully Science Geeks up, saying perfect, let's go ask her if we can borrow it. Julia's all not so much with you two, Dodie's still a little pitchfork and torch-y when it comes to you guys. I'll go ask.

 

And presumably goes off to do so but who cares because we are back to the Rennie Living Room and new queen of my heart, NATALIE ZEA!

Edited July 30, 2014 by Snookums

[Snookums]

AND HERE WE GO!

 

Jim holsters his gun as Nat (whose character is Max), clearly savoring her big entrance, says "Big Jim Rennie at a loss for words? Never thought I'd see the day." 

 

Jim, whose day has just lurched sideways far faster and more sharply then he was prepared for, asks dazedly what the hell she'd doing there, and at her "can't drop in on an old friend?" clarifies he means in Chester's Mill/Dome City. Jim wonders if she got through the barrier but Max, with a classic straight outta The Following eyeroll, is all please, break into this shithole? She sets up a whiskey girlfriend for Jim and another for herself (whiskey girlfriend! How could you? Jim loves you!) as she says nope, the one day she's not in Westview is the day that thing came down. 

 

So you came to see me? asks Jim, and Max, getting right down to business, says yep, I'm here about those problems with our little arrangement? The one you assured me you had under control? Like it's a normal drug dealing day and they're not all trapped under a dome or something. Max is clearly a proponent of making your own reality. 

 

Jim, falling into line with this, holds up his end of the discussion, saying in response to Max's snips about the law and the man of God getting all antsy/crazy that Duke and Coggins are no longer problems, and anyway, Rapture is Max's problem. Max points out that she could never have gotten this venture off the ground without Jim's supply of her secret ingredient. (Huh? Propane? Is propane the secret ingredient? Shit, I could have been having every kind of high at once for years now!) 

 

Jim says relax, nobody's talking about our business dealings what with all the water wars and shit, and where the hell have you been staying anyway? Max says she found a house, she guesses whoever lived there got caught outside the Dome, lucky bastards, and when it became clear they weren't getting out...

 

"You decided to make the best of a bad situation", says Jim, in the tone of one who's made that his life's work. "You know me soooo well, Jimmy", grins Max, crossing her polished legs in their spike heels (Can I just mention how fabulously Stylish For Maine her outfit is? Her jacket is just amazeballs. It looks like something Michael Jackson would have designed for Junior Prom.) 

 

Max, whose motto is clearly "I will be Queen Shit of Whatever Fuck Mountain Pops Up In My Path*," says she's not letting a good crisis go to waste, and Jim's the guy to help her make it happen. Jim looks like somebody who's had one too many life altering events cross his path, like so many black cats playing freeze tag in his driveway.

 

(NATALIE ZEA, you guys! May she stay this fabulous throughout the series!)

 

We cut to Barbie and Linda breaking into the funeral home. Which is filled with caskets. 

 

Now, wait a damn minute. On the surface of things, it's of course totally normal for a funeral home to have caskets in it, naturally. But this town has had mass deaths in the past week. MASS DEATHS. (Please see ActionMage's excellent post totalling everybody who's gone to that Big Dome in the Sky in Chester's Mill in the last few days.) WHY THE HELL ARE THERE ANY CASKETS IN HERE?? They should have been used up by now for the endless funerals of loved ones way before now! At least two women, Rose and Alice, have been buried sans casket, which only would make sense if there were no more to be had. I refuse to believe that Big Jim Rennie would let Rose go to her Maker in nothing but a winding sheet. And even setting aside all emotional considerations, bodies plonked straight into the dirt are going to present a major health hazard as they decay. For that reason alone, the caskets should have been used until they were gone. It's not like Coggins is around to object! 

 

But it will become very clear, in just a minute or two, why the caskets, bright and polished, are still sitting untouched in the only funeral home in Chester's mill. And that reason will be INFURIATING.

 

So anyway, Linda and Barbie enter, Barbie commenting that he's never seen a town where the preacher was the mortician. Linda says Coggins ran a "one stop body and soul shop" HA HA HA THAT IS HILARIOUS and apparently everybody in Chester's Mill is A) religious and B) the SAME religion, which gave Coggins a right handy little monopoly on the departed, didn't it? I would hate being Jewish or Catholic or anything besides whatever version of apparent Christianity Coggins was dishing out with no oversight or protest, I can tell you that. 

 

Barbie and Linda start cracking caskets and after about one minute find one of them tip topped off with big ol' bags o'drugs! "I really can't believe this," says Linda. Yeah, neither can I, for the above stated reasons. In any reasonable version of this story those drugs would have been discovered days ago when the townspeople were ransacking the place for something with which to ensconce the loved ones they lost so swiftly and brutally. But none of that happened because the Idiot Plot required the drugs remain undiscovered until now! It's the damn Water Tower Pipe all over again! If I ever get a hold of these aliens who set this crap up I am going to bitch slap them into next week, I'll tell you what. 

 

Okay, my cats are gnawing my legs off, hang on while I feed them and  then more NATALIE ZEA! 

 

 

*phrase from the incomparable Sars and her website!

Edited July 30, 2014 by Snookums

[Desperately Random]

Glad you're back Snookums. And yes Natalie Zea gets more awesome as the series goes on. She is kind of a badass as you've already seen and you could tell NZ was having fun with the part.

[Snookums]

And we're back! 

 

Still in Coggins' "We Put The Fun In Funeral" home, Linda is saying she's known Coggins since she was a kid, like that means he's Santa Claus or something, and Barbie's all yeah, you probably know lots of people from when you were a kid but that's not really germane to the present situation. He pulls out a folded sheet of notebook paper which is THE RECIPE FOR THE DRUGS (I love how Coggins has it all tucked in there! All his drug eggs in one casket!) and Linda reads aloud: "denatured alcohol, chemical stablizers..." "Liquid propane," finishes Barbie. Linda says she's never heard of propane being used to make drugs (so the special ingredient was propane???? And Max needed Jim to get her large amounts of this perfectly legal substance WHY, AGAIN?? I guess it was to ward off any suspicious ATF agents but still, when you see her house later, this reasoning will become as flimsy as a wet paper napkin.) (Also, propane??? It coulda been Party All The Time at my inlaws, I'm telling ya.)

 

But even the Dome can only take so much absurdity, and we cut to the long neglected radio station, where Dodie's sending one out to the recently punctured Phil, "who was dumb enough to try to stop a bullet with his shoulder yesterday." I love these two's love/hate relationship. I hope Phil's getting more treatement at the clinic then summoning an inchworm to walk over his wound or burying half a bean at the dark of the moon or whatever Clinic With Nothing is presently falling back on.

 

Julia walks in (is Dodie still on the air? I hope not or their conversation is about to be broadcast across Chester's Mill) and asks how things are going. Dodie says she's been sending out messages, but..."no message from the outside world?" asks Julia. Not even a peep, says Dodie, pouring more coffee (is there a coffee underground? How is Julia not tackling her and snatching the mug from her hands?)

 

Well, probably because she's got a goal for this interview, and that is, of course, borrowing the Ghostbuster Rig (they call it a Yaggi). Why? asks Dodie. Julia puts on her best "Just borrowing a cup of sugar" ton and says heck, they never did find that power source, might as well take another swing at it, ya know?

 

Dodie says the Yagg-whatever's not going to help with that, since it stopped working after the Witch Twins touched the Dome. O RLLY, says Julia, um, have you mentioned that to anybody? Nope, says Dodie, like I promised. Not yet. Oh, well, says Julia, trying to keep things light/not "send Dodie pelting off to round up a mob and hunt down two teenagers," thanks anyway! Dodie leaves the shot as Julia tries to figure out a next move. I'm trying to picture Julia as a hard bitten reporter but I'm not quite there yet.

 

Big Jim is pacing around the empty sheriff's office when Linda and Barbie walk in. He brings up the shooting and Linda's all no biggie, we handled it. Yeah, but what about next time? asks Jim. Lotta people armed in this town, hell, look at the problem we had with the water (say, did anybody ever scoop up Ollie?) Jim's clearly trying to undercut whatever Max is cooking up.

 

"What are you saying?" asks Linda. "We collect all the guns?" Oh, my, this should go swimmingly. The whole well clusterfuck was bad enough; I am just seeing a picture in my mind's eye of Linda, Junior and Barbie trying to convince these panicky, angry, bewildered people that they should hand over all their firearms. 

 

"Might wanna think about it," says Jim, and this whole thing devolves into Big Jim Rennie proposing the truly crackerballs idea that Chester's Mill is now its own country. Well, considering they have no courthouse or judges, he might actually pull this off. He points out that tensions are only going to rise, and gets Barbie to reluctantly agree that neighbor turning against neighbor is a consummation devoutly to be avoided. As always, Big Jim takes a crazy, major league crazy, proposal and in a few swift verbal darts tarts it up into a feasible sounding idea. His inner king, the one that's been itching to rule his whole life and which he's tried to placate with his status as Big Man on the Chester's Mill campus, has quit scratching at the door and is now kicking it. 

 

Blah blah blah I'll go first voluntary program float the idea and in a few seconds, Linda the Appeaser says okay, as long as it's voluntary and temporary, but the second that Dome comes down...guns back, no prob, says Jim. Um, I'm thinking that once the Dome's down everybody in this Godforsaken hellhole is going to tear ass outta here and fuck everything from guns on down. Jim can make them into a Lincoln Logs cabin for all most people will care.

 

Barbie points out Jim's going to need help (YEAH, I'd say so) and he guesses it's him. Jim flexes his "count on you?" muscles and Barbie's all Jimmy, c'mon, I said yes, let's go on that date! Jim side eyes him but walks out. Linda queries if he's really down with his and Barbie's all HELL to the no but I'm not letting him outta my sight. He walks out as Linda ponders why she didn't just go to medical school. She could be dispensing hen's teeth and newt at the clinic right now.

 

Radio station where Big Jim is presenting his rabidly anti-Constitutional idea like it's an announcement for a bake sale. It's fun! PIe! Games! Races! Hand Over Your Guns! He totally right wings it, which is hilarious considering what he's proposing. And hey, if you participate, extra food and propane! (OHHHH, so when Ollie does that it's shitty but when Big Jim does it...) the music sting agrees that this idea is super shady as we cut out to Max smiling away as she drives, listening.

 

Back in on Joe and Norrie, apparently having decided to kick back and wait for Julia by viewing a Microsoft Tablet (product placement!) photo cache of Joe's embarrassing baby photos (only Joe. ONLY JOE would show off his naked infant bottom to his crush object with no irony.) Truman the dog, probably faint with hunger, lies beside them as Norrie laughs and teases Joe about that shirtless one. It's just adorable. Maybe they'll use the Tablet to pull taffy or make kettle corn later.

 

Joe demonstrates that neato keano detachable screen (have you seen those commercials? Wouldn't it be a riot if that little girl grabs the tablet with the kite on it and flies it, and whoever was holding the keyboard changed the picture to a big anvil?) when Julia walks in, saying no joy with the Yaggi.  Joe suggests door to door, but Dorrie recalls that Truman sniffed out Mini Dome, and maybe he can do it again. Truman's all fucking feed me already and you're on.

 

Linda, having pondered the events of her day, scoops up a conveniently returning Junior and heads out to the propane warehouse, telling him that Coggins wasn't just high on the Lord. But on their way out, who should they see but Angie! She's sitting on a bench, having apparently listened to that whole guns "we are our own country" thing and having nobody notice her, until Junior walked by. She clearly has something on her mind. Pink stars, perhaps?
 

Junior's all can I take my break? and Linda does her usual five second Responsible Boss routine before going whatever leave your radio on and heading out alone. This can only end well.

 

"Angie", smarms Junior, "I knew you'd be back." A conversation ensues that is frankly tiring to listen to, we know all this crap, Junior locked her up to keep her safe OMG MOVE IT ALONG, and Angie says she knows there's more. Yeah, says Junior, but he didn't know it until her seizure. C'mon, I want to show you something. He takes her arm.

 

Angie yanks back, but as Junior strolls off, clearly not going to force her to follow, she charges after. This relationship is as gross as it is repetitive.

 

Cut to a large amount of people handing over truly alarming piles of weaponry (and presumably, bullets) to Big Jim Rennie. Damn, I woulda thought it would take more then fifteen minutes,but clearly most people are just as freaked over the possibility of factionalized warfare as Jim predicted they would be. 

 

One guy, handing over a pistol, practically has NEXT PLOT POINT on his forehead, and when Jim says hey, tell that neighbor of yours I was hoping to see him he says good luck with that, he says you'll have to kill him.

 

Jim, not really down with that, fills Barbie in. Seems this guy was always a  collector but went off the Weaponry Deep End when the Dome came down and produced a car accident that mashed his wife and kid. Say, perhaps this guy is upset partly because HE DIDN'T GET A CASKET TO PUT THEM IN?  "Can't have a guy like that running around armed," Jim says. Barbie snarks about the whole "Not coming to your homes" thing (at this point I'm waiting for the extras to start singing "THANKS OBAMA" in unison) but Jim's all, guy's gone bonkers, it might be necessary. 

 

Hey Jim, says Barbie, picking up a random hunting rifle from the pile. If you're going out there, you're gonna need some backup. Backup that totes is not going to take advantage of this situation, no sirree.

 

Coming up, Dome Hunt and Gun Drama!

Edited July 30, 2014 by Snookums

[Snookums]

In on the Disco Egg Trio following Truman the dog around as he sniffs the entire woods. Joe encourages him and Dorrie snarks he's just showing them all the best places to pee (hey, Dorrie, this was your idea in the first place, dial it back). Joe suggests it may have just disappeared and Dorrie that they hallucinated it, but Julia says she saw it too and things don't just disappear. Dorrie points out that the giant Dome in which they are trapped gives the lie to that, but Julia insists there's a rational explanation. Right here is where the mummy or vampire should leap out. 

 

Truman sniffs something and heads to a bush, Joe following. It turns out to be nothing but Jump Scare birds, but Joe is undeterred. 

 

Cut to Propane Warehouse. Linda's shaking the lock on the door when *POOF*, that Cat Lady from the pilot that called Julia out about the propane appears and says about time! Linda, showing restraint, does not shoot her.

 

Cat Lady, relishing the chance to pour out her theories, fills Linda in about her suspicions--some good, some Dome-influenced crazy. Linda asks why she didn't tell her about this before and Cat Lady's all, I told our former sheriff, but he didn't seem so interested for some reason. She tells Linda to talk to Julia and walks off to arrange her fifteen thousand china figurines as Linda ponders that application for Cordon Bleu and how different things might have been.

 

Abruptly deciding enough is enough, Linda shoots that lock right off the door and yanks it up like She Hulk. She strolls in to question the truly absurd amount of propane inside.

 

Big Jim's Ridiculously Shiny SUV (do elves polish it at night?) pulls up outside Presumably Distraught Gun Collector's House. Brief discussion on tactics: Jim will walk in and Barbie covers him, but don't fire unless things go sideways. Sideways like that bullet that hits the windshield. 

 

Both men duck out of the car and circle, waving those there guns they want people to give up.

 

Angie and Junior arrive at Junior's former house. Angie's still skittish and Junior's all will you calm down? I promised you and dad that I'd never hold you against your will again. Well hell, that changes everything, Angie should probably marry him now. Junior leads her over to a shed which is apparently Junior's late mom's art studio. Okay. 

 

They walk in, Junior reminiscing about how it seems like yesterday she was here and Angie saying she took her pottery class, as they both pass some--okay, how to put this--truly, um, basic art. Literal stick figure basic. At first I thought this was some of her students' work, but no, This is a grown woman's artwork. I'm not saying she has to be Rubens, or even Grandma Moses, but good Lord, every single one of her students was overcharged if these are typical examples of her work. Holy crap. 

 

Angie asks, reasonably, what this has to do with her trip to the stars, and Junior says a couple months before she died his mom had a dream about him, came out here, and painted: this. He sets a big picture on the easel. It shows a young boy (Junior, I'm supposing) standing out on a hill, surrounded by..."pink stars," Angie breathes. Oh, great. This fucking means Junior is going to be involved with the whole seizure/Baby Dome thing. Wonderful. THANKS, OBAMA. 

 

Back to Gun Collector Mansion. Jim enters, calling out for Gun Guy to put his weapon down (I think his name's Ted.) Barbie circles outside as Jim enters a bedroom full of a distraught guy and a HELLA amount of guns. Like, I'm guessing he was already on some watchlists guns.

 

Barbie takes aim. A red dot is on Jim's head.

 

Jim does a counseling session with Ted that ends with the reveal of a grenade OKAY GAME CHANGER. Barbie is unaware of this, as Jim is blocking his view.

 

Jim tries but Ted pulls the pin and there's a moment where things really could have gone down the shitter, but things luckily do not get wrapped up with an explosion for once. Jim tells Barbie to take his friend to the clinic and get him sedated (with what? Eye of Newt Sleepytime Tea?) while Jim packs up the arsenal. He thanks Barbie for keeping his cool and not shooting him.

 

Linda, finding the propane tight lipped, is breaking into the warehouse office, where security footage is conveniently cued up. She sits and watches footage, fast forwarding to a shot of Max (Linda doesn't know this yet, of course) meeting DUKE and handing over a big "I'm full of money" envelope. I adore how Duke drove out there in an official car in full uniform in front of the camera. I mean, this was all top secret but let's not get crazy, amirite? Linda ponders anew why she never looked into grad school.

 

Cut to Angie and Junior oddly bonding over their new shared interest and what this painting means. Junior ponders that maybe his mom knew the Dome was coming. Angie asks if his mom could see the future or what, and Junior launches into a spiel about if she could, Angie can too, and he's not crazy. He's not crazy and his mom wasn't either, she knew something was coming, she knew. As much as I rag on Junior, it really must have been hellish for him, knowing both he and his mom were "off" and getting no support or help with that burden. Realizing there's an explanation, no matter how wild, is the first time his view of reality has been confirmed. 

 

And then he ruins it again by flipping right back to Crazy Love and asking if she can't see how great this is, that they're in this together, he's always loved her OH MY GOD. CHANGE THIS RECORD.  Angie does not look thrilled, to say the least, at this turn of events.

 

Jim and Barbie are unloading guns someplace (I have no idea where this is; Jim's office?) but haven't gotten very far when Max strolls in, bold as brass, saying hey, great job with disarming the populace! Jim's all hey, um, I woulda called, but Max is all miss this? No way! Jim starts to introduce Barbie, but Max preempts that by being AWESOME. She strolls over, right up to Barbie, and kisses him full and long on the lips. WOH, says Jim's expression. His expression does not change as Max cheerfully explains that she and Barbie know each other. Quite well, it appears. Barbie gives Jim a rueful, tiny smirk as Max and her awesomeness fill the room with pheromones and game changing.

 

Darkness. Dorrie bitches that that was a day wasted, but Indefatigably Optimistic Joe says hey, maybe we'll find Baby Dome tomorrow! Oh, Joe. "Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life" holds no irony for you as a tune, does it? 

 

Joe tells Truman to find his bowl, let's get him fed (FINALLY) and Dorrie plans to check on Invisible Carolyn, but suddenly Truman runs towards the barn! What ho? What can this mean? Dorrie and Joe are at first dismissive, but finally check it out. 

 

And, within the confines of the barn, is, of course, Baby Dome, Disco Egg sitting within in it on a perfect rounded scoop of dirt. (So it was in the barn the whole time! And Truman dragged them all over the woods all day when it was right there! That is fantastic! Go Truman! That'll teach them to mess with din din times!)

 

Back to JIm's office of Awkward Smooches as Jim side eyes everything and Max rags on Barbie, how he's not going to greet her at all? No long time no see or anything? Max just revels in the awkward and it is delightful. Barbie is clearly feeling the opposite as Jim calls out Barbie's whole "stranger passing through" routine and Barbie's all at least I'm not pretending confiscating an arsenal was my own idea, so SHUT UP. Max steps into the snipefest, assuring them they're both pretty but that's not important right now. 

 

Max proceeds, like the practical gal she is, to outline "their" plans for Chester's Mill (Jim rolls his eyes at that), saying hard times mean desperate people, and it could go the boring ol' everybody shoot each other way, or...her way. Barbie says let me guess, black market? Booze, drugs, gambling, hmmm? See? says Max to Jim. You have nothing to worry about, he gets it! Why go Crimean War when you can go Bootlegger's Chicago? At least that way people are entertained and Max, true to her cash register of a heart, can make a tidy profit in whatever is going to pass for currency around here. Glad you're on the same page, Barbie!

 

Wait, what? says Barbie. Who says I'm helping with any of this?? Who says you aren't? asks Max, pointing out he's got a lot of dirty little dead husband shaped secrets that are just waiting to get dug up if she so chooses. Oh, please, says Jim, dig away, and Max points out that he's hardly got a horse to hie up on here. "You both are working for me," she says, "even if you didn't know about each other and now is not the time to grow a conscience." Yeah, those things are more of a pain than orchids, with the hand pollinating and all that. If they don't want to face a jail cell, or lynch mob, they'll go along. 

 

Barbie says she isn't bulletproof and Max is all girl, please, what am I, five? I've got an insurance policy. Anything happens to me, you two star in the Chester's Mill version of TMZ. Having popped both guys' balls in her stylish handbag, Max gets back to business, telling Jimmy to load up the weaponry and haul ass to the cement factory. "Give her a kiss goodbye for me, will ya?" snarks Jim to Barbie as he grabs a box and heads out. Barbie looks like he'd rather make out with a puff adder. Max smirks and twines herself around Barbie, reminding him of how they met so many months ago, and look at them now.

 

Barbie says whatever she and Jim are up to, they're making a huge mistake. Max says he's right there with them. Don't think so, says Barbie, and Max pulls the "dead doc" card out of her sleeve and asks how his new little affaire will manage with that info on the line. Oh yeah, says Max, I've been watching you, and Jim, and everyone in this hellhole (she was? How? How did no one spot this very eye catching woman driving/skulking around town keeping tabs on everybody?) so keep that in mind. Barbie thinks longingly of his days in Iraq as we cut to

 

Barn and Baby Dome! Joe and Dorrie stare at it (Say, when did they lose Julia? Why isn't she here?) as Angie walks in, spotting it and saying hey, is that it? Yeah, says Joe, and aren't you freaking out about it? I'd like to, says Ang, but I'm a part of it and besides, it's kinda cool! It would be cooler if it didn't involve Junior, but hey, lemons to lemonade I guess. 

 

A truly absurd bit follows where it's established that Joe apparently sleepwalked out and brought Baby Dome to the barn, in the kind of "outline the circumstances that are apparently too expensive to show" perfected in turn of the century vaudeville theater. Whatever, show. Move it along. Joe says you didn't think that was weird and Angie's all "what isn't?" and they all just go with that. Sure, fine.

 

Cut to Julia sitting with a clearly distracted Barbie, but she doesn't notice because she's recounting her day of Baby Dome snipe hunting (again, why did she break off from the kids?) She says she's been clinging to the belief in a rational explanation for everything, but now... maybe we'll never get any answers and they should just say screw it. She turns to him, taking his hand, and says "and be grateful for what we do have." That loud THUNK you just heard was a guilt arrow hitting Barbie in the back.

 

Julia asks about his day and Barbie realizes that never, in his entire life, has he been less able to tell someone about his day."Nah," he says. I can wait 'til morning. Ohhh, says Julia, do you wanna take me to bed? (THUNK. THUNKTHUNKTHUNK.) They kiss, but it's hard for Barbie to get his lips around all those quivering shafts (rim shot) and says he's gonna stay up for a while. Oh, says Julia, um, yeah? She plays it cool but it's bothering her, clearly. Yeah, says Barbie, everything's fine, no big deal, hey, everything's great. They both pretend nothing's wrong as Julia heads to bed alone.

 

Junior emerges from the Art Shed/Shrine, only to hear some mysterious clanking about and spot light coming from the shelter. Convinced it's Angie down there in a wedding gown, he runs over. Alas, it is only his father/nemesis, who's apparently mixed up the shelter with the cement factory because there's quite a stockpile down there, including that grenade he took off Ted. Hmmm, thinks Junior as the music swells ominously. How are we going to set up the chairs and flowers around all this stuff?

 

Cut to Dorrie saying Joe might have brought Baby Dome to the barn to keep it secret, and Angie posits that maybe only people who've had seizures are supposed to be around it. That cuts out Julia, Dorrie points out. Okay, but what do we do with it? asks Joe.

 

Angie, always impulsive, reaches her hand towards the curvature. As she touches it, electric blue light coats her hand. Dorrie and Joe kneel and do the same, the light surrounding their palms also. Disco Egg lights up as Angie asks if it did this before. No, says Dorrie, it's like these are locks and our hands are the keys. The title of the episode finally comes into play in minute 40 of this 41 minute episode as the three all turn their heads towards the blank side of the dome, where a ghostly outline indicates what's needed--"a fourth hand", says Joe. "I guess we need to find it," says Angie with strange and inappropriate glee, and we fade to credits.

 

DONE. See y'all here tomorrow for Let The Games Begin, which not only has more Natalie, but a big ol dollop of Mare Winningham! I have been a very good girl this year. 

Edited July 30, 2014 by Snookums

[Actionmage]

Thank you again, Snookums! I am loving these recaps. The episodes are much more enjoyable this way.   I am going to have to use Sars' phrase; it's too fun not to use at some point!  Maybe I can cosplay NATALIE ZEA as Max and have one of those 'Hello, My Name is' badges with that title!  Fab outfit, 25 cent sticky label and voila!

[Davey]

Officially took this show off the DVR. Not sure why it took so long as I pretty much hated it as soon as they showed people sitting down for a nice cup o' joe and a slice of pie instead of being at all interested in the crazy dome thing. That was the first episode I think. These writers, who are terrible, were given a tool that they have been abusing and it makes every single moment of the show utterly pointless. The dome warps your mind. So anything anyone does is meaningless because they will be a totally different person in the next episode. I still can't get over the fact that Junior is a good guy now when he was soooo over the top bad in the first few episodes. 

 

TV used to be pretty strictly an episode to episode format with each being pretty much self contained meaning you could watch them in any random order. Now it has become a format for telling one long story that you really need to watch from the beginning. While that has given us great shows like The Sopranos and Breaking Bad it has also ruined so many shows that started out great(not this one). Weather it's shows like Rome and Deadwood that have no ending because they are abruptly cancelled or shows like LOST that have a beginning, a looong meandering middle and an unsatisfying end that can't possibly tie up all the loose ends, it's just so frustrating to get invested in them. And most likely maddening for the writers/showrunners. 

 

Anyway, my point is that this was supposed to be a mini-series lasting like thirteen episodes(It was fully written) but it became a hit and just like LOST the writers have no idea how to stretch it out. The first season of LOST was crazy good but IMO sucked after that because they shit on everything in that first season. UTD didn't start off any where as good as that show but it had an interesting premise. It aggravated me that nobody really panicked until like episode 4, that nobody seemed all that interested in getting together and talking about how to survive this but instead sat around the diner gossiping but the premise was enough to keep me interested. Around mid season you could just feel the way the story that they already wrote in it's entirety was being stuffed with filler and now it's just a soap opera that can go on and on forever. 

 

It sucks because if a show gets too popular TPTB have to ruin the story to milk those ratings and if it's not popular enough it gets cancelled with no real closure. Some writers like Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad) and Matthew Wiener (Mad Men) are up to the task but most are not. The Under The Dome people are definitely not. I can't even hate watch this anymore.

[Snookums]

Okay, finally! On to Let The Games Begin, and then I get the last episodes, and then I should be wrapped up with Season One just in time for Season Two to end! This is starting to feel faintly faintly Sisyphean, honestly. But hey, let's roll this rock.
 
We open with the "Chester's Mill was a totes normal seething viper's pit until that stupid Dome and now our secrets aren't safe" thing, then the usual "Last time on UTD" stuff, reminding us that NATALIE ZEA is here to shake things up in an awesome manner, and Angie, Joe and Dorrie are Magical Dome Fairies. Cut to the world's unluckiest Monarch caterpillar, climbing the inside of Baby Dome. It obviously got scooped up during Joe's Conveniently Off Screen Sleepwalking And Baby Dome Hauling Service Call and is not happy with its relocation. There's no good school near this barn.
 
Pan over to Angie, Dorrie and Joe, all sleeping on piles of quilts in the barn, with Joe and Dorrie tied together at the wrist. Man, if sleeping in that pile of germs and manure doesn't kill them they are superhuman. At least they won't have to shake down the clinic for adder's tongue and dried toad.
 
Dorrie stirs, muttering "no sleepwalking, I knew it", and sits up. Spotting Mr. Caterpillar, she bolts up, yanking Joe awake. "Sorry, but look what's inside the Mini Dome!" she says. Joe, Science Geeking away (ugh, it's too early in the morning for this much enthusiasm) gasps "whoa", waking Angie, who has the right idea in telling them to shut up.
 
"Angie", says Dorrie, whose hair is far more fabulous then anybody who slept on a barn floor has a right to, "the Egg has a visitor." Ahah, so this caterpillar was a college kid who went to Disco Egg last night and got scooped up. Dorrie says as much, saying it was under the dirt and now it's trapped, just like the big Dome trapped them. Angie is fascinated by the little creature, but not as much as Joe is. Geeking to beat the band, he points out the black, white and yellow stripes, to which Angie, probably fervently wishing she'd brought home some of that precious, precious coffee from the diner, says "Yeah? And?" I'm guessing Angie might have roughed Joe up a bit during their childhood.
 
Joe points out it's a monarch caterpillar, to which Dorrie says "the Monarch will be crowned," and explains that's what Julia heard in the woods. Joe posits they should tell her about this and Angie nixes it, saying they all agreed not to tell her. Yeah, says Joe, but what if she's the fourth hand they need? This sounds like a bunch of kids sitting around a pile of graph paper and Jolt arguing over the more arcane points of a D&D campaign. 
 
Dorrie thinks maybe that elusive fourth hand can turn off the Dome, but Angie points out that Julia hasn't had seizures. Well, that you know of, Ang. Since this show is perfectly okay with sending Carolyn into the hoary netherworld and Joe off on very focused sleepwalking campaigns without showing a frame of either, why not a seizure or two? Handy Offscreen Action, Your Shortcut To Plot Points!

The three of them, at a loss, surround the dome and touch their hands to it, lighting up their palms, Disco Egg (it previously had been black and inert) and the fourth outline. It's pretty clear what they need, but Joe, Captain Emetrius of the U.S.S. Obvious, points it out anyway--they've got to find out who the fourth hand is. Angie looks to be thinking unwelcome but undeniable thoughts as Dorrie points out that they've got to find out who else had seizures.
 
This next bit is a riot, as the kids get to their feet, cover Baby Dome with one of the quilts and stroll out. Like, the quilt is magic or something??? It's completely obvious there's something under there and they just leave it in the middle of the floor! That's not going to attract the wrong attentions of anybody, no sir. It's clear Baby Dome doesn't mind being hauled around by these guys, so why can't Joe roll it in a corner or something? 
 
What's that? You can't imagine there's anybody around who's deeply suspicious of Joe and Dorrie, and was just hit up in a very weirdly casual manner to borrow a piece of specialized electronics equipment that she created especially to find power sources? Well, HAH on you, because as we cut to the three kids walking back to the house the camera zooms in on--
 
DODIE. She clearly has not bought Julia's "La la la, ya know, watched all my Netflix so I thought I'd just take another run at finding the Dome's power source and I have nothing to do with those creepy children who can turn the Dome knobs, no sirree!" routine and is hiding behind something or other, watching them from a distance. Next shot is her walking straight into the open, unlocked barn, right up to tucked in Baby Dome. In the middle of the floor with a shaft of sunlight highlighting it. Way to go, Guardians. 
 
Dodie circles it, pulling off the quilt, and stares in shock. The music tries to warn her not to mess with Baby Dome as we cut away to a berobed Julia (honestly, is there no outfit she can't make look straight out of a J Crew catalog? And once again her hair is PERFECT. She's washing it in reservoir water filled with dirt and sticks and animal leavings and it's PERFECT. One day under a dome and my hair would look like the remains of an unlucky badger on the shoulder of Route 99. Life is not fair.) heading downstairs. I don't know if Barbie joined her at any point last night, but he's gone now in any case, as the note "BACK LATER" under a mockingly empty coffee mug shows. Julia gazes into the middle distance, wondering if she's got time to put on one of  her Fabulous Casual Makes Everybody Else Look Like An Obese Troll Monster outfits and head down to the diner to fill that mug up before Barbie gets back. 
 
Well, she probably does, since Barbie is currently knocking on Big Jim's door, and any conversation with Big Jim Rennie is a long one. But I'm not interested in that right now, because right behind Barbie, who is standing on Big Jim's porch, is the lake. The giant huge lake. 
 
Did you guys ever get the impression that Big Jim's house was lakefront property? And that the lake (which by now should be filled with rotting fish and vegetation and methane, by the way, rendering pretty much all such housing uninhabitable and gassing a good portion of the town to distraction) was THIS BIG? The geography of Chester's Mill is really getting frustrating/enraging to track. I get that the Dome didn't come down on the exact town line, since plenty of residential streets were shown cut right in two and lots of farmland/rural area that isn't zoned as Chester's Mill proper is underneath it. And yes, the lake was shown to be at least partway under the Dome. Fine. But the whole barrier thing is getting really suspiciously--flexible, let us say. Basically, whatever the hell the writers need for an episode is Under Dome, including things like the cement factory and the propane tanks, no matter where such things might logically appear in an actual town. This place includes only one church, no real hospital, a mortician who's also a preacher who's also the pathologist, no courthouse, no apparent lawyers, and one restaurant, but tons of fabulously expensive lakeside property (including housing on inhabited islands in the middle of the enormous lake, as we'll soon see.) Who the hell zoned this freakshow of a place? I'm guessing that Rapture shit isn't as new a drug as one would think, is what I'm saying.
 
I'm so distracted by this, I can barely focus on why Barbie's here--to chat with Jim about their mutual crazy non-ex, Max! Yay, any convo about Max is bound to yield some dialogue gems. As Jim sips his coffee (of COURSE Jim has coffee. Jim probably has a tiny coffee plantation around here somewhere) and steps out onto his porch, he says it sounds like somebody wasn't to happy to see her yesterday. Barbie's all you weren't exactly jumping with joy, either. Jim admits she's a "piece of work." Oh, she is. A magnificent piece. 
 
Jim attempts to plumb the depths of Barbie (dirty joke insert here) and asks if he'd care to share how he and Max came to know each other so well, and Barbie's all you first, girlfriend. Next they'll write in slam books and braid each other's hair. Jim snorts and says well, enemy of my enemy, what do you propose? Jim's all for cutting out bullshit when it's expedient. 
 
Barbie points out there's not a lot they can do unless they get hold of that insurance policy Max was bragging on. It's got to be somewhere Domeside or she couldn't use it for shit, so that means it's hidden somewhere they can get to it, at least in theory. Jim repeats Max's story of staying in a random house but Barbie shoots that down immediately, Max is too smart for that.
 
Jim ponders his nemesis and equal for a moment, the says Max has a legit real estate company in Westview called Osiris (the Egyptian God of the Dead? That's an interesting choice of moniker. "Now, this property is a real cute fixer upper, but you probably shouldn't put up earnest money unless your souls can be weighed against a feather.")
 
Anyway, Jim says,she's got some holdings here. Barbie likes this train of thought and asks how they can find out which houses are hers, and Jim says the town clerks' office should have the records. Town clerks tend to have their offices in courthouses but I wonder where Chester's Mill's will be! A record store? An abandoned lot? Perhaps upstairs of the pool hall? Hey, with these zoning laws the possibilities are endless!
 
Jim says he'll check it out but Barbie's all yeah, no, not down with you going alone so much, what with both our asses on the line. "You'd think I'd screw you over?" asks Jim, but he barely fakes the hurt routine and Barbie has no problem smirking back that Jim's a used car salesman. Fair enough, says Jim's expression, and he says sure, come along, whatever. 
 
Well, the trip over was apparently uneventful enough, since the next scene is the two of them going through piles of paperwork in the clerk's office, wherever that is. Barbie's saying there's at least a dozen sales to the Osiris Corporation (Motto: We don't let anybody SETtle for a low bid!) and  Jim that most of them flipped within a year. All except this one. Here on Bird Island, says Barbie. It's out on the lake right outside your house, and hey, guess what, under the Dome. They're peering at a map that apparently shows the exact parameters of the Dome. This should mollify me but does not. I guess Joe drew this during one of his handy offscreen bursts of activity? 

 

Pretty convenient place to hide whatever she's got on us, says Jim (YES, CONVENIENT.) Well, says Barbie, probably shouldn't go out there unarmed. Just as Jim is smirking please, I wasn't born in a barn, like some Baby Domes I could mention; you think I let Max have all the guns? when "Uh, oh, what are you two doing?" Speak of the devil and she shall appear! Max strolls in, wearing another fabulous frock (she and Julia are going to end up going head to head in some ersatz version of Next Top Model by the end of this), all bitchery and perfection.

 

Should I be worried? Max inquires, as Barbie does the world's most obvious job of hiding the files and Jim Salesman Horseshits of course not, just tending to some business. That's not yours.

 

"For now, anyway," says Max, losing interest and handing over a list. Jim takes it and reads espresso, dark chocolate, silk infused conditioner...? At the men's looks Max sighs she likes her luxuries, and should she go without just because a giant and undefeatable Dome has them trapped? SHE SHOULD NOT. SHE IS MAX. Max points out that there's plenty of abandoned houses and they should be able to find at least some of this stuff. Normally, I would disagree, pointing out that this is a small town in Maine, not New York, and due to fullscale looting there's probably not a lot of anything lying around in empty houses. But A) as has been established, this is the most bizarro world wackadoo unlikely small Maine town EVER, B) The Dome has clearly demonstrated that the Euclidean Circle is barely a suggestion as far as It's concerned, and C) MAX. Max could probably demand and get a golden sleigh pulled by a team of platypuses if she wanted one.

 

Or hey, says Max, if you're not down with that, I can always expose your dirty laundry and see how that goes! Um, Max, you know I would never, never tell you what to do, you magnificent bitch goddess, but maybe a little less with reaching for the blackmail gun? Too much of that and these guys are either going to commit suicide, kill you and to hell with the consequences, or seize any opportunity out of sheer desperation and use it to undermine you. And indeed, that is exactly what happens. Jim, having just been offered a Max free space of time, is clearly not going to spend it foraging for chocolate. He didn't get where he is by not carpe the hell out of his diems.

 

Barbie, meantime, is all I may be a desperate man trapped in a web of deceit and lies but you can't make me forage for GIRL STUFF. Not you, says Max, just little Jimmie over there. You and I have some other stuff to take care of. She strides out on stiletto heels and greatness, snapping "Come ON" to Barbie like he's a poodle. The two men exchange looks, understanding the situation, and Jim gives a faux-rueful shrug as Barbie leaves, crumpling and flicking the list away like a pesky housefly. Watch your fabulous back, Max.

 

Okay, I've gotta sign off for now but I'll be back, with Dodie Zappings and Fight Club Chester's Mill Style! Can you believe we're not even at the title card yet?

Edited August 6, 2014 by Snookums

[Snookums]

All righty, time for some punching and exchanges of precious food for useless electronic goods! Humans, nothing but good decisions all the time, I tell ya.

 

Okay, so we're back in Baby Dome barn where Dodie has taken up a new career as a paparazzi, snapping pics on her phone of Baby Dome and Disco Egg. Not satisfied with that, though, she does the photog equivalent of chasing Hayden Panetierre down the street and reaches out to touch Baby Dome. Baby Dome Don't Like That, and shows it by flaring blue around Dodie's hand before just shocking the hell out of her! She gets thrown backward a good ten feet before landing, unconscious, in a big pile of hay that would have done really well to hide a unearthly and inexplicable Dome from prying eyes if Plot Idiocy had not required it to be left in the most obvious eyecatching part of the barn instead.

 

"What the hell was that?" yells Joe, as he and NORRIE (heads up to ActionMage for straightening me out on this character's name*) race into the barn literally one nanosecond later. Like, they had to have been standing around outside the open barn door purposely looking away from said interior while blocking their ears and humming loudly not to notice Dodie fooling around in there. It is made even funnier when Norrie says "it sounded like thunder!" So quite loud and noticeable then? But you two and Angie, Presumed Guardians of Baby Dome, apparently thought hey, even though this creepy outworldly thing has apparently selected us to guard it and keep it safe, going through the trouble of light shows and projections of Dead Moms and bizarre proclamations and inducing sleepwalking, we shouldn't, I dunno, try to keep strangers from taking its picture and fondling it? 

 

I'm no security expert but mistakes were made.

 

Anyhoodle, Joe and Norrie do rush to Dodie's side, at least, and Norrie sees her burned hands and reacts with shock (dah-dump) as we cut, finally, to the title card (7 minutes 31 seconds, y'all. UTD puts the Marines to shame. Gets more done in a day then most shows do in a season!)

 

Cut to Dodie in a wheelchair at the clinic (oh, good, I understand Toad Eyeball is the perfect treatment for massive electrical shock) being pushed down the hall by Angie (who is/was a candy striper there [clinics have candy stripers now, by the by] so I'm okay with that) as she mutters and rolls her eyes and generally comes to as Joe asks if she's all right. After being informed she's at the clinic she asks what happened? "You don't remember?" asks Joe as Baby Dome Three exchange Significant Glances. 

 

"I remember electricity...?" says Dodie, obviously casting about for some kind of explanation for the giant holes in her memory and hands. "Was it the generator at the radio station?"

 

Realizing that they've been handed a far better cover then a crappy quilt, Joe and Dorrie seize on it. "Yeah, the generator! Radio Station!" they exclaim. "We were just passing by! Heard loud noise! Found you! Much Burns! Many suspicion averted!" 

 

Dodie, who's not firing, understandably, on all pistons, says yeah, that must have been what happened...and luckily Curly Haired Nurse wanders out from taking inventory on how many Frogskin Poultices they have left to spot somebody in medical distress and runs up to take over. She thanks them for bringing Dodie in and wheels her off, presumably to rub salamander blood on her neck and administer ground narwhale horn. 

 

Angie, who's been doing some kind of private mental calculations while all this is going on, runs forward with a question just as CH Nurse is heading off--does she know of anybody in town who's had seizures lately? "Besides Joe and I?" adds Norrie, because that inquiry wasn't weird or attention snagging enough on its own. But CH Nurse doesn't bat an eye. Just shrugs and says "not since your tenth grade dance, Angie" and wheels Dodie off. I am now going to play a little game where I try to come up with a question for Chester's Mill medical personnel that would make them think "wait, what?" Let's see... "Know anybody who got burned to death in a highly suspect fire?" "Just Pratt over to the propane storage place." "Anybody with bacterial meningitis?" "Aw, hell, who didn't have that, right?" 

 

Angie, having been reminded of something that frankly, she should have twigged onto hours ago considering her little art appreciation tour with Junior, does one of her patented freak and run aways as Joe and Norrie ask what's wrong and chase after her. Besides forgetting somebody (and we haven't even gotten into who, yet) had a FUCKING SEIZURE at a school dance? How the hell do you forget something like that? I wet my pants in class in fourth grade because we had a sadistic alkie teacher who wouldn't let us go to the bathroom and I promise you, if I was ever so foolish as to turn up for any kind of reunion my classmates would have absolutely no trouble recalling the incident. And given the importance of seizures in becoming one of Baby Dome's elite guard, this whole thing is even more ludicrous, but we'll return to this later.

 

Cut to Perfect Hair Julia walking into the deserted Sheriff's office. I'm not sure why she's here, but she calls out, looking for anybody, until she walks into Duke's office and finds Linda, clearly working hard on a private project that involves lots of Duke's files. She asks if Linda's seen Barbie (so he hasn't returned to the house yet; go get some coffee, Julia! Before it's too late!) and Linda's hasn't seen him since nobody's been rioting or shooting for the past few hours. 

 

"What's going on?" asks Julia, noting Linda's tense demeanor, journalistic instincts tingling. Linda, in true hardboiled cop manner, doesn't even try to feint and instead asks her about talking to Cat Lady and her mutterings about all the propane shipments. Did she ever follow up on it?

 

Well, says Julia, as much as I usually like to run front page headlines based on tinfoil hat conspiracy theories, this whole Dome thing kinda distracted me so no, why? She wasn't so crazy after all, says Linda, preparing to walk Julia through what, in any other circumstances, would be a scoop of a professional lifetime. I think the Dome Aliens must come from Planet Irony.

 

Linda sets up the security footage with Max and Duke and they watch. "She's handing him money!" says Julia, who is apparently whiling away the odd Dome-induced free time hour taking Obvious lessons from Joe. "All of which has to do with some kind of drug being made with the propane called Rapture," says Linda, outlining the kind of bust that ruins lives and makes careers in law enforcement circles. These women cannot get a career break, here! The aliens must have summer homes in the Professional Heartbreaks Colonies.

 

"You think Duke was involved in drugs?" asks Julia incredulously. "Reverend Coggins, too," says Linda, accepting the wholesale corruption of the local religious figure and father substitute / mentor she known her entire life like she's found out they jaywalked or took more then one mint from the dish beside the cash register at the diner. She goes on to say she thinks Coggins burned down Duke's house to hide evidence; now they're both dead and she's been going crazy trying to figure out what's going on. Crazy in the kind of calm, "eh" way you go crazy trying to half ass remember the name of that band you liked in eight grade, anyway.

 

Julia points out that LInda knew Duke better then anyone; where would he hide evidence? "He only cared about fly fishing, bourbon and that hat," says Linda. His tackle box burned in the fire, and Big Jim clearly has an iron grip on any and all spiritous liquors in town--he's the jealous type. That leaves...

 

Both women look at Duke's hat (lucky he wasn't buried in something so closely associated with him, right?) and Linda snatches it down from the rack. Sure enough, inside the band is a key, which Julia pegs as unlocking a safe deposit box, bank of Chester's Mill. "I'll drive," says Linda. It's nice they're getting some girl time. Maybe they can sit around laughing about how their hair is so much better then any other human's on the planet on the way to the bank.

 

Cut to Big Jim Rennie and his Pistol Girlfriend (what? He loves Whiskey Girlfriend but he's got more needs then she can fulfill, okay?) steering a boat, presumably on the lake, presumably to Bird Island. I don't think he's after chocolate.

 

Cut to Junior driving around town in his official police car. He looks pretty crisp and put together for somebody who's been sleeping in a jail cell at the station when he's not moping around his dead mom's studio or making Dream Wedding plans. He spots a guy walking down the street, who takes off running the minute he spots the car. "Yeah, you're not acting suspicious," mutters Junior (DAMMIT, SHOW, stop making me agree with Junior, it's giving me a rash!) and spins after him. 

 

Tootling the siren (is that something guys just automatically know how to do? Is that a guy thing?) he follows the guy down an alley, blocks him in and hops out, giving patented Junior Rennie Seriously Fucking Crazy Eyes as he asks where the guy's going? "Nowhere?" stammers the brain trust, and Junior relishes the opportunity for a little show of force (luckily he doesn't have one of the department's giant guns with him today.) He twists the guy's arm behind him and slams him onto the hood of the car (again, is this a guy thing, or more probably and horribly, a growing up in Big Jim Rennie's house thing?) and frisks him, obviously assuming the guy's been looting or is transporting whatever is still illegal to have in Chester's Mill. Instead he turns up a container of--table salt. 

 

This makes even Junior pause and ask why the hell the guy's stolen table salt. "You kidding?" says the guy to a uniformed police officer. "Better than cash if you want to get into the cement factory!" Really? Do tell! 

 

Which I will, but after I get back from work. Coming up next--Cement Factory Fight Club Pop Up Kit! Set Up Your Own Underground Sex And Death Empire In Hours! 

 

 

 

*ActionMage very kindly sent me a note pointing out that I've been referring to Norrie's character as Dorrie. I have no idea why my brain switched those letters, but I will be sure to use the appropriate moniker from now on!

Edited August 8, 2014 by Snookums

[bmoore4026]

*ActionMage very kindly sent me a note pointing out that I've been referring to Norrie's character as Dorrie. I have no idea why my brain switched those letters, but I will be sure to use the appropriate moniker from now on!

 

Norrie, Dorrie - it's all good.   Or bad.  Take your pick.

[ottoDbusdriver]

Norrie, Dorrie - it's all good.   Or bad.  Take your pick.

 

Don't forget Fivehead.

Edited August 9, 2014 by ottoDbusdriver

[Actionmage]

I figured it was a coping mechanism. ::shrugs:: NATALIE ZEA can't fix everything. (Or can she?)

[Snookums]

Annnnd I am back! It's been hot as balls here for the last few days. I feel like I'm living inside a giant tongue, with the humidity. Not that you all need to know this, it's just my latest flimsy excuse for not writing. BUT I AM BACK! And it is time, children! Time for Max's Fight Club Of Ludicrous Awesomeness!

 

Okay, so we have left Junior and Mensa guy draped over the squad car with the table salt (dirty!) and are now pulling up in Max's car with her and quietly sulky Barbie to the cement factory. This place is teeming with people. Like, Crazy Days sidewalk sale when everybody's waiting on the free hot dogs teeming. Gee, what could possibly be going down here?

 

Let's ask Max! She's in a wisdom sharing mood. "Word of advice, Barbie," she says brightly to Barbie's fisted up countenance. "Whatever you and Big Jim were huddling about, be careful, you can't trust him." Frankly that's true enough, but considering the source I can see why Barbie doesn't throw himself into her arms, sobbing that he was wrong for ever having doubted her. "Like I can trust you?" he snarks.

 

Max looks sincerely (and hilariously) hurt at this, it's terrific. "I have NEVER lied to you, Dale [first time Barbie's first name has been used, I believe!]" she says, and the Dome is definitely interested in Max's social experiment because I think it just diverted about fifty lightning bolts that were aimed at her head after that statement. "I'd like to think the same about you." Ohhhh, my God, is Max really trying to work a guilt trip here? Because that is a riot. Also, Max missed her calling as a kindergarten teacher. She would have those kids marching in formation and cutting out paper stars for her in under an hour.

 

Barbie, who is having the latest of a series of conversations he can't quite believe he's part of, does not respond to this, and a huge guy materializes from nowhere to open Max's door for her. I want to be Max! I want to be Max SO MUCH! She's like a walking, talking Vision Board from that Secret book that just pulls the world to her feet! VIVA MAX FOREVER!

 

Anyway, she hops out, like she's at a fancy brunch place and not her underground empire of sin and vice, and Barbie asks what this business is that they're attending to. "I'm guessing these people aren't here for a church service," he quips as dozens and dozens of extras head toward the cement factory doors. HOW MANY PEOPLE LIVE IN THIS TOWN? There weren't this many extras at the Dome perimeter saying heartfelt goodbyes to their loved ones and now all these randos are here to watch bare knuckle boxing?? 

 

"Nope," says Max,  just a little adult entertainment! WHOO-HOO! As she points out, it's been nine days since the Dome came down, so there's been no TV, no internet, no fun at all. Wait, what about that lovely gun battle for Ollie's well? That was lots of fun! And there's also hanging around Rose's diner for no reason, and looting, and...hmmm. 

 

However, I have to point out something here The Dome has been down for nine days. Now, granted, the utter inability to process this level of reality warping is going to fuck with people's heads. I'm not arguing that. And yes, being without all modern media is going to suck donkey balls. Not arguing that either. 

 

But you know what we haven't seen? ANYTHING between "What the hell?" and "Let's go watch people we know well and dealt with on a daily basis beat the hell out of each other while we bet our dwindling food supplies!" on the part of the general populace. That's a helluva slippery slope, there. Most of the people out here waiting to get in look completely middle class white middle aged tea drinker, not bloodthirsty crazed spiral of hopeless rampaging to forget feral pack of forgotten humanity, you know? It's like watching a Mad Max movie cast with nothing but Glee Club members. 

 

"Right," says Barbie (the guy who opened the car door is walking along behind them, so I'm guessing he's Max's onsite manservant) "So you smelled an opportunity for your usual booze" --Max smirks--"cards, brothels.."

 

The smirk drops right off Max's impeccably made-up lips and she jabs a finger into Barbie's ribs. "Hey," she snaps. "I don't deal in prostitution, EVER. Got that?" Ohhhh, somebody's all sensitive all of a sudden! Yes, Max only deals in money made off human bodies when it's two guys beating each other unconscious for the viewing pleasure of others. Max is a SAINT, I tell you. St. Max of The Underworld.

 

Barbie holds back many thoughts and Max's grin is back. C'mon, she says, come check out my empire of Dankness and Salt Trading! Yes, yes! I can't wait!

 

They walk down the steps into a frankly unbelievable amount of both activity and electricity being used. Hundreds of people are swarming around under electric lights as loud music blasts, clearly swapping food and other valuable goods amongst many, many tables that have been set up, and past a fight ring where two guys are punching away as a ring of men cheer them on. 

 

"Welcome to my brave new world", says Max, looking all sly and world-wise and generally on top of said world with her fabulously shod foot on its neck. Barbie looks like he'd really rather be out telling Julia about her husband or just about anything else as we go to break.

 

Okay, time for my second point. The Dome, as previously and clearly stated, has only been down for nine days. NINE. Not nine months, not even two weeks. And for a good half of that people were frantically trying to get out/throwing tennis balls at soldiers/thinking they were about to die in a thermobaric blast. Max has set this entire thing up, fully generated with electricity and FULLY STAFFED BY DOZENS OF PEOPLE, and word has gotten around fast enough that a good two thirds of the town is literally lining up to come in and bet their last remaining scraps of food on watching their friends and neighbors beat each other bloody while getting their eardrums blasted off, IN LESS THEN FIVE DAYS???

 

Look, people, there's good, there's great, there's unparalleled at Social Darwinism and then there's completely fuckingly ludicrously impossible.

 

I love Max and she's my everything, but there is just no way this could physically happen. Even accounting for despair, desperation, restlessness and the fact that DJ Phil had rigged a sound system down there, it just can't. Where the hell did Max get the generators that are producing electricity to power the dozens of no doubt filthy and rat-chewed lights in this abandoned factory? How did she hire and control all these people? And why hasn't Big Jim Rennie, who not only has long standing and intimate dealings with Max but also is obsessively and paranoia-level in love with this town, heard one inkling of this before now??? Are they in parallel universes or something? Is it like that China Meville book The City And The City? Did the aliens give Max an Invisibility Cloak??? 

 

These questions, needless to say, will go unanswered. Any and all practical notions of reality have been jettisoned from here on out. There is no rationality or empiricism, only Max. She's like Zool from Ghostbusters, here to just unleash hell because she's bored and she wants to. Just relax and accept it.

 

Luckily the show senses I'm at my breaking point and we come back in on Jim landing his boat on a very, very nice island. Like, I'm kind of expecting Mr. Rourke and Tattoo to show up and offer Jim a drink as he walks down a really long dock to what is honestly a palace, or at least a hotel. This place is HUGE. Jim walks past a row of generators (and this is one scrap that does make sense--an island home is going to lose power on the regular, and whoever owns a place like this is clearly not going to sit around the fireplace and sing until it comes back on) and tilts his sunglasses down in a classic "Whaat the heellll?" gesture as he takes in this enormous structure, with its polished wood ceilings and fans and clean white paint and thousands of  flowering plants everywhere. Jim adjusts his pistol girlfriend as he warily prepares to check this shit out. 

 

Scanning one of the several dozen porches, he hears a noise and looks over to see a woman doing some planting. Okay, so she's the caretaker or gardener? I guess if you're trapped in a Dome you make the best of it. Ooops, but there's more to this then meets the eye because a closeup reveals it is MARE WINNINGHAM. You don't get Mare in to play a gardener. 

 

A board creaks in the classic "hey, some guy's trying to sneak up on you" manner and she turns around, spotting Jim and not unreasonably asking who he is. "Sorry for the intrusion ma'am..." says Jim, but that's as far as he gets because Mare suddenly fangirls on him. "Wait, Big Jim Rennie?" she asks? "From the car commercials?" She proceeds to sing the jingle to him as Jim has another moment of clarity about how you never know when your life choices are going to bite you on the ass. He's obviously used to this though and graciously acknowledges his identity. 

 

Well, then it's hardly an intrusion, then, says Mare, I like your ads! I've been asked to believe a lot of impossible things in the course of this show, but right up there in the top five is the idea that ANYBODY is going to be this thrilled to meet a used car salesman, no matter how many local ads he does. 

 

A convo follows in which this nice lady reveals her name as Agatha and that no, it's not her house, "I'm just the caretaker." LIES, Jim! That is MARE WINNINGHAM! She does not caretake! Her black button eyes are up to no good!

 

Jim asks with elaborate casualness if she works for Maxine Seagrave? and Mare says nope, the owner's Oliver Luckland. No, it isn't. 

 

Jim lets this go for now and tells her he came here for more important reasons than selling cars, he's a councilman and is going around checking on the citizenry to see if they need anything. Well, they seem to be full up on booze and fistfights, anyway.

 

Agatha says oh, yes, it's shocking, I'm so glad to be here in peace and quiet. And I am totally trustworthy. Totally. Jim asks if he could wait for Phantom Mr. Luckland? "Inside?" grins Agatha, with an expression that suggests there's gonna be a hell of a roast on the table tonight! "We'll have a nice cup of tea, " she says, leading the way. Jim, I need you to be closer to Pistol Girlfriend then you've ever been before, okay? This woman looks like somebody who read Hansel and Gretel every night and took notes on the witch's methods of allurement.

 

Oh, thank God, we're back to the totally believable not ridiculous at all Cement Factory Fight Club! Barbie and Max stroll among the teeming throngs as Max asks what he thinks of her little empire. Barbie quips it's smaller than she's used to and Max says give her time, she'll have the whole town in here. What, the eight people who aren't already trading their last loaf of bread for booze? 

 

Barbie asks how she set all this up and Max says she wasn't sitting on her hands. That's...not really an answer. They duck around WAITRESSES (for fuck's sake!) as she says some of these people owed her from before, and she's sure Barbie will recognize a few faces. Wait, I thought Barbie had never been to Chester's Mill before his Julia's Husband Killing duties?? Why would he recognize anybody? 

 

Max explains the setup as they're set up with drinks--that somebody can come in with spare batteries and try his luck. If he wins he trades up, if he loses..."I win!" Max concludes with a sunny smile. Barbie points out that people are already bartering in general and Max is all that's for needs, this is about vices. Um, okay, but aren't food and batteries kinda, needs? Are they special Vice Batteries or something?

 

Barbie's all, you realize survival's at stake? and Max is all yeah, mine. If I'm gonna be trapped in this hellhole I'm going to live as well as I can. Now, this is interesting, because Max was clearly already living plenty well out on Bird Island in her giant palace house with Agatha (don't pretend you didn't know that's her house.) Why come into Chester's Mill at all? She had everything she could possibly need already. 

 

It's because Max's inherent selfishness is her driving force. She's a hustler and she can't sit back on her laurels. If she's not doing, she's dying. There's no reason for her to be here at all except that she can't stand the idea of a missed opportunity, no matter how crazy the surrounding circumstances or how lopsided/dangerously unstable her setup makes the township at large. People like Max never reach the top, because the top bores them. The first thing they do is fling up whatever ladder they can and keep climbing.

 

Barbie is left to ponder the destablizing influence of an extreme personality type on a closed group setting as we cut away to Angie, Norrie and Joe walking past yet another ridiculously huge mansion. How can the town have this kind of tax base and yet only one restaurant?? People who own places like this do not go to the Westview Denny's. 

 

"What's going on?" demands Joe of Angie as stalks down the sidewalk. Norrie says Angie, c'mon, you are obviously upset. Angie turns to them (still in that green tank top! Girl, you need to loot some new clothes!) and says, dramatically, that she thinks Junior is the Fourth Hand. Dah dah dahhhhhh!

 

"Are you kidding?" asks Joe, but no, Junior apparently went to the hospital the night of his tenth grade dance (AGAIN, how do you forget something like that?). Everybody thought he passed out from drinking, but what if it was seizures? Um, that makes his father even more criminally negligent of his kid than he already was for not getting him proper medical care? 

 

"But it can't be Junior," protests Joe, "that guy weirds me out!" Um, I'm pretty sure your personal weirdings-out aren't the basis for this, Joe. Angie agrees with me and snaps "Do you think I'm happy about it? After what he did to me?"

 

Wait, what does that mean? asks Joe and Angie stops, her face registering Oh right I didn't tell them I promised Big Jim I wouldn't FUCK IT, and she turns around, informing them that the reason they couldn't find her after the Dome came down was Junior decided to play Cherry Ames Crazy Ass Nurse because he thought the Dome was making her sick and held her hostage.

 

Joe, his fraternal instincts on full alert says he's gonna kill him and Angie says nooooo, no, if anybody's gonna kill him it's me and Norrie has to step in and put things to rights before these two reed slender tiny people charge off to confront crazy heavily armed obsessive Junior Rennie. She points out that she's all for taking Junior down but if he's the Fourth Hand...? 

 

Everybody's all UGH FINE and calms down, and Norrie queries if Angie is sure that Junior had a seizure back then? Angie's all sure am, and that's not the only reason I think so. I need to show you two something. Time for First Thursday Free Admission to Junior's Dead Crazy Mom's Gallery Of...Well...Art. Of a sort. 

 

Okay, this post is pretty long so I'm putting it up and will continue with the adventures tomorrow. Safe Deposit Intrigue and Barbie's Clashing Love Interests, coming up next!

Edited August 13, 2014 by Snookums

[Snookums]

Okay, I'm back! And even for this show things are about to head down the black diamond trail of WTFery, so here we go!

 

 We cut to Linda and Julia walking through the abandoned bank. Linda shines her big police flashlight around on open cash drawers and piles of money as Julia observes that it looks like everybody left in a hurry. Yep, large scale panic, looting, gunfights and being blown to bits by the US Army can make people say bugger all this about their home loans, even if they could win a free toaster. 

 

They continue their conversation as they climb over the teller counters--I presume because the door back there is locked? I wonder why that is? Everybody in the bank fled to scoop up armloads of toilet paper and punch their neighbors in the face while abandoning United States currency for the chimera that it is but some daytime manager made sure to lock the connecting door? 

 

But ours is not to reason why, ours is to join in the girl talk as Julia wryly observes that her marriage fell apart over money--that's why, in answer to Linda's question, he ran off. Well, he also ran off because he was a fucking idiot who couldn't a) handle money, b) get help for his gambling addiction and c) appreciate being married to a magical enchantress who looks ready for any public function at all times, but that's okay shorthand, I guess.

 

"I guess I knew deep down something was wrong," Julia says ruefully, "I just didn't want to see it." Linda is sympathetic but more about solving The Mystery of Duke's Hat then commiserating over a union gone bad. They walk back to the safe deposit room but it's locked. Dammit, Julia says, heading back out to find the key. Hope the keys aren't locked up too, or currently in the pocket of said daytime manager who is currently doing shots and betting against that asshole teller he never liked at Max's Den Of Fuck It All. 

 

Julia locates a key ring, but Linda is fed up with never having any lawbreaking fun and just punches the door open with a fire extinguisher. Damn, she is She Hulk! Go, Linda! Okay, let's find out what's in here--

 

--later, because right now we need to head back to the cement factory with--yaaaaaay--JUNIOR. Rather then, I dunno, call LINDA, HIS BOSS, with news of an illicit gambling ring that could destabilize the town both financially and in its human connections, Genius here has purloined the disputed table salt from his luckless capture and is heading in to check shit out on his own! He has had the smarts to take off his cop uniform, but it's not like he's either unrecognizable as Big Jim Rennie's kid or as a police officer. The bouncer at the door proves me right by calling him by name and attempting to send him on his way. Do not blame him one bit. Introducing Junior Rennie into things can only mean a turn for the worse.

 

A short altercation later and Junior is knocked on his ass, bloody nosed and saltless, with the bouncer ushering the giant, snaking line past his sulky face. For somebody who's quite big, in good shape and grew up with Big Jim Rennie for a dad Junior cannot fight for shit. I mean, I don't blame him for getting his ass handed to him by professional soldier/enforcer Barbie but that bouncer is on pretty even terms with him physically. Junior could probably be beaten by a balloon animal at this point.

 

Cut to two men whaling on each other with a frightening amount of enthusiasm in Max's 24 Hour Fistfights and Bottled Water Emporium. Again, this is a frightening and frankly excessive amount of rage and nihilism considering the amount of time the Dome's been down. And considering that the clinic is treating all wounds and woes with blessed water and runestones at this point I am pretty concerned with the massive amounts of head trauma going on. 

 

One guy beats the other guy into unconsciousness and the winners on this round run off to--hang on here--spend their...money? On what looks like bottles of soda and wine or whatever??? What the hell? Why is money involved here??? As was established NOT TWO MINUTES AGO, money is utterly worthless, mere paper with green dead men's portraits on it. Are these papers just chits establishing what each person's entitled to, like a grocery list? So, like, somebody comes in with table salt and gets a piece of paper saying salt on it, bets it on a fight, and then what? He gets a paper saying two bottles of Coke Zero and a bag of Funyuns? So, basically, these chits are just fucking replacement money???

 

Max extols this ridiculous, cumbersome and unworkable system as Barbie makes a series of expressions similar to mine as I rewound this bit. "See?" she concludes. "Everybody's happy." Well, I'd say everybody is a rock bottom idiot who has thrown over every last working of their higher brain functions but Max is happy AND MAX'S HAPPINESS IS ALL THAT MATTERS. 

 

Barbie gives up trying to figure out this crap and asks Max what she needs him for. "Lotta chaos in this crummy town since it all went to hell," says Max, "but the one thing I've heard over and over? That Barbie, he's a real badass." She writes his name on the chalkboard and underlines it, like Barbie is going to be room monitor while she's out at the copy machine, and informs him that he's the main event.

 

OHHHHHH no, says Barbie, with the tone of a man who has actually been in a physical fight and knows to avoid them, no way, you are not going to get me to fight. So, says Max, you've forgotten everything we talked about? And once again pulls the "Julia's gonna hate you for killing her tool husband" pistol from its holster. Max. MAX. GET A NEW ANGLE. If you know Barbie in the slightest you must know this threat is going to get more and more chafing every time you use it until Barbie, Jim, or both of them fling it back in your face. 

 

Barbie's not quite there yet, though--even when Max points out his opponent, some guy named Victor who gambled his life and family away a few months ago and had the displeasure of Barbie's company on several occasions. She takes great sexy pleasure in pointing out that Barbie doesn't have a gun and Victor really looks ready to even the score. Okay, so Barbie's been in town before, then. So why the HELL doesn't ANYBODY recognize him? I can see people like Peter and Victor not trumpeting his name from the rooftops but Barbie never bought gas or a road map in Chester's Mill? Stopped for a burger at Rose's Diner? TALKED TO A LIVING SOUL??? 

 

Well, enough man sweat, blood and tears, time for some tea instead. "You take sugar, Big Jim?" Agatha calls cheerfully from the gigantic kitchen of this humongous house as Jim seats himself at a marble topped counter that probably cost six figures to install. Yep, I could get sick of this and head over to start a fight club with a totally ridiculous and unworkable bartering system based on legal tender for funsies. 

 

"Yes, Ma'am," calls Jim, and continues call-and-response convo with Agatha as he stealthily searches various drawers and mail piles about the imaginary Oliver Luckland who does not exist and does not own this house. Agatha keeps up the bullshit stream as she takes off her apron and Big Jim discovers a photo in a drawer; a photo of a younger Agatha, really quite young, and a teenage girl who looks nothing like Max at all but somehow triggers neurons in Jim's noggin.

 

"That's my daughter, Maxine," says Agatha, who's come into the room to see if Big Jim would like cream, lemon, or bullets with his tea. She's aiming a hunting rifle at him in very businesslike manner as she tells him to drop his own weapon. I hope pistol girlfriend's the understanding type. 

 

Jim reaches, but Agatha remembers she forgot to tell him something and shoots a perfectly nice and inoffensive lamp that wasn't doing anything to emphasize her determination as she says "slowly." Jeez, okay! I'm pretty sure Max isn't going to appreciate her Pottery Barn scores in fragments on the floor or bullet holes in the wall, Ms. Caretaker. Jim sets pistol girlfriend down as Agatha informs Jim that Maxine didn't learn to be the way she is from her father. Big Jim has a flashback of his own parenting skills as we cut to break. 

 

ARRRGH, time for me to go to work. Damn, life sucks--I was just getting to Max's headliner act! Back in a few!

Edited August 15, 2014 by Snookums

[Snookums]

Okay, bad news about food poisoning--you have to leave work early and spend an inordinate amount of time running to the loo. Good news--score of a bunch of free time to finally wrap this sucker up and get that last DVD up in here!

 

Okay, so we pick up right where I promised--with Max strutting like a prize Persian Cat into the very well lit Fight Ring, circling and smirking. God, I love her. "The wait is over," she announces, " 'Cause here it is! Victor Rollins"--gesturing to a pumped up, flexing Victor who has clearly learned NOTHING about dealing with either Max or creative ways of earning money/expressing his anger, as the crowd cheers--"Versus your Special Forces veteran, Dale 'Barbie' Barba!" That's the second time she's called him Dale. I'm thinking it's a little intimacy-used-as-cattle-prod thing, the kind of underhanded little whipcrack that Max does so well. 

 

Barbie closes his eyes for one precious second and pretends that he's back in the Green Zone as Max informs him (rather at the last minute, too, in my humble opinion) that "the rules are simple; there aren't any. There's no rounds, no time limit. You fight 'til you lose." Delightful. I'm guessing Max has a sideline in selling off all those inexplicably unused caskets at the funeral home that's about to get hella lucrative, as those kinds of boundaries, or lack of, pretty much guarantee a pile of corpses from massive head trauma by the end of a typical evening.

 

(Also, I managed to pause the DVD here at just the right moment and Max looks likes she's laughing and sneezing at the same time, it's a riot.)

 

Anyway, back to it. "May the best man win!" says Max jauntily, and heads out of the ring. As she passes Barbie she leans over and murmurs "Disappoint me at your own risk." Okay, I'm sure Barbie really needed to hear that right then. 

 

Barbie heads into the ring as the crowd cheers lustily, and many of them are definitely waving handfuls of either money or chits. I must pause here to go reread The Worldly Philosophers and send copies to every person on the writing staff.

 

Okay, I'm back. Victor is a flexin' and a posin', all snotty and snarly about finally getting to face off against the target of his misplaced anger, while Barbie just looks weary, somebody who's learned way too much about violence to have much empathy for either the spectators or his opponent. He reaches his own fist out to Victor's outstretched one--is this some kind of boxing thing?--and Victor promptly slugs him one and knocks him right down to the filthy, tetanus covered sheet metal panels covering the floor of the ring. 

 

Barbie rolls up, a bit surprised at the quickness out of the blocks by Victor, who's too busy working the crowd to fucking pay attention, which he learns to his detriment one nanosecond later as Barbie sweeps the leg and brings him down to the floor with him. Max smirks away. Her face is going to get stuck that way if she's not careful. 

 

But enough of all this testosterone and bad lighting! Back to Giant Palace on Bird Island, where Agatha has remembered her manners and is inviting Big Jim to sit and make himself comfortable. "Max should be back after sundown, or tomorrow." Jim points out that's a long time to hold someone at gunpoint and Agatha agrees: "Hope I don't get drowsy. Might pull the trigger." That statement isn't as relaxing as the tea invitation was. 

 

Gazing at Big Jim, Agatha prepares to unleash another plot twist that was seemingly designed solely to enrage me. "You don't remember me, do you?" she asks, out of nowhere. Big Jim, full of irritation at a wasted afternoon of boat piloting and being held at gunpoint, sourly answers "Gimme a hint." 

 

Agatha goes on about how they were in the same high school class until she dropped out and Jim says he only remembers one girl dropping out, and her name wasn't Agatha. Because nobody born in the last fifty years is named AGATHA, any more then Millicent or Gertrude. Anyway, Agatha says she's sure he remembers, it was "quite the scandal", and Jim says she got pregnant, Agatha says yeah, sixteen and no way to support myself except having to bone local men who'd turn around and call me whore blah blah blah OKAY WAIT A DAMN MINUTE HERE. 

 

Remember how I was complaining, at length, about how Angie didn't remember Junior's collapse and ER visit during her tenth grade dance, and how that's not something most people forget, being rather out of the ordinary run of things? Well, you know what's even more difficult to let slip from your mind?? A classmate who got fucking preggers in a small town during a time period when it was apparently a life wrecking issue who then was forced to turn to PROSTITUTION with local grown men who publicly shamed her!! 

 

Agatha isn't claiming to have experienced this in some other town; she says she and Max moved away precisely "to get the stink out of our hair," and neither of them will ever forget "the REAL Chester's Mill." I'll bet they won't. My question is how the hell would ANYBODY, let alone Big Jim "Obsessed With Chester's Mill, She Is My One True Love" Rennie not only forget such a thing, but apparently never have heard of it until now? Big Jim Rennie who wheeled and dealed with the very men Agatha appears to be condemning? Big Jim Rennie who has had a longer and closer association with Max and her bitterness and her ambition than anybody else in town? Seriously, what the fucking hell is going on here? Did Lake Whatever used to be the end point for the River Lethe or what?

 

Luckily lots of perfectly logical answers are coming up! Ha ha, no they're not. Instead there's a bunch of free association masquerading as tension building as Agatha and Jim throw non sequiturs at each other, the gist of which is Jim learns about Barbie's husband killing oopsie right before Agatha drops the "and your son's a fuckin' psycho" bomb into the conversation. "Junior's turnin' out to be just as crazy as his mama, isn't he?" she taunts, provoking Jim into a "Shut your mouth!" How does a guy with emotional buttons this easily pushed get as far as Jim has?  He leaps to his feet, as does Agatha, holding the rifle on him.

 

Jim, though, even if he's rather easily provoked, is also quite skilled at swerving situations around to his advantage, from zig to zag. His ears picked up that little quiver in Agatha's voice as she threatens to put a bullet in his chest and he doesn't hesitate to grab the wheel. Rather then back off, he approaches Agatha, eyes polished slits of agate. "You ever killed a man, Agatha?" he enquires. "Yeah, you got your sob story, but have you ever rolled up your sleeves and murdered someone?"

 

Agatha tries to hold her own but Jim's on solid ground and knows it. " 'Cause I have," he says. "And even with all that hate, I'm not seeing that you've got what it takes. To kill." Poor Agatha had no idea she was going up against ol' "Roast 'Em Alive" Rennie, did she? 

 

Jim mocks her, pressing his chest against the barrel, and this ends where we knew it would--Jim grabbing the rifle and turning the situation neatly about. Pistol girlfriend weeps silently on her end table. Don't worry, pistol girlfriend, what happens on Bird Island stays on Bird Island. "Now," grits Jim from his lower teeth, "we're gonna do something about your family." I'm guessing a happy picnic isn't what he's got in mind.

 

Were you wondering how Barbie's doing? Well, keep it up because now we're back with the Baby Dome Three in Junior's Mom's Art Gallery and Obsessive Brooding Space. Every time I see these pictures I roll my eyes harder. This woman gave lessons?

 

Joe and Norrie check out the offerings but Angie quickly focuses their attention on that painting of Little Junior And The Pink Stars Of Vague Prophecy. This timeline is bizarre. Junior's mom painted this thing when he was a little boy, he had a seizure in tenth grade, and only NOW is the rest of this Dome/Baby Dome/Pink Stars/Fourth Hand bullshit falling into place? These aliens have no sense of pacing. 

 

Joe says it doesn't matter, he's still going to kill Junior, but Norrie cuts in that it doesn't matter what they want, it's what the Dome wants, and they just need to find Junior.

 

Well, no problems there, because guess who just walked in, having apparently not mentioned that whole underground gambling/permanent brain trauma black market thing to anybody! Yes, your favorite stable, well grounded character and mine, Junior Rennie! 

 

Junior asks what the hell they're doing with his mom's Bart Clown Bed Level creepy painting, but Joe isn't interested in making polite gallery talk, "You son of a bitch!" He yells, hurling his 100 lb soaking wet frame straight at a guy who not only has a good foot in height and fifty pounds in weight on him but is, as Joe himself pointed out seconds ago, CRAZY. Now, I don't blame Joe for this impulse, not one bit. It's not hard to work up a head of rage against a guy who kidnapped your sister and held her hostage. HOWever. This might not be the best way to go righting that wrong?
 

Junior catches Joe like Joe wishes he could catch a chicken and gets him in a half nelson as Norrie and Angie shriek for for Joe not to do this/Junior to let him go. Brief convo of "you promised my dad you wouldn't tell" "I know but I had to and you have to help us" as Joe turns interesting shades of vermillion and Norrie pretty much stands back and looks concerned. After a lot of flailing from Angie Junior flings Joe across the room and asks why the hell he should help them with anything--"these are the only things I have left of my mother." Well, point taken, crazy, but you aren't exactly out in front in the Moral Sweepstakes Triple Crown Race here. 

 

Angie outlines the whole "something bigger" thing and says they're all connected to something amazing and she can prove it if he comes to the barn with them. Junior looks dubious but you know he can't resist the Lure of the Angie.

 

Next up, punches, a quick and inexplicable drowning, and a confession!

Edited August 18, 2014 by Snookums

[Snookums]

Okay, this is the last post no matter how long it gets. I swear, it's like writing a recap of War and Peace, if War and Peace took place in Maine under a dome and was utterly ridiculous.

 

We are FINALLY back at the fight, that's been going on for bit, clearly. Both guys look the worse for wear as they swing and kick and hurl each other about. Even Max lets a shade of concern cross her face before Barbie tosses Victor down, where he lies dazed and out of it.

 

Barbie looks at Max, who gives him the tiniest of nods. What's all this about? But Barbie seems to get it and approaches Victor, goading him to get to his feet. "No wonder your wife and kids left ya," he snarls. Damn, everybody in Chester's Mill missed that "don't say anything if you can't say something nice" lesson in preschool. It works, though, and Victor staggers up. He flings himself  at Barbie and as they grapple Barbie hisses in his ear "Hit me. As hard as you can." Victor has no problem obliging him and BOOM, Barbie's down.

 

Max waits a few seconds, calculating, then strolls into the ring and declares Victor the winner to a chorus of BOOOOS. Okay, so that little eye sex exchange was her telling Barbie to throw the fight? Yep, seems so, and Max says as much as Barbie staggers up, saying that everybody here bet on the big hero Barbie and she's just made a fortune, because she knows him, and "I know you'll do anything except let me win." The music agrees with Max (AS DO WE ALL) and we cut to

 

...Linda and Julia! Hey, I forgot all about them! It's taken them a while to find the right box, which is odd because I'm pretty sure both keys and boxes are numbered, but here it is. They set it down, open it up, and..."My God," breathes Linda. 

 

"What?" asks Julia, obviously expecting something along the lines of a human head, but instead it's this little tin badge that Linda gave Duke after his pacemaker surgery, blah blah blah yes this is very touching and he loved you like a daughter, let's move it along. Julia agrees, and having rooted through the box while Linda was talking finds and hands Linda a letter addressed to her. I'm guessing it's along some "sorry about all the drugs but I love you forever" lines.

 

Linda asks Julia to read it. Sure enough, it's a confession of sorts about the drugs and how his kid died of an OD and how he only stayed his hand from suicide by vowing to keep drugs out of Chester's Mill, which he did by...kinda bringing loads and loads of drugs into Chester's Mill. Okay, that's a little unfair--all he really did was take loads and loads of bribe money from Maxine in exchange for turning a blind eye to the whole propane smuggling thing. Basically they used the emergency reserves thing to duck the DEA and in return she gave them money to "shore up Chester's Mill coffers." So, what, was this disguised as taxes or something? I don't think an IRS audit would fail to point out certain irregularities in this scheme. Plus, Chester's Mill and environs are lousy with multi million dollar properties; the property taxes alone should make the town rich as Croesus! THIS IS RIDICULOUS. 

 

I guess Duke salved his conscience by insisting Max keep "all" drugs out of Chester's Mill, but come ON. One, Maxine Seagrave probably had trouble not just bursting out laughing when Duke brought THAT proposal to the table--you know damn good and well she's gonna flood Chester's Mill with drugs and keep them quiet with blackmail, her favorite arrow in her quiver. Two, even my beloved Max isn't in charge of all the drugs in the Goddamn world--if she's not selling others are going to move in. And three, this place may be remote but it's not on the moon! If people are willing to bag out to go to Denny's they're sure as shit going to head out to any other town on the planet to buy meth or whatever. This whole thing is BULLSHIT and the idea that Duke was an intelligent, grown man and experienced law officer and gave this scheme the time of day, let alone decided it was some kind of magical fence (or Dome!) that could keep drugs away from his beloved Chester's Millians is more ludicrous than just about anything else presented by this show. 

 

Linda, however, has apparently had her brains liquefied and just keeps caressing that little tin star, saying "he did it to save us" (GAHHHH) as Julia reads on, the letter announcing the involvement of both Coggins and Jim Rennie. Linda actually looks shocked by this revelation although anybody with a functioning brain stem would not have been surprised. Julia isn't, muttering " of COURSE he was involved," as Linda murmurs "why didn't Duke tell me?" Um, because this whole thing was life ruiningly illegal and Duke didn't want you to go to prison? Julia says as much, saying it was because Duke loved her. "Maybe for the same reason Peter didn't tell me," she goes on. Nah, pretty sure that one is because Peter was 100% moron.

 

"Think you can hold a flashlight for me?" asks Julia, pulling her own SD key from her bag. Linda snaps to and does just that as Julia grabs her box from the shelves and slaps it down on the table, opening it. What ho, what's this? A life insurance policy! For---ONE MEEEELION DOLLARS! My goodness! Julia is stunned, breathing "I have to talk to Barbie." For some reason. 

 

Cut to Bird Island as Jim pulls out off the gigantic dock, Agatha trussed up in the bow. Well, her hands are tied together anyway. She asks what Jim's planning to do with her and he replies that the world reveals the right course of action. What is this bullshit? Does Jim read The Secret or something? 

 

Agatha agrees with me, sarcastically saying he thinks the world is "just lookin' out for you, don't ya? Who ever or whatever's behind the curtain pulling strings, just for you!" Pretty much, yeah, I think that's exactly what he thinks. Agatha stands up, furious in the way you can be furious only when you're facing down the embodiment of all your dead dreams, crushed hopes, and evergreen humiliations. Moving towards him ON A MOVING BOAT, she snarls "there's nothing behind that curtain but darkness!" 

 

Okay, I had to rewind this part a few times. Jim yells at Agatha to sit down, and she--falls?--over the side and into the lake. I honestly couldn't tell if she did it on purpose or not, but she surfaces sputtering for air and yelling for help, so I'm guessing it wasn't a planned out plunge. 

 

"Jim, help me!" cries Agatha as he circles around her. She seems to be treading water just fine, really, but she still is pretty frantic and her hands are tied up. Jim reaches down, then hesitates...

 

As Agatha shrieks, Jim realizes that the world has revealed its plan of action. He takes off, face set in stony lines, leaving Agatha to bob and cry fruitlessly after him until she sinks beneath the surface. I guess the show wants me to be shocked here, but this is a man who BLEW A GUY UP to cover his tracks, so I'm not. And while a living Agatha might have been a valuable pawn, a dead and gone one (Max will have no idea where she got to) is even better. Now he can head out there whenever he knows Max is in Chester's Mill and search for clues at his leisure, while also ensuring that Max's emotional lifeline/source of potential danger to him (Agatha flat out told him she knew all his secrets) is permanently silenced. Wow, the world really is looking out for Big Jim Rennie! Thanks, World! You're the best!

 

(Now, we didn't actually see Agatha die, but I'm sure everything's fine. There is no way in the world she's going to pop up later to raise all sorts of hell, nope. Everything is dandy.)

 

In the meantime, the world continues to sit on Barbie's chest and dangle loogies over his face. He's in some back room or other with Max, bleeding and just generally questioning if there's a point to Life, the Universe and Everything as Max orders him to cheer up. "You know the house always wins." She offers him a drink but Barbie's too busy being a mass of bruises and resentment to accept.

 

Well, okay, how about this then? Max swoops across the room and twines herself around Barbie's neck. "Tonight was rather successful, wasn't it?" she purrs. Well, depends on whether you currently have some broken ribs or not. Max is in the mood, however, and insists on looking on the bright side. "I won," she continues, "you...helped me win." She curls onto his lap as he winces in massive pain. Hot. Max continues on, her voice as sultry as a Mississippi evening, about how as long as this Dome is around, she can see them making this place "our playground."  Yes, there's nothing that's more of turn on than a sociopath getting you pulped within an inch of your life for her own personal gain and selfish fetishes and then demanding you not only be grateful but bone her right then and there.

 

Max has no problem with this train of thought at all and slithers in for a kiss, but for some unfathomable reason Barbie isn't into it and turns his face away! How dare he! Max is shocked at his refusal (AS ARE WE ALL.) Barbie sneers that yeah, she won some scraps and a few people owe her, but that's not a hell of a lot. Max, however, hasn't come this far on good wishes and fairy dust. Dabbing at his split lip with a rag, she points out now more people will owe her, then more on top of that. "I live the way I want, Barbie," she says. "We will live the way we want." 

 

"What if you don't get more?" asks Barbie. "No more whiskey, no more me." So not only is he refusing her offer to be her house pet, he's also pointing out an inescapable truth--that soon there just will be no "more" to be had. The whiskey, the food, the batteries, the whatever...it's all going to run out sooner or later. They're in a closed system with nothing coming in, and no matter how big a pile of shit and and bloody glory Max builds to stand atop of, it is inexorably going to shrink away to nothing sooner or later. The end is coming.

 

Max pauses for a moment, blank eyed, as the truth of this gets to her for the briefest of moments--but only the briefest. Gazing at Barbie unblinkingly, she informs him, coolly, "Then I'll burn the place down." And she will. Carthage will be destroyed before Dido goes a begging or is forced to drink instant coffee/eat Hershey bars. SILK INFUSED CONDITIONER OR DEATH TO EVERY LAST MAN. 

 

Barbie looks back at her for a minute, then shoves her roughly away from him and gets up. Max sighs "what are you doing?" and then AGAIN pulls the "body of dead doctor husband" thing. And that was the one time too many. Coupled with the glimpse he's just had of her utter, mirror-clear selfishness, Barbie realizes what he has to do.

 

In a fury he approaches her and grabs her arm--to her delight; she thinks she's got him. "Thaaat's the old Barbie," she breathes. But no. Like every real player, she ends up pushing too hard and Barbie drops the limb and walks away again, growling "we're finished, Max." And this time, he leaves. Max stands frozen, trying to process the fact that she's goofed as we cut away to

 

...let's see, it's Linda. She's sitting in the dark fiddling with that tin badge. It takes a second to reveal that she's on Big Jim Rennie's porch, waiting for him. Well, at least she's got a nice view of that giant lake that is apparently in the middle of town. 

 

Jim climbs his porch stairs, more ready then he's ever been to talk the day's events over with whiskey girlfriend (boy, I sure hope he didn't leave pistol girlfriend back at Bird Island Palace for Max to find! THAT would be awkward!) when he sees her. His body language betrays a split second of "Jesus H Christ NOW what?" before he's back to Jaunty Jim, observing he didn't expect to see her here. Linda replies she didn't expect to come but that they need to talk. Oh, God. The only talking Jim wants to do right now is to whiskey girlfriend. But, "Sure!" he says, c'mon in, he'll cook some dinner...

 

Actually, says Linda, we should talk at the station, and Big Jim sags, sags right down to the ground for a flash. But you aren't Big Jim unless you're basically one of those clown punching bags that bob up, again and again, and he turns the dial to "slight menace", saying whatever it is it can wait until morning, "I think I've earned that much respect in this town, right?" Risky move there. He knows that she's here about something dangerous to him and this could be his bridge too far...

 

But this is Linda. Linda, who put Junior Rennie in uniform. Linda, who is more naive then an Amish newborn raised in a Skinner box, and it works. "Come by first thing," she says. Oh, you bet. Yep, Big Jim Rennie will do just that. NOT TOTALLY KILL YOU OR ANYTHING. Jesus. I honestly don't see why Duke didn't tell her about the damn drug deal--he probably could have convinced her it was all a D.A.R.E sketch they were filming or something. She wraps up by saying that if she has to come back, "these cuffs don't stay on their belt." Well, now that you've as much as told him you know something to his detriment and given him an ENTIRE NIGHT to plan, I am positive this will not end in your grisly murder! Let's ask Agatha, shall we? (*glub* "IT WILL TOTALLY END IN YOUR GRISLY MURDER *GLUB!* ") Jim's face is a study on "I cannot fucking believe this life sometimes" as she walks to her car. Aw, Jim. Go hug it out with whiskey girlfriend.

 

Cut to another set of deliberate footsteps, this time those of Barbie, back at Julia's. This should be a very interesting conversation. He finds her sitting on the stairs, staring into space. "I need to say something," he says. Julia stands, walking to the living room, pausing only to ask "Like why your face is all cut up?" Well, actually more then that, but it's as good an opening as any.

 

Jim follows her to the darkened living room where she seats herself, numb and waiting. It takes him a second, but he starts. 

 

He tells her about how he said Peter wasn't at the cabin --"but he was," interjects Julia--he didn't have the money... but Julia seems to know all this already. "He pulled a gun on you," she concludes flatly. Barbie, fed up with everybody knowing stuff he thought was a secret, asks how she knows all this. In reply, Julia opens a small black box, containing "...no gun, all the bullets." Long story short, she's figured out that Peter essentially used an empty gun to goad Barbie into shooting him, having first taken out that policy to provide for her. I hope there's more then twelve dollars and fifty-seven cents left over after the bank gets through with that foreclosure. They aren't very forgiving on late fees.

 

What Barbie takes away from this is that Julia knows he killed Peter. Julia nods, struggling to keep her voice steady as she says she didn't want to believe it. She shows him the policy and outlines the whole "you were used as a suicide tactic" thing. 

 

Barbie processes for a second, then says he's so sorry, for everything. Julia whispers "me, too", and that she's seen him sacrifice himself for total strangers, but in the future, there can be no more lies. Um, wait...the first part of that sentence doesn't really fit the second. What Barbie latches onto, though, is that little phrase "the future." Does this mean...

 

Yep, Julia seems pretty much down with being somewhat okay with the whole murder thing. I mean,she's not embracing him and jumping up and down with delight, offering a nice big T Bone steak and some sex times, but still, WOW. Peter, you blew it in every possible way.

 

But never mind these searchings of the soul and the dank, shrinking things to be found there--on to the barn! YES! Time to fire up this stupid Baby Dome once and for all! 

 

The Dome Quartet move in, Junior staring in shock and asking "is that an egg?" "With a Mini Dome around it," fills in Angie. It's nice they're taking over a part of the Pointing Out The Incredibly Obvious burden from Joe. Norrie spots something new--the caterpillar's formed a cocoon!

"It's actually a chrysalis," says Joe, all rested up and ready to resume his duties. That earns him an all around eye roll and Norrie deadpans "he's an nerd."

 

He sure is, but that's not what's important right now. The three of them kneel in position and place their hands on Baby Dome, firing up the familiar light show as Junior watches. He moves in slowly, asking if they think he's supposed to be part of this too? "Yeah," says Angie, smiling up at him, "we do." And hey, if she's wrong Junior gets a massive electrical shock and possibly killed! Win win!

 

Junior kneels, looking wary, but places his hand in the blue outline. The lights blow out and Disco Egg fires up, exploding outwards with a radiant light show of "Oh, my God," says Norrie, "it's the pink stars!" "And they're making constellations!" cries Joe, fresh and prancing to get back out on that Duh Track, but nobody tells him to shut up. They stare, dazzled and amazed, as they are surrounded by pink stars. "It's beautiful," gasps Angie. "But," says Junior, looking scared, "what does it mean?" What, indeed!

 

Well, that is it, y'all! Finally finished with this damn disc and the last one will be heading my way in a matter of days! I hope you all are enjoying these posts--bless you a thousand times for indulging me! See ya on the flip side of the Dome!

 

Edited August 18, 2014 by Snookums

[Desperately Random]

Loved the recaps as usual Snookums. Sorry to hear about the food poisoning and hope you have gotten past the worst of it.

[Snookums]

Finally, the last disc!

 

I can't believe I'm almost done, you guys. It's taken a lot longer then I thought it would, plus I've been having a heck of a time logging onto the site. Every time I click away, it boots me off, then won't let me sign back in with my password. I have to have a new one sent to me every single time I try to log on. Anybody else having this problem, or is the Dome just lashing out at me for calling it an asshole?

 

Well, regardless, the last three episodes of Season Three are coming up, and appropriately enough, the first one is Speak of the Devil. Yes, indeed.

 

Opening blah blahs (hey, anybody notice that last shot of the lit up Dome at night surrounded by the military never shows up on the show? Or did it and I forgot?) then the Previouslys, and then...

 

We open on the Dome Quartet sitting in compass rose position around Mini Dome, gazing beatifically at the ceiling, like they just smoked some reaaaal sweet Molly and are now discussing, like, what if...wait...what if...we're all just, like, atoms in an even bigger Dome, man?  "It's amazing," sighs Joe, gazing at their apparent handiwork, for the barn's entire roof and walls are covered with white dots of paint and lines connecting them into--constellations, I guess? They don't look like any constellations I recognize, so I guess the Dome showed the kids how to connect the dots? 

 

"Still just a barn, Galileo," snarks Norrie, as Angie asks okay, the dots in the egg are constellations but what does that mean? "Maybe the Dome's trying to communicate with us," muses Norrie, rubbing straw and manure deep into her hair as she ponders. She points out it stopped the riots with the rain, made them babble about pink stars, what could it mean? Hey, any more Cheetos left? 

 

Joe notes a straight row of paint dots across one board and gets up for a closer look and to see if there's any resin left in the pipe. He points out that the dots aren't part of any constellation and he thinks "they're us." Before he can expound upon his theory Junior asks what "this guy"--meaning the chrysalis--has to do with it. It's much further along, having changed from the pale green stage to the see through, apparently overnight according to Angie.

 

"It's a monarch, it's gonna hatch into a butterfly," grins Joe, "It's pretty rad!" UGH, Joe, keep all nature enthusiasms to yourself until after 10 a.m. from now on, got it? And Norrie agrees, leaping up and snapping it's not rad, it's insane! "We're like the guardians of some secret cosmic mystery!" Ohhhhh, my God, I just realized: Nobody in Chester's Mill is going to get to see Guardians of the Galaxy! That is just beyond sucky. Not only will these poor bastards eventually succumb to their own worst impulses out of desperation and despair, none of them will know the wonder that is Rocket Raccoon. What is the point of going on?

 

Well, that's the worst that can happen, at least. I mean, my beloved Max will always be safe and sound, right?

 

Norrie starts having a meltdown about how it's too much and Joe says they've got to tell somebody. Angie nixes that, pointing out that Dodie got half a stigmata for her troubles, but Joe suggests Julia. After all, she's the one who heard the whole "Monarch will be crowned" thing. Junior agrees (I know!) saying that the butterfly's going to hatch and may lead them to something or someone, who might be able to bring the Dome down. That gives everybody pause and Angie says, okay, this thing seems to trust Julia, "Joe, go tell her." Um, what? Shouldn't you all go, or at least Joe and Norrie? Joe's probably going to talk Julia's ear off with the life cycle of the Monarch for a good hour before he gets around to mentioning her upcoming coronation. 

 

But Joe scampers off, and we cut to the most surprising thing of the epsiode: Big Jim keeping his appointment with Linda! And not holding her hostage or trying to bribe her or anything, just acting like this crap is totally normal. This is how Big Jim Rennie keeps going and going, slithering on and on through crisis after crisis unscathed--he always knows what scenario to enact. He's acting all nonchalant, all yeah we bought a bunch of propane, so what? Just a little Dodge 'Em around the feds, you know how they are, blah blah blah, confessing to a piccadillo so the whole "conspiracy to cook shittons of SuperMeth" sounds as crazy as...well, as it would probably sound to an outside ear. He keeps pressing the point that it's a damn good thing he made that little deal or they'd all be in the dark with no electricity or irrigation if it hadn't been for his foresight. The more Linda hammers on the whole "FUCKING DRUG DEALER" thing the more he earnest-stump-speeches. 

 

Linda, knowing when she's beaten, points out that the Dome saved his ass: "If it hadn't come down, you'd be in jail." But it's an empty threat and Big Jim wouldn't be the man he is if he didn't press his advantage: "Go ahead, charge me with conspiracy to keep the lights on. Or, you can go after a real criminal." Who, oh who could he be thinking of? Hint: He's scruffy and his name isn't Skipper. 

 

(Rando aside: it's good to know that the Chester's Mill beautician, whomever she is, is still going gangbusters. Linda's eyebrows look fab.) 

 

And in case you didn't get it, cut to Pensive Barbie reenacting The Thinker as Julia comes downstairs in linen shift and skinny jeans. Her linen shift is not wrinkled at all. Julia has made a pact with The Evil One, I just know it. They're quiet for a moment, as befits the most awkward of Morning Afters ever, and Julia inquires how was the couch? 

 

"Lonely," says Barbie, looking up from his bruised knuckles, and Julia replies that the bed was too. Um, so...all good, or what? Barbie's confused as well, asking if she wants him to leave, but Julia says no, I want you to take me to Peter's grave. Okay, that escalated quickly. 

 

Barbie looks shrunken and bewildered as poor Julia has to spout all this crap about moving forward and closure and blahbitty blahbitty blah, like they're trying to settle an argument about buying a new car, not the fact that he shot and killed her husband. He wisely doesn't interrupt her though, and figures hell, day can't get any worse then showing your new lover the place where you buried her spouse's corpse, right? Nope, no way.

 

Barbie heads off to get dressed and do that thing where you put the bathroom cabinet mirror over next to the wall mirror so it does that "infinite" thing to see if that will help make sense of the last twenty four hours, and as he leaves

 

We cut to Linda acting more obtuse then usual asking what she's supposed to go after Barbie for. Jim tells her about the whole "nice legs, shame if they got broken" line of work that Barbie used to do for Max (neatly eliding over his own involvement with her, by the by) and how he's been beating up Chester's Mill and is a jerk. Linda clearly wishes she had never started any of this and refuses to believe that there's gambling going on in town at all. Duke's thing of keeping Linda innocent of the dark side of Chester's Mill is just having shitloads of unintended consequences, is it not? This woman is supposed to be a law enforcement professional. Granted, she's not in New York City but for God's sake, was she raised in a dollhouse? How can a modern person with access to the internet be this shocked over the idea of illegal gambling?

 

Jim is impatient with her as well, and hurries to beat Barbie and Julia to that grave so he can dig up Peter Shumway and wave his dessicating corpse in Linda's face. "He was up to his eyeballs in debt to Max, and Barbie paid him a visit the day the Dome came down," he says. And guess what, haven't heard a peep from him since. "Some people have secrets," he says. "You can't imagine." 

 

"What about you?" asks Linda, leaning back and doing that hold a pen at an angle thing that she's been doing this whole conversation and it's REALLY ANNOYING.  "Me?" says the guy who's killed at least three people that we know of so far. "I'm an open book."

 

DING DONG says Julia's doorbell and she heads over to see if Harriet needs some more yogurt or help with the isolette her premature baby is probably sleeping in. The Dome was sure in a hurry to get that baby and now it's disappeared off the face of the Earth. Maybe Carolyn's babysitting in the hoary netherworld. "I got it," she calls upstairs like everything is normal. Hell, going out to see your husband's last resting spot with his killer? Just another manic Monday, amirite?

 

Julia opens the door and it...is... MAX. Ohhhh, dear. Max has clearly not said all she has to say about Barbie dumping her crazy ass. Crazy exes, always calling and hanging up or sending you thousands of texts or showing up at a strange woman's doorstep.

 

Julia, unaware of what she's about to step in, gazes with mild questioning at the blonde and fashionable stranger with the dramatic eye makeup and non reassuring expression who's standing in her doorway. She might be thinking of asking what her source is for silk infused conditioner, but instead settles on "Can I help you?"

 

"Right now," replies Max, "you can't even help yourself," and she pulls up a pistol and BLAM! Shoots Julia in the shoulder! HOLY SHIT! What the fuck happened to writing "JOOLIA IS A SLUTTY SLUT SLUT WHOREBAG" on the town picnic tables or something? 

 

Julia collapses straight backwards as Max contemplates her handiwork with a tilt of the head, then strolls back down the driveway like nothin' ain't nothin'. 'Cause that's how Max rolls--people aren't people to her, they're objects of desire or or obstacles to be mowed down. Note, she didn't go after Barbie--he's still a toy she wants to keep around, and she honestly thinks that all she has to do is get rid of Julia Shumway and he'll crawl straight into her lap. The idea that he might be upset, or blame her, or even try to kill her for what she's done matters to her not a whit. Barbie had to learn. Dome or no Dome, what Max wants Max gets.

 

And we are at the title card! Six minutes fifty two seconds. Coming up--Blame and betrayal and One Tree Hill relationship drama! 

Edited August 26, 2014 by Snookums

[Snookums]

Part two! Things be gettin' real! Or real-ish. Or kinda sorta nodding relationship with reality if you squint. A lot. And are drunk.

 

Barbie, having heard the shot, tears downstairs to Julia's side, quickly applying pressure, then lunging for his walkie talkie and calling for Linda and help. If you have to get shot, Barbie is the one you want around. Unless you're Peter Shumway, and even that seemed to be more "Hey, do me a solid?" then murder right now.

 

Barbie babbles that Julia's been shot, hurry up and get over here, and to Linda's "Who?" bellows "I DON'T KNOW!" and signs off to try and keep Julia from bleeding out right there on the rug. Jim, who's been most fortuitously listening to this exchange, asks quietly, "You believe him?" Linda looks doubtful. I have a feeling Linda struggled mightily with Encyclopedia Brown mysteries back in grade school. 

 

Barbie gets back on the horn and yells that she's got to get over there RIGHT NOW, he can't drive and keep the pressure on at the same time. Big Jim blocks her path (Jesus, guy, back up! She said she'll think about the all weather rims but a woman is dying, here!) and says "Think...think." Yes, about what a perfectly splendid, not to say sociopathic, asshole you're being right now? say Linda's eyebrows as she heads out. 

 

Back to Mini Dome Party Barn. Angie is sitting with Junior contemplating Life, The Dome and Everything, but gets tired of it and asks if he's hungry, the chickens are still laying eggs and she could scramble some up. So they're still feeding the chickens! That's good to know, since Truman has clearly gotten tired of this crap and vanished once again, along with Harriet, Baby Alice, Carolyn, and Skater Ben. 

 

Angie's trying to act all friendly and casual, pretending that everything's cool, it's all about Mini Dome and unexplainable forces and shit, but Junior, helping her to her feet, says "can you believe it, Angie?" and when she says it's all been pretty crazy, he clarifies "I mean us." OH. my. God.

 

The thing is, with obsessive people? This is just how they are. The groove they live their life in is the only reality they know and to relate to anybody they have to pull that person into the groove with them. Even after all this crap, Junior is still convinced it's all about him and Angie. The Mini Dome, the egg, the constellations, the Monarch thing--he sees them all through his super focused Angie Lens and how this or that or the other means they'll be together, whatever "together" means to his crazy ass. THIS is why it's so hard to feel constant empathy for someone with a mental or emotional illness--it all just bounces off them, or gets twisted into whatever private meaning will do them the most good in the narrative they're endlessly weaving and unweaving and knotting up in their heads. 

 

Angie, who reached "full up" on this crap tank quite a while ago, drops her face onto the barn floor as Junior pulls the shoulder of her hoodie up in a super creepy gesture and babbles about how he never thought Fate was real, or there was a plan but it's undeniable they're going to be together forever! Angie's face is broadcasting the exact opposite but that means nothing to Junior, never has, and he reaches to kiss her.

 

"ARE YOU INSANE?" hisses Angie, reminding him of the whole "hostage/near drowning" thing and how she nearly died. "But you didn't," points out Junior. GAAAAAAHHHHD. Angie says it's the four of them that are connected and through the Mini Dome AND NO OTHER REASON, CRAZY PANTS, Junior says he doesn't believe her, like some anti vaxxer on the internet, and Angie yells "Believe it! We will never be together and if somehow we make this dome come down then I'm gone too!" 

 

Whoopsie doodle, there, Ang. Probably the wrong thing to say if you want Junior "Earth Angel" there to calm down. "Then I'm out," says Junior, walking over to grab his shirt. Angie does the 'we need you' thing but Junior's fed up with the whole shebang and as much as he makes me crazy, I can't blame him. Mini Dome's enigmatic crap wears thin real quick. Angie cannot believe he'd ruin the only chance to get out out of spite, but his eyes clearly say believe it as he walks towards the doors and swings them open into a--raging windstorm. Um, that's not good. Angie bellows that she can't believe he's so selfish, and he turns around all windswept and tempest-toss'd and says that it's Love, and he'd rather live and die in here then ever be apart from her. Fine, Heathcliff, go explain your little drama to the rest of the township and see what they think. I'm guessing it will involve unleashing Barbie on you no matter how many bottles of Diet Rite cola they lost on him.

 

Cut to stormy weather as Linda's car skids to a stop on her way to Julia's. Her car's been drained of gas. "Great," she says, sounding at the end of her rope. "Now even the cops are getting ripped off. " I think Linda's parents wouldn't let her watch Sesame Street because it was too urban.

 

She yells to an extra that she needs a ride but he indicates his car's dry too (no talking though; no SAG card for you, useless extra!) Linda turns about, trying to find a solution and throws herself in front of a car driving down the street--it's DJ Phil! Driving one handed! That doesn't seem very safe!  "You carjacking me?" asks the only African American actor on the show right now. Ha ha! No, says Linda, Julia got shot, take me to her house. 

 

Barbie's holding any piece of cloth that comes to hand to Julia's wound when Joe ambles up. What, he just now got there? Was he hopping on one foot? But who cares, all Barbie needs to know is can he drive? "Yeah," stutters Joe, "I've got my learner's permit but the guy said I didn't check my mirrors..." and Barbie receives a mental marriage proposal from me for cutting him off and saying help me get her in the car! They haul her up and out and down to I guess Julia's car, stuffing her in the back and Joe in the front. In a perfect little character moment, Joe fastens his seatbelt before skidding in a panic down the street. He's the Labradoodle puppy of characters.

 

Big Jim struts out of town hall (which has bags of garbage piled around the entrance--I really like this touch) and stares at the rising wind and wonders how he can enlist the coming storm in his murder spree. When he spots the clouds forming a funnel, though, he's shaken and mutters "what the hell?"

 

"Hell's right here," chirps My Favorite Psycho, Max, strolling up all ready to trade obstacle shooting stories. She asks if he wants a ride. Um, what? Non Sequitur  Theater continues for a few more lines, then Big Jim, who seems to age ten years every time Max shows up, says they need to talk. Goodie.

 

"Somebody shot Julia Shumway," he informs the shooter of Julia Shumway as they walk down the hall. Max struts it off but Jim says he knows it was her. She doesn't deny it, saying Barbie said the one word a girl hates to hear, "No." Well, I do hate to hear no, but I also hate hearing "Your cat needs two days hospitalization" and "It's your turn to do the dishes" and I haven't shot anybody. 

 

Max says hey, make the right choices and we're golden! Step outta line like Barbie did...Jim cracks it's a shame he's single and Max says "oh, I'm sure there's somebody around here you care about." And right on cue, Junior steps around the corner. Max smiles. Nothing up her sleeves. 

 

Max does the whole "Over friendly/quasi flirtatious 'friend' of Dad" routine, with her own little digs about how Junior looks like his mom and some mild threats thrown in for Jim's benefit. Once she's threatened Junior's bewildered face without saying the words enough she chirps that she'll see them later, she's got business on Bird Island. Jim points out that the weather's acting up and maybe she shouldn't be in a tiny boat on the lake, and she's all "Aren't you sweet to worry about me!"  Hah hah, like any storm could threaten Max. She harnesses storms and rides them to exhaustion and then gives herself a silk conditioning rinse, does Max. 

 

Max stomps out on her hooves/heels and Junior turns to Jim all "I may be crazy but that was something else again,"  He asks who she was and Jim replies "The devil." You wish, Jim. Max is just a version of you, and that's why you're so worried, isn't it?

 

The wind clangs the church bells as Joe shoots down the road and Julia shakes and shivers. Joe takes time out to note the crazy weather and how the Dome is angry at them as we go to break. Well, the Dome can just learn to use its words, okay? I'm sick of divining the weather. 

 

Slam bang and they pull up in front of the clinic. Barbie pulls Julia out and tells Joe to plug in the car (aw, it's a Prius!) because they'll need the juice. Why? They're already there. But Joe does as he says and we get to see how easy it is to charge your Prius, two year payment plans available, look them up on your Microsoft Tablet this was not a commercial this was gripping drama.

 

The clouds look super angry as the three of them charge into the clinic and Curly Haired Nurse directs them to a room. Was she just hanging out in there? Nobody else is. Barbie, in addition to being Chuck Norris's more badass cousin, is also a medic, and there's a lot of medical drama about relieving the pressure in Julia's chest, but before CHN can do anything an extra runs in about her husband being crushed by a tree and she's gotta head out. That leaves little Joe, and there's a lot of flailing around for tubing and pens and shit since the clinic is out of everything. It's a miracle DJ Phil is so up and at 'em, considering he's recovering from a similar gunshot wound with no antibiotics or anything.

 

Cut to Bomb Shelter And Wedding Chapel as the Rennies head down for a little father-son bonding. Somebody bailed out the water, at least, and Big Jim shows Junior his guns 'n ammo stash. Blah blah blah Max is going to destroy me all I care about is this town blah blah blah with some Junior interjections. Junior says Max seemed nice enough to him and Big Jim sieves "that just shows you don't know what the hell you're talking about!" through his teeth, then regrets it as Junior's brow clouds over. Can't keep on that line, Jim, so he switches over to how Max wants to hurt him, boo hoo, by hurting Junior. That works fine and Junior immediately says "then let me help you." Cripes, when it comes to his dad Junior Rennie is easier to lead around then Joe, any day of the week. 

 

Now that he's got Junior back on his side, though, Jim immediately emasculates him by treating him like a six year old, then offering him a chance to show he's a big boy. Big JIm Rennie, should he ever tire of being the small town Machiavelli-esque vizier of Chester's Mill, could make a mint writing "How To Warp Your Kid To Your Taste" manuals. He wraps things up by handing Junior a rifle, box of shells, and telling Junior to stay in the house and not open the door to anybody but him. That sound you hear is Revenant Freud from a couple weeks ago racing down the sidewalk, hoping to catch this preview as Junior gazes at his new, daddy approved penis gun.

 

Next up, Part three! Lightning and thunder and Yaggis, oh my!

Edited August 27, 2014 by Snookums

[bmoore4026]

Ah, we're getting down to the end, folks.  Let us brace ourselves for Snookums' coming conniption over the Season One finale.

[ottoDbusdriver]

I can't wait to see what Snookums thinks about when Joe builds a flux capacitor, lightning strikes the Dome and everyone in Chester's Mill are all transported back in time to 1955.

 

I'm kidding, I'm kidding -- none of that's going to happen.  The scary part is that it's not beyond the realm of the silliness of this show.

Edited August 27, 2014 by ottoDbusdriver

[Snookums]

 

I can't wait to see what Snookums thinks about when Joe builds a flux capacitor, lightning strikes the Dome and everyone in Chester's Mill are all transported back in time to 1955.

 

I FUCKING KNEW IT.

[Totale]

There was a first season?  We've forgotten all about it.  What happened?

 

Signed-

The UTD Writing Staff

[Snookums]

Part three, Flux Capacitor Hijinx! Ha, no. Just the usual WTFuckery.

 

Okay, so let's see, now we're with Dodie at the radio station as she sees the weather acting up. Say what you will about the denizens of Chester's Mill (and oh, how I have; it's pretty much my second/unpaid career at this point) Dodie is the most dedicated, work-ethic driven character on this show. With a few exceptions arising from exigent circumstances--Visitor's Day, Thermobaric Bomb Day, SnapChat Baby Dome And Get Shocked To Hell And Back Day--the only place we really see her is the radio station. Go, Dodie! Your commitment to your duties will serve you well for the rest of your long and happy life! (right? Guys? ...guys?)

 

Anyway, the lightning instantly triggers Dodie into thinking something might change atmospherically with the whole "radio silence from outside the Dome" thing and she races over to her listening setup.

 

An aside, here: much as I rag on this show and as much as it richly deserves it, they do a very good job with one thing. Each character interprets events and occurrences through their own filter: their desires, their background, their areas of expertise. It's one of Steven King's big themes, that no matter the circumstance, no matter how extreme, silly, or crazy, people don't fundamentally change, they simply become more and more nakedly who they really are. Big Jim is becoming the despot, Julia the caretaker, Barbie the protector, Max the dog in the manger, that they've always really been, but until now had to present through scrims and filters of societal expectation and cultural/community influence. Not to say that nobody ever changes their mind or switches sides, but they do it because of their fundamental selves emerging, not because of some cosmic rewire coming out of nowhere.

 

But enough of this deepness, back to the shallows and the thrashing! Dodie gets on her headphones and fiddles with various widgets and wires and sure enough, the crash and crackle of voices come through the ether. Dodie's thrilled at first, naturally, but she quickly hears something to wipe the smile off her face--various official sounding vocalizations saying things about Barbie. As in "We've reviewed the tapes of Visitor's Day, that's definitely Dale Barbra in there." And they seem reeeeeeal interested in that info. REEEEEEEAL interested. 

 

Back to Junior pacing around his childhood home with his penis gun. (Apropos of nothing, that place is spotless. Leave it to Big Jim Rennie to make sure his housekeeper/maid service did not permit the tiniest interruption of cleaning services.)

 

A frantic pounding on the door sends Junior into a tizzy, and he heads over, gun ready, up and cocked (thank you! I'm here all week! Try the veal!), to answer. He shoves the screening curtain aside with the nozzle to reveal: Angie, who's looking over her shoulder and then directly down the barrel of said gun! Hey, this should change her mind about him! She shrieks aloud and Junior quickly lowers his weapon and lets her in. (SHE IS STILL IN THAT DAMN GREEN TANK TOP, PEOPLE. SHE SLEPT IN A BARN FOR TWO NIGHTS IN THAT THING. If she ever gets around to heading over to the cafe for a shift, she should run a two for one e.coli and hash brown special.) 

 

"What the HELL are you doing?" yells Angie, and Junior, quick on the draw for him, says he was about to ask her the same thing. "Well don't bother shooting me," bellows Angie over the howling wind. "You're about to get the whole town killed!"

 

Junior's used to shouldering blame for shit he didn't do but this is a tad much, and his bewildered face says so as he gasps out "what?" "JUNIOR," yells Ang, indicating that "forming a funnel but not actually forming much more of a funnel then the last three times they showed it" gale of twisting clouds. "IT'S SENDING A MESSAGE!" He has to come back to the group or else the Dome will destroy the town! Ooops. The last time Junior stamped off in a huff all it cost was a semester's tuition.

 

And again, I've gotta give it to the show here, they timed this just right. The Dome's current hissy fit, as shown, could equally have been set off by Julia's shooting, Junior's desertion, or some other cause. If you re-watch they've done it precisely. It's very strange to be lavishing praise on UTD, but hey, Domes bring out the weirdest things in us.

 

Anyway, long convo at the door, "If you don't come back we're finished"/"I control the weather?" blah blah blah. Let's head over to " 'Clinic', Honestly, Is A Bit Of A Misnomer At This Point And Prius Charging Station" and see how Jules is doing! So far, not so great. Barbie is laboring over her and Joe is behind him doing his Worried Puppy look, but it's not helping. So much so, in fact, that the Dome gets especially snitty and chucks a tree through the window! CRIPES, Dome, you want this fixed or don't you?

 

Joe calls a warning in time for Barbie to cover Julia, but he gets knocked to the floor. Luckily nobody's hurt and the glass is that kind that doesn't leave you with tiny cuts and abrasions over your entire skin surface when it gets blown to shreds all over you. In fact it's pretty much ignored for the rest of the scene--the actors don't even brush themselves off. But to be fair, they are being distracted by Julia going into defib! Yikes! Of course, considering the amount of blood and fluids she's lost and the conspicuous lack of IVs around, it's really a miracle she's lasted this long. 

 

Barbie puts on his UltraConcern Face as he panics, but he snaps to and forces the hollow pen in between her ribs (yikes!). There's a hiss of air and he begins to draw the air filling her chest cavity out through it orally, kind of like reverse CPR. Joe is stunned but clearly noting everything Barbie's doing. Julia remains pretty much on the brink of death.

 

Back to Angie and Junior on the Rennie front porch. The wind's much worse and the funnel seems to be more committed. Junior tries to pull Angie back inside but she insists they have to go back to Joe and Norrie. "My dad said to stay here!"/"Junior, quit being a pussy!" back and forth, as Angie basically says Junior, for once in your stupid life do something because it's what you're SUPPOSED to do. Junior looks very, very confused, but ONCE AGAIN steers the conversation back to "You need me, Angie." FOR. FUCK'S. SAKE. Dome, seriously, pull the cork on that funnel, I cannot take any more of this.

 

Angie, however, finally becomes pragmatic. "Fine," she says. "I need you. NOW C'MON!" She's finally seeing the bigger picture, or at least the bigger picture as she sees it--that Junior's obsession, and the Dome's enigmatic bullshit, are not and will never connect to what she actually wants and it's a waste of time to bother trying to get their realities to conform to hers. If Junior insists on living this fantasy world where he and she are a perfect couple and the Dome insists on Junior, Angie's going to have to play along, at least for now. As if to underline this, the Dome chucks a glider swing at her as she's running and Junior has to leap on top of her to get her out of the way. That seems to be what the Dome had in mind--the clouds begin to retreat and the wind to calm.

 

But IS IT? Because at the same time, back at the clinic, Julia seems to be slipping away....

 

OR NOT! SHE'S BACK! Her vital signs stabilize and she's breathing! Hooray! Thank goodness she won't need any pesky surgery or antibiotics or saline or O Negative because she'd be pretty much shit outta luck, but hooray! Joe is thrilled and celebrates via his usual method of State The Obvious: "It worked!" Barbie sags with relief, but makes sure to tell Joe he helped out. 

 

Joe heads over to the shreds of the window (glass? What glass? There is no glass anywhere. You are crazy) and notes the calming elements outside. He turns to Barbie, a beatific expression on his darling little face. "I have to go now," he says. "I have to tell them." "Tell who what?" asks Barbie, warily sensing more stops ahead on the "I Can't Believe I'm Having This Conversation" express.

 

"You saved Julia!" says Joe. "Just like you saved me the day the Dome came down. You're here to save all of us." Barbie tries to head this babble off at the pass with a brusque "I don't think so," but Prophet Joe, glowing with his message, will not be deterred!  "The sphere was right!" says Joe to Barbie's "please, kid, I'm begging you stop with this" face. "The monarch's a person! And that person is you!" He runs off to spread the good word as Barbie's shoulders fold inward under the burden of yet more craziness heading down his personal pike. 

 

 

Okay, gotta go get the laundry and post this, part four coming up! Beachcombing's not always relaxing.

Edited August 29, 2014 by Snookums

[Snookums]

Part Four! Water safety tip: Don't go swimming with your hands tied.

 

Max is walking along the now frankly laughable pristine shores of Lake Whatever Wherever. I can't tell if she's over at Bird Island or still on the Chester's Mill side. Anyway, since it cleared up it's a lovely day for a stroll. Maybe she'll find some blue beach glass (or red? Can't remember which one's the rare one.) Or maybe something else.

 

Max is strutting along (even without her heels, she strides with pride) until she spots something in the shallows. She heads over, into the water, and pulls up--yes, you guessed it--Agatha. Who is quite dead. Boo, now she won't come back and wreak havoc with Big Jim! I guess the show couldn't afford Mare for more then a couple days. And anyway, as Max sobbingly notes her blue lips and quite obviously bound hands, she clearly doesn't have to be alive to cause a ruckus. Max touches her mother's cheek; the only woman she ever cared about, the one who taught her everything, and then gazes into the sky. Prepare to burn, everybody.

 

Back to Julia, now sleeping peacefully. Or rather, she's pretty much in a peaceful coma as she lies there, a bloody Snow White. Barbie gazes at her, nothing more at his disposal to bring her back, then kisses her forehead. He turns to Curly Haired Nurse who's just appeared behind him from nowhere (I wonder what happened to that guy the tree fell on? Maybe she administered some salamander oil or ground unicorn hoof) and says he's gotta go somewhere, so could she...? "She and I aren't going anywhere," says CHN, moving in to do what little she can for her patient. Barbie thanks her, then heads out to the handily charged Prius (He apparently stopped to wash his hands; he was up to the elbows in blood, understandably, a minute ago and now he's pristine). Where he's going will forever remain a mystery, though, because Bad News Personified, Big Jim Rennie, pulls up in his Black SUV Of Ill Tidings.

 

Jim asks after Julia and Barbie grunts out a one word answer to the equivalent of "She's as well as can be expected, you small town banana republic generalissimo asshole", still tidying up the Prius cords and not making eye contact and just pretty much radiating NOT IN THE MOOD NOW OR EVER signals. But Big Jim, who cut those lower teeth of his on battering through resistance, keeps right on going. He points out that both of them know it's Max who shot Julia (although until this second Barbie hadn't appeared to know anything of the sort, but whatever). Barbie says that what he knows is that it's time to stop her. 

 

"Take both of us to do it, " observes Jim, gazing right at him. Barbie gives him a look, then says they do this by his rules; they're taking Max alive. Okay, good luck with that, guy. Jim agrees with me and snorts "right, so we can be high and mighty. And dead." Honestly, as much as I see Big Jim Rennie as a small town Stalin, he's pretty much dead on here. Max personified not only "I won't be taken alive" but "I shall sincerely enjoy taking you all down with me. Like, it's the top of my Netflix Queue of enjoyment." 

 

"That's all you know," says Barbie, a man who's seen the worst of humanity all over the globe, and how things fall apart into chaos because of the "eye for an eye" philosophy run mad. "Kill or be killed. You're not saving Chester's Mill, you're eating it alive." "You've got no idea what it takes," snaps the petty dictator, echoing every strongman thug asshole down through the ages. The back and forth continues as each man tries to hold a mirror up to the other, resulting only in the images bouncing off each other. Barbie trying to show Big Jim that his version of salvation is nothing but self-aggrandizing crap, Jim that Barbie's deluded idealism will cause wholesale collapse.

 

The long and short of it is, they're going to get Max together and then each can kindly fuck the hell off out of the other's way. Barbie heads off after informing Jim to his face that after they defang Max he's going to do whatever he has to to bring him down. For God's sake, has nobody in this version of the universe ever read a book or seen a movie? Telling your enemy that you're going to cut him off at the knees will result only in him coming after you. Even the latest lame-o movie versions of Spiderman have twigged this by now.

 

But hey, that can wait, back to the barn! Norrie's still sitting and watching the chrysalis with commendable patience, since everybody else must have been gone for hours (where was she during Angie and Junior's Wuthering Heights re-enactment, by the way?) She turns as Angie and Junior come in, Angie asking after Joe. Norrie says he must still be at Julia's, and Angie's relieved at that, saying there's no way he'd try to come back in that storm, right? 

 

Norrie agrees with the general assessment of the weirdness of said storm and how "it came out of nowhere,"  "Maybe not, " says Angie, but further discussion is curtailed by the appearance of Joe, full of news and prophesy. He fills them in on the whole mysterious shooting thing, blah blah blah, and how Barbie brought her back, and that Barbie might be the Monarch. Junior looks put out by this news.

 

Joe goes on about how the tornado went away after Barbie's heroic chest-air-sucking actions ("Ew," says Norrie, hilariously) and Junior insists it wasn't stupid Barbie, it was because he came back to the group! IT WASN'T STUPID BARBIE, IT WAS ME! ME ME ME! "Okay," deadpans Norrie again and she's my new favorite character. I love how she's so OVER Junior and his constant histrionics. 

 

Angie says look, something started it and something stopped it, how do we figure out what to do? And Norrie once more into the breach, saying that they need to go to the Dome. The big one. All four of them. Joe agrees, indicating the string of paint spots that apparently represent them. They just have to go to the same spot under the big Dome, indicated by the constellations (oh, okay, so these are supposed to be North American constellations) and he science geeks along for a few seconds until he concludes that it's the Bollingwood Bridge. Junior asks, not unreasonably, what they're supposed to do once they get there. Joe's all I dunno, hold hands with it again? It worked before with Norrie and me, and Angie jumps in saying yes, that's it."The Dome owes us some answers." I am sure the Dome will be concise, clear and not at all infuriatingly enigmatic or downright assholish/breathtakingly cold hearted in those answers, aren't you?  C'mon, kids, Group Dome Grope! 

 

Alrighty, I misread Jim and Barbie's parting as they have both hopped into the Prius and are now at the utterly deserted cement factory (No bare knuckle savage fistfights on slate today? And how the hell am I going to cash these chits for Frosted Flakes and soda?). Big Jim sourly asks after what the plan is, exactly (musta been a very tense and silent ride over): march right in and ambush her? Barbie, setting up some electronics witchery, says they aren't going in the front, Julia showed him another entrance back in Ye Olden Thermobaric Bombe Days. Jim asks what the hell he's fiddling with and Barbie says "giving us a way out." It's just an alarm clock, he says, for just in case and shut your face.

Back over to the Prius's roomy trunk space (this car has gotten more vanity shots then any of the actors) to grab a couple flares out of the fully stocked roadside emergency equipment box (0% financing available) and says "let's go." Big Jim is confused, and confused makes him angry. But he follows, for now.

 

We're back at Julia's! Linda, having finally moseyed on over there with DJ Phil (did they take the scenic route? Stop to pick wildflowers? How did it take them this long to get there?) is checking out what would in normal circumstances be a crime scene, noting the open door, the ridiculously tiny smear of blood on the carpet, etc. Phil says that the Prius is gone, then gazes at the decorous little blood puddle that is completely realistic for a giant bullet through the shoulder at close range that resulted in a person's nearly bleeding out. "My God," he says, "I never thought he could go this far, " and boom, we're reminded that Phil one of the people in town who know Barbie from Before. 

 

Linda asks after Phil's exact extension of aquaintenceship with Barbie "My Favorite Deputy Until Now". Phil deflects that nobody really knows him and Linda points out that Julia thought she did. Phil gives in, saying Peter Shumway was in deep, "He literally bet the house." And I'm guessing the bank isn't going to be too happy with that blood soaking through the floorboards and adding to the depreciation. Blah blah blah, Barbie was the collection agent, Linda takes her usual fifteen minutes to grasp what should be a VERY SIMPLE CONCEPT FOR A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER, and Phil concludes that Barbie killed Peter. Not because he actually knows that Barbie did indeed kill Peter but out of surmises borne of past experience and current bloody hallways. Linda concludes that Julia found out and they both look at the tiny bloodstain, that is doing its best to shape itself into letters spelling out if he tried to kill her why the hell would he call and tell you about it, morons, much less act to save her life? But alas, no such luck. If I ever get the chance, I am moving to Chester's Mill and setting up an international arms smuggling operation. I could probably convince Linda I provide tanks and antiaircraft guns for parades. 

 

Back to utterly, completely deserted cement factory. No long lasting card games, no drunken heaps of boozed up assholes sleeping it off, no furtive and joyless sexual activity in corners. Not a single table or bottle cap or broken piece of chalk in this giant cavern of a place that not twenty four hours ago was holding the majority of the population as they cheered their friends and neighbors on to mash each others' faces into hamburger. Max may be a demon from the Pit but she has got FANTASTIC security/janitorial staff. 

 

Barbie and Jim move down the corridor, hissing back and forth about the wisdom of this approach/JUST SHUT YOUR STUPID ASS FACE FOR ONCE until Max and her flunky from earlier step out of the shadows to hold guns to their heads. Wow, so Max found her mom, went home, changed clothes, went back to Chester's Mill, out to the cement factory, fetched her guard dog and has been standing there in the shadows on the off chance that Dale and Barbie would both stop by and she could get the drop on them? This woman's organizing skills are second to none. She puts all those closet sorter ladies to shame. 

 

Barbie and Jim both pop their hands up and move along, Big Jim stopping just long enough to toss a little silent "told ya so" dart at Barbie as they walk into the commercial break. 

 

Part five coming up: Secrets and Lies and Unbelievable Timing!

Edited August 29, 2014 by Snookums

[Snookums]

Part Five! Max Triumphant! (SHUT UP).

 

Okay, we open right after the Jim and Barbie capture, in some room in the cement factory. This room does have tables and chairs in it, so I guess the afternoon shift isn't here yet to set up table and marry the ketchup bottles and whatnot. Good thing too, since even for Max this kind of employee review might be hard to explain.

 

"Jim killed my mother, Barbie!" Max announces after her flunky's taken the hapless duo's guns (How does that feel, Big Jim? Hmmm? How does that make you feel?)

 

Barbie glances at Jim, who just does this hysterical "yeah, whateves" shrug in response as Max paces and prowls, frothing with anger at this outrage. "You two are just the same," mutters Barbie, and it's hard to tell between Max and Jim who takes more offence at that statement. Max is the one to vocalize, however. "I don't think so," she says, aiming her gun at Barbie's face. "You and me, though...we were good together."

 

OH, WHAT? Max, I love you. I love you, but honestly, this train has left the station. Do you honestly think Barbie is ever, ever, in a million, billion, kajillion years, going to say "You know what? You're right! You and me baby, all the way! Let's get cracking on shaking down those useless DVD players and other crap from the hapless townspeople before boning all night on a pile of worthless replacement money!"

 

Well, yes. Judging from the expression on her face when Barbie says WE NEVER DATED YOU HIRED ME TO SHAKE PEOPLE DOWN. She looks like one of those old guys who hires a call girl for a girlfriend experience and cannot grasp the fact that she's only doing the cuddle and coo routine for cash. "It's a good thing you're handsome, brother, because you sure are thick sometimes", she snaps at him, gun never wavering. Girl has excellent wrist control.

 

"What do you mean?" asks Barbie, rather proving her last point, and I would give many Max Bux for the camera to show Big Jim's expression at Max's reply. Voice breaking, she says "I'm giving you a chance. To live." She really seems hurt at Barbie's inexplicable resistance to her delusions of grandeur. 

 

There follows a really, truly "what the shit is this shit" convo where Barbie points out that for FUCK'S SAKE, SHE SHOT JULIA, and Max counters like all she did was badmouth Jules on Facebook: "She was never right for you anyway!" Barbie snaps back that Max is the one who's not right, and Max cocks her head, a real look of hurt and bewilderment stamped across her perfectly made up face, as that bit of truth circles, probing for a place to land. "I had plans for you," she says, finally, reverting back to what she knows--Max and all connected with Max. "I trusted you and you screwed me over. You're no different from him" gesturing towards Jim, who snaps out of gazing into the middle distance like he's making a grocery list in his head while two strangers have a relationship fight next to him at the bus stop.

 

Max goes on with the whole "this whole town tries to fuck me over every chance it gets, " thus proving that the term "self-fulfilling prophecy" formed no part of her Agatha-headed education. Jim mutters "look who's talking" and that totally flips her out, waving her gun at his shiny head and bellowing that she's nothing like him, that she's a survivor. See my last point, add two tablespoons irony, stir.

 

Adding a nice dollop of insult to this injury casserole, Barbie chooses that second to openly check his watch. Max takes second helpings of offence. What, does he have plans to be somewhere? Well, "someone is going to be very disappointed!" Yeah, take that, Barbie's Lunch Date Who Isn't Max!

 

That's not what Barbie was thinking of though, and we cut back to that little thingabobble that he set up earlier, that is just now counting down to zero. Oh, right! What could he have had in mind? How about a blackout? BEEP, says the cell phone hookup, and the lights go out!

 

Max and her flunky start shooting immediately, but both Jim and Barbie have already ducked down. Muzzle flashes light the darkness as Barbie tosses those flares he brought (awesome!) and disarms Max! (AWESOME!) and Big Jim grabs his own gun! (okay.) Barbie points the weapon straight at Max as she, in true survivor style, immediately puts her hands up. She doesn't fight losing battles. At least, not personally. (Jim's corralled the flunky, meantime. He can come in handy when he isn't busy trying to steal glory with every passing second.) Barbie announces they're all leaving and pushes the two prisoners towards the door. Everything is going swimmingly, here! They've got Max alive and soon she'll face justice! Nothing can possibly go wrong, I say!

 

Cut to Linda walking out of Pretty Much Entirely Nominal Clinic towards DJ Phil, having checked on Julia's condition. She says Barbie was there but took off with Big Jim. This pretty much proves he actively saved her and did not try to kill her, she does not add. Cripes, did Linda attend the Police Academy on Opposite Day? 

 

DJ Phil says they probably headed out to that gigantic underground fight club Max set up in less then forty-eight hours, thus capitalizing on the raw emotions and longing for escape of an entire town that the HEAD LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER OF SAID TOWN is just now hearing of. I feel so safe, like angel wings are wrapped around me. Linda commandeers Phil's vehicle again, against his protests that she can't do this by herself. "You're not a cop, Phil," she says. So he's good enough to get winged in the shoulder in Big Jim Rennie's little militia wargames crap but he can't drive his own car to the cement factory? I guess so, since Linda says see you soon and heads out. IN HIS CAR. AS HE POINTS OUT AND SHE DOES IT ANYWAY. GRRRRRRR.

 

Max struts out of the cement factory, followed by Flunky, as Jim, having recovered a good deal of his swagger, and Barbie herd them, guns ready. Well, Jim's gun is ready. Remember how Barbie was just now spectacularly awesome and amazing and competent? Well, that's over. Because he's letting his mortal enemy, the man he knows wants Max dead, the man he knows is a latter day petty, jumped up Tiberius, to hold his gun on the captives while Barbie goes to fetch the Prius. Seriously. This is the kind of back and forth inconstant characterization that plagues this show and is utterly infuriating to watch. Competence When The Script Calls For It And Not One Shred More. 

 

"You don't want to do this," says Max, slouching for all the world like a bored teenager. Jim sneers that he already took care of her little insurance policy and Max sneers right back, "You have no idea." That gives Jim pause. He and Max are two sides of the same crappy coin, and he knows that in her place he'd be damn sure to have backup plans in place, ready to go in many an exigent circumstance (TITLE SHOUTOUT.) It's Barbie, though, who walks over to her and says "It's over," then heads off. Back to Jim. Jim with the gun and the two prisoners and every reason to do things his way. Nope, I cannot think of any reason at all in the world why any of this would go sideways.

 

No reason.

 

And CRACK, we hear the most expected sound ever, as Big Jim Rennie's gun solves his latest problems. First Flunky drops, and then... then....

 

MAAAAAAAX. MY MAX, MY DARLING. My black dahlia, my shining serpent, my reason for accepting the intelligence insulting, logic violating, utterly and completely shitastic writing and plotting of this show! NOOOOO! NO, IT CANNOT BE! A world with no Max is no world at all!

 

But it is. Max has collapsed to the ground and Barbie turns to the camera with absolutely most insulting expression on his face that he could possibly conjure up: surprise. I want to punch his stupid head in so much. He compounds the flagrancy of said insult with his next line, "What the hell did you do?" and deserves every bit of Jim's contemptuous glance as he says Max breathing was a threat and now she's not. "And neither are you." He raises his gun to Barbie's chest. 

 

Alas, Jim, Barbie's Idiot Plot Induced Idiocy is over with and he's back in GI Joe mode. He takes that gun like it's a melting popsicle, knocks Jim flat, and pins him in place with hammer pullback and a glare. Okay, looks like Big Jim Rennie's luck may finally be running out....

 

But alas, we'll have to get to that later. I must celebrate Labor Day with seven straight hours of taking pizza orders from "I had three beers in the hot sun before calling" customers. So, it's going to be a lot like reviewing this show, but I can't snark aloud. Pity me, me alone in a world without my Max, as you romp in the sunshine, so careless of your good fortune. I'll wrap this sucker up tomorrow, I promise, and move on to what I am positive will be nothing but a totally satisfying and utterly nonenraging conclusion to season One!

Edited September 3, 2014 by Snookums

[Snookums]

Okay...*sob*...*sniffle*....

 

Okay. I'm back. I....I...*choke* no, NO. I HAVE A POST TO WRITE. I owe it to Max. I...I ... Max would want it this way....

 

Well, actually, Max would want me to head over to Chester's Mill with a flamethrower and teach that whole ungrateful shithole a lesson in appreciating fabulous, eyelinered, stiletto heeled PERFECTION when it deigns to appear before them, but I...I do what I can. *blows nose* Okay. I'm okay. Let's get this travesty over with.

 

So, fuck. Where the fuck were we? Stupid Barbie has Shitheel Jim down on the ground, post Max Demise *BOOO HOOO HOOO* I AM FINE I. am. fine. So, they're locked in a standoff, Barbie's clearly thinking of taking a page from Big Jim Rennie's Practical Elimination Of Bothersome Others handbook and Jim's must managed to choke out "wait", when--

 

"Barbie, put that weapon down!" Yes, it's Linda! Who has chosen the absolutely, perfectly worst or best time ever to appear on the scene, depending upon which of these two players you are. Big Jim's intricate and seemly ridiculously petty manuverings will very soon come to stand him in good stead, here. To the point where you kinda have to see some truth in Agatha's statement about how he believes the Unknowable Powers That Be truly are looking out for him, because really, the timing here, and of this whole episode, is going to come to the kind of head where if even one thing was a little bit off the whole structure would collapse. So God or The Dome or somebody looking out specifically for Big Jim Rennie seems to be the only explanation. (Or, you know, a bunch of writers.)

 

Linda's standing up behind Phil's car (God, Linda! Try not to get his car shot up, at least!) aiming her own weapon at Barbie. Remember, she believes (against all reason and empirical evidence) that Barbie shot Julia, thanks in no small part to Jim's insistence that Barbie isn't who she thinks he is. Plus, she's just now arrived, so she hasn't seen what went down seconds ago (SOB) and right now her view consists of two dead bodies, Big Jim on the ground and Barbie pointing a gun. So her taking the situation at face value isn't as bag of hammers stupid as it could be, and that's bad news for Barbie. 

 

She keeps yelling for Barbie to drop his gun and Big Jim, proving Max wrong even in death (WHEEEZE), displays that survival instinct nicely by immediately recovering enough to yell that Barbie shot Max and Flunky and that he's gone nuts (as he slimily implied earlier) all the while grinning right up in Barbie's face. Everything works out for Big Jim Rennie.

 

Linda, upset and confused, takes Jim's word for it (and I'm not going to rag on her for once because given what she's seeing it's not illogical) and keeps telling Barbie to back up and drop the gun. Barbie is more trapped then he's ever been before, looking left and right before accepting that there's no way out and putting the gun down. Linda does the "hands behind the back spread your legs" cop thing as Big Jim gloats, all "You've killed your last victim" OH MY GOD SHUT UP, ASSHOLE. It's working, you don't have to keep this shit up. 

 

And his little vocal parade of braggadocio is once again his Achilles Heel because it gives Barbie the push he needs. He knows he can't be taken into custody with Jim Rennie installed as Tyrant Of Chester's Mill in all but name, and he makes a quick decision. "Linda," he says, turning as if to plead with her, but instead BELTS HER IN THE FACE and takes off running, not forgetting to pick up the gun as he does so! Competent Barbie is back! If only his evil twin would quit showing up and ruining everything!

 

Linda did not enjoy that last interaction, naturally, but she recovers in a beat and runs to firing position, yelling STOP OR I'LL SHOOT! She doesn't pull the trigger, though, until Jim snarlyells "Shoot that sonofabitch!" Then she fires, making it pretty damn clear that Linda obeys authority figures no matter what, no matter how much she might protest this or that. She fires multiple times, but Barbie's too far away. He's gone. Somewhere, the Prius weeps softly. 

 

Well, things cannot get any worse for Barbie today! Right? Ha ha ha. The Dome is clearly having too much fun with him to quit now! Let's see, we're already mowing through characters like ripened grain at the harvest, who else can we set up to bump off for no good reason except short term shock value?  Why, here we are at the radio station!

 

And so is Big Jim Rennie! I guess Linda gave him a ride out there (no questions asked, of course) for no earthly reason I can fathom except that the Idiot Plot Requires that he be there for the next set of machinations in this fucking absurd pig pile of an episode. I mean, I guess Dodie could have called him at some point, but I can't think when, during the events as shown, he was answering his cell and noting down afternoon meetings when he was done with his afternoon enemy eliminations.

 

Dodie, having been alone out here all day listening to the military talk about Dale Barba like he's a combination unicorn/dirty bomb, clearly needs to unload on someone, though, and once again James Rennie Sr. is in the right place at the right time. That is good storytelling!

 

She goes into how she's been able to pick up outside frequencies blah blah blah and how the military knows Barbie's in here. Why in the hell is this such shocking news? DODIE WAS WITH HIM ON VISITOR'S DAY. She helped sign Barbie's questions to a soldier! She saw Barbie show that little insignia thingie to said soldier to win his confidence! What has changed between then and now to make the notion of the military knowing Barbie's location inside the Dome such a trending Yahoo story? 

 

None of the viewer's business, apparently! Just accept it! As Jim does, because it's apparently big (and bad) news to him as well. "They said that he's the one. The one that they've been looking for." Okay, to be fair, that's new. I wouldn't think a former soldier's location to be of such enduring fascination without a reason. Big Jim, however, is all for killing two Barbies with one stone, and he tells her to turn on the microphone. I guess that's why he's out here, to use his dulcet tones to smear Barbie but good to the town at large. They could have made that a bit clearer in the beginning, though.

 

Back and forth bit of Jim announcing that "Maxine Seagrave, and her business associate, Otto Aguilar" were murdered over shots of DJ Phil who's decided to don't worry, drink coffee (OMFG there's still coffee???? What the hell, show? Are they out of coffee or not?) while waiting for Linda to return his ride at the handily open diner (I just adore this. Does Angie run down there every two hours or what? And are people just hanging around all day hoping she'll open? There's a family behind Phil having lunch like this is totally normal!) hearing this announcement over the radio. Phil knows both of them and he was at Julia's house earlier, so it makes sense that he personally is shaken up by the news, but frankly, why would the town at large care especially about Max (My Max! My sweet Max!) and some rando guy getting shot? I mean, a lot of them lost money on Barbie at the fight and all, and yes, his stock with the public has taken a hit, but I can't believe every single person in Chester's Mill is so personally invested in Dale Barba that they immediately will keen and wail and rend their garments at the news. 

 

Big Jim continues his smear campaign (the best part is when he calls Max a 'reputable businesswoman'), blaming Julia's shooting and his own latest physical sufferings on Barbie as well. Barbie runs through the trees as V.O. Jim natters on about an arrest warrant and how he's charged with basically killing the world and kicking puppies and telling little girls they're ugly. This multiple murderer blathers some crap about how this isn't who we are and Barbie will face a fair trial and AMERICA FUCK YEAH. He winds up by announcing "the government" will seek the death penalty. So basically he's told everybody out there to shoot on sight and it's okay because patriotism or something. Honestly, how is anybody still buying this shit? 

 

But enough of the intricate plans both human and divine that doth catch many a man in their intricate webs and coils: time to Touch The Dome!

 

"Any bets on what will happen when the four of us touch it?" asks Angie (who is running the diner???) as the Dome Quartet head to that magical spot to get all enlightened. "All I want is answers," says Norrie, who apparently likes to set herself up to be constantly disappointed. They arrive at the spot the Dome designated and line up in a row.

 

Whatever happens, says Angie, don't let go. Okay. I mean, I was planning to have you all touch it and then yell "PSYCH" and run off laughing but I guess I won't. The four of them raise their left hands and each places their palm on the Dome. There's the usual electrical *zing* sound effects and the four of them stand there, waiting, eyes closed, for a sign.

 

Well, here comes something. It looks like...it looks like...Big Jim Rennie. Goddammit, is there going to be thirty seconds of this fucking episode without that guy and his smirk and his little slitted eyes and his talking through his lower teeth on my screen? Guess not! This guy seems a bit different, though. For one thing, he's smiling rather more benignly than is Jim's wont, and for another, he's OUTSIDE the Dome. Another hint that he's a conjuration is that hideous light yellow shirt/see through wifebeater combo he's got on. The Dome has the fashion taste of a guy who works at the feed plant in Wichita, apparently.

 

"Dad?" says Junior, clearly thinking along similar lines to me r.e., the whole "I would really appreciate a whole You free day" thing, and the rest of them don't look super pleased about it either. And they will swiftly grow even less thrilled, because this smiling, genial, silent version of James Rennie starts to spontaneously bleed! Multiple times, like he's being stabbed or pierced! I'm enjoying this more then I should! There's something wrong with me!

 

More and more wounds appear on DomeVisionJim, including a nosebleed that it wipes away, as it continues to smile at the four and stay completely silent. Junior isn't following suit though, and his continued "Dads?" get more and more upset as the blood flows faster. It doesn't help one bit when Angie looks at him and sees that Junior is suddenly holding a bloody knife out of nowhere! And the rest of them are too! Shit, even for the Dome this is messed up. 

 

All of them freak, but at Angie's "Junior?" Junior looks at his knife, the smiling bloody chimera before him, and flips understandably out. He yells "NO!" and jumps away from the Dome wall, breaking the connection and causing both Bloody Jim and the knives to wisp away into the ether whence they came. "DAD!" he yells, then runs off, saying he's got to find his father. 

 

"Did we all see the same thing?" asks Joe, clearly hoping not. The others confirm, and he immediately demands to know what the hell that was, "I thought we came here for answers!" Oh, Joe, you beautiful summer child, never change. 

 

"We did," says Angie, "And I think that was it!" Basically, she and Norrie piece out that the Dome's coming down is predicated on Big Jim Rennie shuffling off this mortal coil. I have no problem with this. "And I think we're supposed to do it, " chimes in Norrie, and I do have a problem with this. Dome, if you want this asshole offed, I feel ya, but asking a bunch of teenagers to stab a grown and very dangerous man to death is really pretty shitty even for you. If this crapfest of yours was a video game it wouldn't get past beta. I don't know what you're trying to learn or prove, but you've picked a helluva way to go about/communicate it.

 

But we are FINALLY at the end of this one! Even as such a high cost as the loss of Max (WAAAAAIIILLLLL) I am grateful for that, at least. And hey, things can't possibly get any crazier/shittier/more blatantly insulting to my intelligence in the last episode, right? It's the season finale! Finales are all about finalizing things! Wrapping up some loose ends, making sense of intricate plot developments, providing some kind of sense of satisfaction and satiation in your audience, so as to leave them pleased and ready for your upcoming season! That's what's going to happen, right? 

 

Guys? Right? 

 

Well, you're busy. I'm sure that's what's going to happen and you all looking at each other and then at the ground and doing that suck your cheeks in/shuffle one foot while not making eye contact with me thing means just what I think it does, that the last episode is going to be a thing of beauty and tight, non ridiculous plotting/writing that will totally not leave me in a homicidal rage. That's what it means. Yes. 

 

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go light a homemade candle and put a Dead Can Dance CD on while I plot to take over the local kindergarten and run a cockfight ring out of it. Max would want to be remembered that way.

Edited September 3, 2014 by Snookums

[Snookums]

Okay, the Dome has been fucking with my mind, this is actually the penultimate episode, not the finale. But that's okay. I was just, you know, sad. But I'm fine now. It's fine. I'm absolutely positive that this will not be the "rolling boil" stage of this series that was supposed to be a one and done thirteen episode show based on a book with a beginning, middle and end, then was renewed, thus throwing plotlines and characterization into turmoil in the most intelligence insultingly way possible. Things can only go up from here, I tell you!

 

Okay, opening blah blah, "last week" clusterfuck outline, then:

 

We open on Disco Egg! It's doing one of its laser shows, and cuts to Julia lying pale and quiet in her hospital cot and Barbie hiding from the tromp of volunteer posse members show that it's probably not happy with the way things are going. Well, whose fault is that? Disco Egg? Hmmmm? Perhaps if you and your alien creators ever would care to use your words rather then do constant planetarium shows and upsetting visions that cause women to go into premature labor and young troubled men to freak out more then they already were things wouldn't be such a huge shitshow right now.

 

But who cares? Big Jim's doing one of his balcony speeches at the diner! (WHO IN THE HELL is running this place? Why is it open day and night? Who decides when it's a diner and when it's Jim's personal Reichstag? WHY IS THERE STILL COFFEE???) Jim's sticking with the whole justice and order thing and how Barbie will pay for what he's done yada yada yada and even the crowd that appears out of nowhere for these little diatribes is getting pretty restless. They want some new material. Once people start gambling on neighbors in bare knuckle boxing matches this shit's pretty tame.)

 

"What if he's hiding in one of our homes?" asks an aged Dougie Howser lookalike. Jim tries to deflect (he knows his position isn't stable enough to actually start storming houses), but DH/"Miles" (his name is Miles, whatever) just ups the demand to if Jim's so passionate about hunting down this bloodthirsty monster, why isn't he knocking on doors?

 

"Because that's illegal," snaps CAROLYN. Oh my God, you guys! Look who it is! Where the hell have you been, woman? In case you were wondering your daughter Norrie has been selected by an unfathomably alien power to be a voice/puppet/assassin for the Dome that has you all trapped here, but hey, you know your priorities. This town meeting trumps all. And to be fair this whole "let's quit pretending and just go full on banana republic police state" atmosphere isn't a casual get together.

 

"What would you have me do, Miles?" queries Big Jim, using his favorite "lead the horse to water and stand back 'til he drinks" method of letting other people spew out bad/tyrannical ideas, then casually stepping forward to implement them. Works like a charm too, as Miles says Jim can check his house right now and the rest of the doufuses (doufi?) chime in to agree. Yes, search our houses! Take our guns! What the hell ever! Thinking is hard!

 

Jim carries on with this incredible horseshit about not stomping on people's rights and the Constitution and this isn't the tune you were singing in Linda's office a few days ago, asshole! Remember, when you convinced her to help you get people to hand over their guns?? Linda's STANDING RIGHT THERE, TOO. Not one connection being made in her brain. Duke's brainwashing/protectiveness was far more effective then he'll ever know.

 

Miles continues to be Jim's unknowing running dog by saying this isn't the United States and hasn't been for two weeks and Jim's got to do something. Jim does his reluctant act and says he's declaring a state of emergency and there'll be house sweeps but only as a precaution ARRRRGH THE USUAL. It even finally prods Linda forward and she hisses that she's not turning the town into a police state on his say-so. Oh, Linda, honey. You're not doing anything. Here, come over here and I want you to take this dictionary and look up "figurehead." Jim doesn't even hide his satisfaction. "It's not me, Linda," he says. "It's the people."

 

Then comes the rousing "We're all in this together/Brave New World/The bourgeoisie are now streetcleaners" bit of the speech and all the doufi cheer, with Carolyn notably not buying what Jim's selling and heading out, a dour look on her face. The rest of them presumably run off to inform the rest of the populace that they have nothing to lose but their chains! AMERICA! USA! STREET CLEANING! Oh, and hunt for a murderer! Christ, no wonder Jim doesn't respect these people and only sees them as pawns, I know they're scared and this situation is extreme, to say the least, but honestly, half of them should be dead from falling down manholes or shooting themselves in the face when they look down the barrels of their guns to watch the bullets come out.

 

One person who's not among the roving rabble is Dodie, still at her post in the radio station listening to all the military bitchgossiping about Barbie the Destroyer or whatever the hell's so Goddamn important about him. The writers should have just named him Jesus and had done with it. She's turning dials and pushing buttons until the static-y query "Any idea where the hell that egg thing is" snaps her attention into focus. Well, right now it's doing a laser show to Pink Floyd's "Another Brick In the Wall, " shows nightly at 6 and 8 pm, why do you ask? 

 

Dodie sure would like to know, and the word "egg" has her reaching for her phone. You know, the one she used to take Disco Egg's photo? And there it is, clear as day. I guess Baby Dome doesn't fry electronics even when delivering a 150,000 kilowatt shock to people. "Oh, my God," says Dodie, her crispy fried memory clearing more and more. "That's what burned me!" 

 

The voices are still talking, saying they haven't found the egg yet and it won't mean a thing until they locate Barba. "He's the only one who's got the expertise." Expertise in Disco Eggs? The Army really does have careers for everyone! Dodie's heard enough to get her moving, and she grabs that phone and heads out. Presumably to a long and happy life. 

 

Cut to Disco Egg, still doing its light show, but now three of the four Baby Dome Defenders are back and watching. "What's it doing?" asks Norrie, and Angie says in a far too casual tone that she thinks it's mad that they haven't killed Big Jim. (Even if that's what the egg wants, Ang, maybe don't be so eager to run around stabbing people? I'll grant you've got more reason then most but still.)  Joe agrees, saying they can't do that, Angie's all with the vision at the Big Dome why does it want us to maybe so Jim won't kill Barbie on and on and on and THIS HERE is why the enigmatic light shows and the silent bloody visions are not the most efficient way of getting things across, Dome! If you're so all fired eager to communicate with Earth's inhabitants, maybe take a few days to familiarize yourself with the local spoken language instead of this endless game of Frustration Charades?

 

Norrie's sick of it too, and yells for both of them to shut up already. They don't even know that Barbie's the monarch anyway, hell, it could be one of them. "Not Junior," interjects Angie, "the way he ran off last night." Angie, again, I don't blame you for hating on Junior, but since this fucking Dome is the one forcing him into your life, maybe not be so ready and willing to do what you think it's telling you?

 

Joe is not one to let go of a notion, especially involving a guy who saved his own life and Julia's. "Trust me, it's Barbie," he says "He's gonna get us outta here." (And hey, Joe doesn't know it but the military seems to be agreeing with him.) "When the butterfly hatches, you'll see." He insists that's when the monarch will be crowned, and Norrie says she doesn't see how the butterfly's going to do anything trapped inside Baby Dome. Joe says he just feels that when the butterfly hatches something's going to change. I am guessing it will not be for the better. 

 

Door creaking open and the three of them whirl around, Angie lunging for the quilt, as the light from the open barn door frames CAROLYN. "What are you doing?" she asks. "WHERE THE BLOODY HELL HAVE YOU BEEN?" asks none of the kids in return, and Carolyn moves forward into the center of the barn where the dome and Disco Egg stand in plain sight because NONE OF THESE GUARDIANS have moved it to a safer location. Maybe the reason the aliens are communicating with light shows and creepy phantoms is they think we are the equivalent of ants or grasshoppers. 

 

"Let me see," says Carolyn in a far calmer voice then I would think she could muster considering what she just came from and what she's seeing. She asks what it is and Norrie says it's like, the Dome's heart. Conversation between Norrie and Carolyn about when and where it was found, how it sent Norrie home to say goodbye to Alice, and the upshot is Carolyn isn't letting those yahoos she just left at the diner find this thing. She tells them to move it, "they're" sweeping the houses, and when Norrie asks if she isn't mad Carolyn replies "Norrie, honey. I'm on your side, always." I may vanish without a trace for days but I'm on your side! 

 

Arrgh, gotta go to work! Where the hell does the time go? Anyway, back soon with more Suddenly Reappearing Characters and Unforgivable Deaths! Those are the best kind.

[Snookums]

Part Two! Only five more pages of text and we'll get to the title card! Hee, just kidding OR AM I.

 

Okay, so The Revenant Carolyn has just assured Norrie that just because she melted without trace for days on end doesn't mean she doesn't care. Family! 

 

So, Carolyn and Norrie are all bonded and shit, so she moves on to the important thing, hiding Baby Dome, since none of these idiots are managing to even keep that stupid quilt over it. She says she doesn't trust Big Jim (smart) with anything (very smart) and especially this (CAROLYN FOR PRESIDENT). 

 

"Take it to Ben," pipes up Angie out of nowhere. "We can trust him." Oh, yeaaaah! Skater Boi Ben! Remember him? The guy who helped Angie bury Rose and totally clean up the diner and stood up to Junior and then *POOF GONE* but we need him for something germane to the plot so he's back now? Yeah, that guy! Hell, it's practically Old Home Week on UTD this episode! Maybe Truman will slide down some interdemensional portal next!

 

"You're not coming?" asks Joe. Well, he's really more your friend, Joe. But considering what tends to happen to Ang when she's on her own I don't blame him for being worried. Angie shakes her head and looks determined. "I've got business with Big Jim," she stated grimly. Probably about how she owns the diner now and he has to quit using it for his Mussolini Strutting exercises. Or maybe a bigger clothing budget. I'm good with either. 

 

But mostly that first one because we cut immediately to said Big Jim Rennie lording it up on that balcony while he surveys his mouthpiece, Linda, organizing the house-to-house shakedown volunteers. This is so upsetting I would prefer to focus on that sweet abstract cutout deer head Rose put up on the wall, but Linda's using her Outdoor Voice. "All volunteers," she's saying "You do not treat your neighbors with disrespect." Not like when you were betting on them in bare knuckle boxing matches, then. "You do not damage property, and you do NOT KILL Dale Barbra." The fact that they need to be told that is already somewhat discouraging, but needs must when the Devil organizes house hunts. All the members of the posse nod and peasandcarrots their agreement (you know they're going to be shooting at every falling leaf once they get out there) and adjust their new black armbands o' authority, which is a nice little fascistic touch. Jim knows that if you focus on the little things the marchers just fall right into line. 

 

"Serve and Protect," says Linda and I really can't tell if she's being sardonic or not. She heads off in some random direction but is stopped by DJ Phil, who's discarded his sling between yesterday and now. Maybe so he can drive his car without it being shanghaied every two minutes. "Morning, Sheriff," he says, and Linda hands him back his keys, saying the tank's empty but thanks. GOD, LINDA. At least Jim isn't ashamed of his tyrant impulses, or tries to pretend that draining a civilian's car and rendering it useless isn't an asshole move, you know? Own your shit. Phil seems to take it stoically enough, though, saying No worries and hey, need an extra hand? Sure do, says Linda and that wasn't what you were saying yesterday when you took his damn car out to the cement factory and left him hanging, LINDA. So now Phil's okayed for dangerous duties that include running around with a bunch of trigger happy Constitutional Rights violating idiots? What's changed in the last ten hours??? Oh, right, the script needs Phil to be someplace specific and this is the most expedient/idiotic way to do it. This show is giving me a rash.

 

Linda and Phil head out to flat out rob another civilian of their transport, passing a frantic Junior as he tears into the crowded diner, looking for his dad (didn't he run off from the Dome wall like fifteen hours ago? Where the hell has he been looking all this time? Or was he just rolled up in a ball in his mom's studio rocking back and forth and talking to the stick figures? That is depressingly possible.) He spots Jim and heads right over, enveloping his father in a full on and not very welcome embrace. Quite a change from wanting to blow his head off, hmmm? Well, let's let wells be bygones.

 

Jim, never a touchy feely type in the best of times, disentangles himself from Junior's octopus grip and asks what the hell's the matter with him now. "I was looking for you all night," says Junior (AGAIN. WHERE? Where was Junior looking? Under random rocks? Climbing up trees? Asking the remaining local cows? Big Jim Rennie is in one of three places 90% of the time: his house, his office, or the diner. Junior is on track for Detective of the Year.) 

 

Junior goes on to tell Jim he's in danger, that someone's going to try to kill him, "Maybe Barbie, maybe someone else." well, that narrows it down. Jim asks how, exactly, he knows this and Junior comes back with that all time crowd pleaser "I just know." I mean, I get that trying to explain anything to Jim Rennie is a heartbreaking exercise in frustration at the best of times and Junior, the poor dumb clod, knows that way better then most, but honestly, considering, what does he have to lose at this point by telling Jim the truth? At least when Jim's punched full of stabby holes he'd have the satisfaction of saying "told ya so" if nothing else.

 

Jim looks like he's predisposed to take even this non satisfactory answer, anyway. He nods abstractedly, tells Junior to get it together, he's got a job for him. He repeats the canard about Barbie shooting Julia and that he may want to finish the job so Junior's got to head over to the clinic and guard her. He's got people outside the clinic but he needs someone he can trust on the inside. Junior, perpetually five where his dad's manipulations are concerned, perks right up and is all set to prove he's a big boy. "Oh, and listen," says Jim. "It's iffy if she's gonna wake up but if she does? And starts talking? Get on that walkie talkie to me right away." You know, especially if she says anything along the lines of Barbie's NOT SHOOTING HER. "Let me know. No one else. Just me." On the walkie talkie that ANYBODY WITH A SET can hear any message sent on it. What could possibly go wrong?

 

Junior tells his dad to be careful and heads off, just as Dodie lurches out of the crowd and up to Jim. Jim needs a cabinet and some ministers to vet his meetings, this current setup is a giant time suck. Jim agrees with me and tries to duck her but Dodie says he has to come with her to the radio station. Jim says he doesn't want to overwhelm the public (O RLY? What changed in the last thirty seconds, you honey cured ham?) with more announcements, but that's not what Dodie's on about. She goes on about how she's got the military back up on her receiver and how they are searching for The Elusive Barbie. That gets Jim's attention. And something else, too, says Dodie as we cut away. 

 

To Angie, heading out of the barn, and she's in another tank top, so I'll give her that. Same jeans, though. I'm guessing that's what Barbie's going to talk to her about because he just grabbed her up and hauled her off! You have to admit this doesn't look too good. 

 

But this is Barbie, and of course his intentions are noble. Desperate, but noble. He shhhhs her and asks her not to scream, and Angie takes over for the absent Joe in the Obvious Department of DOY with her statement that  "A lot of people are looking for you!" Barbie contents himself with saying yes, he knows that, but more importantly, none of that crap Big Jim's been saying is true, and..."I believe you," says Angie, a flat statement of fact. Barbie's face relaxes, realizing he's not going to have to tap dance to convince this person that he's not a crazy killer. "You do?" he says, and Angie points out that she's got a lot of good reasons not to trust Jim Rennie. Using her diner as the headquarters for his junta, for one. 

 

Barbie is thrilled but time's a factor here, so he lays it out for her. Julia's still at the clinic and if she ever wakes up and says hey, it wasn't Barbie who shot me, assholes, then Jim's story falls apart, so Julia's not long for this world unless they help her. Angie asks what it is that Barbie wants her to do, and Barbie's all I need you and your candy striper keycard to help save Julia, howsabout it? Angie doesn't even blink, and good on her; she nods her agreement and Barbie looks like the world's most grateful puppy as the music shrieks us into break. 

 

HOLY FUCK we are just now at the title card, you guys! Nine minutes and nineteen seconds! New record!

 

Onward! In on peacefully slumbering/comatose Julia, tucked up all the way to her chin under a blanket and apparently in the same room as Barbie left her. Did Curly Haired Nurse clean up all the blood and shattered glass? I guess she had to do something to keep busy since there is clearly not a scrap of actual medical care beyond the pallitive going on--no IV, no antibiotics, nothing. Man, CHN, you could at least break out the powdered toad or walk widdershins around the bed or something. 

 

Junior, leaning in the doorway, asks how Julia's doing and CHN says she was lucky to survive. Especially in this germ filled broken windowed hellhole with a BULLET HOLE and no antibiotics. Seriously, Julia should be running a hundred and five degree temperature right now. "There's no telling what kind of neurological damage she might have," Nurse concludes, tucking Julia in a bit closer and heading off to do something or other. "Do you think she'll come out of it?" asks Junior and CHN says she's not a doctor. Well, noooo, but you ARE the only medical professional around here so maybe not so much buck passing? Junior points out this very thing and CHN says she has other patients to check on and takes off. Probably she's got to lean over them and hiss "I'm not a doctor, who knows what damage you might have" into their ears. 

 

Cut to Barbie and Angie watching Big Jim's guards from the shelter of a few shrubs outside the clinic. Big Jim really must review his policy of using completely oblivious morons in these key positions, since they are barely nominally hidden and talking in normal tones of voice. Seriously, they aren't even trying to whisper or keep out of sight. How Jim gets anything done is a mystery to me.

 

Angie asks what the plan is and Barbie says they're going to hotwire an ambulance (so nobody's drained the ambulances' gas tanks? How civic minded of the bare knuckle fight cheering/house to house illegal searching/gun rounding up populace), use the keycard to get in, get Julia out, and Angie drives them away. Okay, nice and simple, at least.  Angie asks about the guards and when Barbie says they'll swing around front sooner or later she clarifies that she means the guards inside. "Big Jim must know you're coming, he might have moved her already." Between the experienced soldier and the candy striper, it is Angie who is displaying the critical and strategic thinking skills, which is filling me with confidence. Barbie comforts neither Angie nor me with his reply of "yeah, maybe." Angie shakes her head over the number of ways shit could hit the fan.

 

Barbie, however, does have a good point. Big Jim's crossing enemies off his To Do list with dispatch and Julia's his last loose end. Plans are always messy and can never cover all the bases, so is she in, or is she out? He outlines this while gesturing with a cigarette he pulled out of nowhere, and this reminds Angie of that nice little convo they had on Dome day, and how he reminded her that everybody isn't Junior, and how much she wants a cigarette right now right this second, and she softens. She's in, and shows it by wordlessly snatching that ciggie and leaning over for a light. Good thing the guards have no sense of smell which burning tobacco could betray.

 

Part three coming up! Dodie wins the lottery and moves to New York and gets a job on the Today Show! I am positive that will be what happens. 

Edited September 8, 2014 by Snookums

[Actionmage]

I know they're scared and this situation is extreme, to say the least, but honestly, half of them should be dead from falling down manholes or shooting themselves in the face when they look down the barrels of their guns to watch the bullets come out.

 

Good thing the guards have no sense of smell which burning tobacco could betray.

 

Dodie wins the lottery and moves to New York and gets a job on the Today Show!

 

I love all parts of your recaps, snookums, but these lines were my top favorites from the latest batch.

[Snookums]

My new goal is to get quoted on the main page! But that seems to be for current seasons of shows, so I'm pinning my hopes on the SoA season (starts tonight!)

[Snookums]

Part three of episode two of the last three episodes! That adds up to cake, I think.

 

Okay, so let's see. We left off with Barbie and Angie getting all cut rate Avengers outside the "Pretty Much A Cruel Heartless Joke Of A Clinic" clinic plotting to rescue Julia over a nice relaxing smoke. So let's cut away from that for more Big Jim Rennie being a murderous asshole murderer! Yay, that's what I needed more of.

 

Jim wrenches open the door to Dodie's rig room huffing and puffing about the military being back on air after the whole "thermobaric bomb whoopsie" bad date. They've got some nerve calling us after that, I'll tell ya, and especially since they want to talk to Barbie. Dodie keeps trying to say that Barbie's only part of it (and presumably fill him in on Disco Egg) but Jim, understandably enough, is more interested in why the military's so interested in his latest frame job victim. He finally decides to process the whole magic egg thing, though, and Dodie shows him her pic of Disco Egg (not its best angle, since it's all dark and inert here but still, you know, magic egg). 

 

Jim looks at the photo, at Dodie's face, and you can see the gears in his head clanging and shifting to work in another murder in the very near future. First, though, he needs what she knows; "What's it do?" he strains through his lower teeth. Dodie, in the relief of finally getting to unload this on someone, the poor sap, breathlessly says she's not sure but it burnt the crap out of her hand. Not the kind of info that makes you useful to Big Jim Rennie, doll. 

 

Dodie notices something or other and says she promised Phil she'd keep the music going (does this poor woman ever sleep? Does she even have a place to live or does she just sleep under her rig table?) and heads downstairs to make various radio station type adjustments, admonishing Jim not to touch anything as she does so. Jim does not appreciate being told what to do--just ask Max (but we can't because she's dead! SOB). He promptly looks around for something to wrap his big evil hot dog fingers around.

 

Hoping for a little fondle, the rig squawks up right on cue with some military voice or other sputtering about how the unidentified object is being transported, that there's no sign of Barbie, and so on. Jim frowns at this, not liking that he doesn't know about this object or why Barbie's so important, but the next exchange really catches his ear:  "Any idea who's in charge in there?" "Squawk babble babble static James Rennie." Big Jim smirks the smirk of someone whose need for attention has surpassed pathological. He takes a satisfied seat to listen more closely, leaning back like a pleased emperor, basking in the acknowledgement that everybody out there knows he's in charge.

 

Well, careful what you wish for in a deranged and all-consumingly obsessive manner there, buddy. The conversation over the airwaves has taken a decidedly less flattering turn. Back and forth in that horrendously annoying crackly manner that blurs every other word, but the long and the short of it is that Big Jim Rennie is not the man the observing soldier would recommend as a "contact" for whatever mission they're gassing on about over an open channel, due to his penchant for murder.

 

Whoopsie! The voice goes on to outline, in great and unmistakable "He totally fucking killed this guy, I totes saw it" detail, that little matter of Jim murdering Reverend Coggins by pressing his be-hearing aided head up against the Dome wall and blowing his head right the fuck up. Remember that? Me neither! I mean, Big Jim Rennie is pretty much a serial killer by this point: There's Coggins, Ollie's buddy in the truck that he blew up, Ollie, Agatha, Max, Max's bodyguard, right off the top of my head. Plus he's planning to kill Julia and is framing Barbie for most all of this! Who the hell can keep track of all this evil shit?

 

Which I guess is the point, here--it's always the nefarious deed you didn't put a lot of thought into that trips you up? However, I would venture to point out that while Coggin's death was indeed a murder and one that can be traced distinctly and directly to James Rennie's bloody hands, the guy was plenty fucking evil before that. The whole propane/drug ring that he recruited the preacher into in the first place would be pretty clear evidence of that, frankly. I mean, Coggins, and Duke while we're up, were presumably grown men of free will who chose to go along but Big Jim set all that shit up in the first place. This whole "Morally Grey tends towards corruption" thing they're trying to do with Jim's character doesn't really hang together if the guy was a fucking horrible piece of selfish shit the whole way through.

 

Anyway, Jim listens in growing horror to the soldier's report of him killing Coggins and yanks the set apart to silence it, but too late: Dodie has heard the whole thing. She does not take my firmly worded and loudly exhorted advice to creep back downstairs and then come up again so Big Jim doesn't know she knows, however. When he turns around, there she is, eyes wide and mouth open with the second mega shock she's gotten in two days. Oh, Dodie. Your weather forecast is heavy and abruptly truncated stormy weather.

 

But hey, this is getting to be a bummer! Let's go to Ben's house! He's just headed out the door on his skateboard (are his parents there or is he alone in his house? I can't remember if anybody ever said so or not) when he spots Miles the Ex Banker and some other guys gathering up the piles of garbage bags that have been growing around town like big plasticky weed patches. (I rag on this show endlessly but I do really like this detail.) Ben cracks about "Mr. Alcott's new job" but Miles is a good Party Citizen now and says nobody needs banks anymore; there's always garbage, though, Comrade. This scene was brought to you by that fucking annoying guy who sat next to you in sophmore Econ--the one with the white guy dreads who bathed in patchouli and kept bitching about The System while his parents paid his tuition and his rent and his phone bill and sent him an allowance. 

 

Ben's musings on the inherent corruption of the capitalist system and how said corruption seems inevitable in all systems that would replace it is interrupted by a hissed "Ben! Ben!" coming from the bushes. Yes, it's Joe, and that whole "one branch conceals me utterly" crap must be genetic because he, like Angie before him, is barely hiding around the side of the house and stage whispering loud enough to wake the dead (oops, sorry Rose and Alice and everybody else who's been MURDERED BY THIS DAMN DOME/ BIG JIM RENNIE duo act.)

 

Ben head around to see what Joe is frantically flailing about, and rightly asks "what's that?" when confronted with one of the best/worst/most WTF images from this show to date-- Joe and Norrie standing beside a Radio Flyer Red Wagon with a quilt covered Baby Dome in it! Really! I'm not joking! They apparently just put it in a wagon and rolled it down the public streets of Chester's Mill, AFTER Carolyn warned them that Big Jim was searching the entire town using groups of thugs, until they got to Ben's house! OH MY GOD, they might as well have attached sparklers and balloons to the damn thing. I get that the aliens controlling this situation are arcane and unknowable at best but did the do any research at ALL into who might be the best guardians for this apparently very very very important object before deciding on this particular troupe of bumblers???

 

Guess not! Because they did apparently get there with not a whiff of attention attracted to them or their little circus wagon so I can just shut up. Joe and Norrie say they've got to hide this here thingy, Ben's all hey, no probs, and the thugs already came by so sweeeeet, man! Great! The three then roll enquilted Baby Dome TOWARDS THE STREET AND THE FRONT DOOR OF BEN'S HOUSE. Any particular reason you don't want to go the BACK door? Oh, well, I am but a mortal and a speck of earth. Who am I to question the wisdom of the Dome Guardians? Besides somebody with a working brain? 

 

(And by the by, why the hell isn't Carolyn with them? Did she have to run back to the Enigmatic Unknowable Void for her purse or what?)

 

Back to Plot strand A-- Operation Rescue Julia.  We see Angie swiping her key card and she and Barbie enter the clinic, slipping easily down the hall (no apparent guards) until they get to Julia's room and oooops, we didn't factor in the whole "Junior Rennie Looming Over Julia's Unconscious Body Like A Vampire With Daddy Issues" scenario. Barbie leans back out of sight just in time and informs Angie, who contents herself with an eyeroll and comment on Junior doing more of Big Jim's dirty work. 

 

Barbie pulls his gun, but Angie looks about for an alternative (remember, she must, however reluctantly, keep Junior alive to get out of this fucking Dome, or so she thinks) and while Barbie mutter-plots how to get a good shot, her gaze lights upon an abandoned candy striper apron. "No," she says, grabs it up, and says "let me."

 

Let me what? We'll have to wait to find out because now we are back at the most necessary, least blood boilingly enraging ferociously fucking stupid plot strand of this episode: Big Jim and Dodie! Hooray! This should be like a warm spring rain while patting a sleepy puppy and sipping chamomile tea. 

 

"Calm down," Jim is saying to Dodie and by the way, public service announcement: SAYING CALM DOWN IN THAT TONE OF VOICE TO ME WILL GET YOUR FACE RIPPED OFF. Even if I'm angry about you eating the last brownie and not just now finding out you are a killer. Dodie does me proud by saying in a quivering but quiet voice "I AM calm." She says what they said you did? I thought what happened was an accident. And she is giving Jim a perfectly good out here! All he has to say is yes, it was an accident, they didn't see what happened. Dodie is quite clearly willing to believe him and that way Jim gains a very valuable ally, or at least some time. The pile of bodies is really getting too big to explain away.

 

...but hey, why do that when you can chose the short term totally shitty and badly thought out MURDER alternative instead? Jim just cannot resist the chance to play I Know What's Best For You Daddy. "He was an accident," Jim says, and goes on to outline how Coggins was making drugs (at Jim's instigation) and burned down Duke's house (at Jim's instigation) and how he was a liability and aren't I the wonderful man who makes the hard decisions? LOVE ME, DAMMIT. "You don't know the whole story, Dodie," he says, and neither do those sucky military guys who suck.

 

Dodie won't bite, though, and asks instead how many accidents have there been? Like, all those people you said Barbie killed? Big Jim digs his Smarm Hole deeper and deeper as he smirks that Barbie's no saint. This non denial highlights the truth for Dodie--that Barbie hasn't done any of the things Jim's says he's done, and if it wasn't Barbie...

 

Jim says Barbie and the rest of those A-holes all got what they had coming to them, then launches into his whole "Chester's Mill Do or Die" speech that is as fucking enervating to listen to as any Endless Love crap Junior ever gassed out. No question where Junior got that particular annoying tendency, hmmm? Junior, however, only has one murder and a kidnapping/stalking charge against him so far. Jim has left his progeny far, far behind in the Rampaging Asshole Marathon. Jim concludes with how he'd never hurt the people of this town, "or hurt you." EEK. 

 

Dodie, frozen with fear, manages to breathe out that she doesn't think that, and Jim's all good, see? Let's work together with this egg thing? Where did you say you took that picture? Dodie snaps to and says it was at the McCallister barn, that she didn't remember until this morning, that it could be the generator...

 

"Generator? For what?" queries Jim, and Dodie, her sweet brown eyes alight with Science, says for the Dome! The whole thing! Maybe if you get this thing, you can bring down the Dome! Jim's face clouds over at this, but she doesn't notice. I can get it for you, she says, I can help, I can be useful and this is just so heartbreaking because with her every effort to save her life she's digging her own grave. She can't see that what anybody else in Jim's precious ship in a bottle would want--to bring down the Dome--is the polar opposite of what he wants. Not only will he have to answer, clearly, to various authority figures about all those pesky murders, but this isn't the main thing. The main thing is, the Dome is Big Jim Rennie's dream come true. His town, his precious little thing, finally under his total control, his vision, his guiding arm, his might? There is no way James Rennie is going to use Baby Dome or anything else to set loose what he never thought was capturable. 

 

"Dodie," Jim says, pulling his gun, "You're already very useful," and points it right at her heart. "That Dome can't  come down." SHIT. 

 

Dodie freezes, tries to think, then decides that there's one last thing she can do--"Big Jim?" she says?
 

"Yeah?" says Jim, "what is it, honey?" and that line right there encapsulates Jim's evil, how he truly sees himself as a Papa Bear to the very citizenry he manipulates and murders. Dodie doesn't blink as she throws the truth in his face: "You're a sick bastard. And one day, everybody's going to know it, and they're gonna smile when you die." 

 

But Jim, like every other king and conqueror, doesn't want to hear prophecy unkind to him, and without another word he fires straight into Dodie's heart. She drops.

 

Jim shoots up the rig to make sure nobody else is going to hear anything inconvenient (tragically, none of the ricochet bullets nick him), and then to make extra sure he just goes ahead and burns the whole station to the ground! Hooray! Not only have we just watched another character whom we liked and rooted for get killed for utterly selfish/enraging reasons, HERE'S ANOTHER FIRE UNDER THE DOME! One that includes lots of extra poisonous smoke from all those burning electronics! Yes, Big Jim, where would this town be without you?

 

Okay, that's enough for this post. Sorry about all the extra rage weight but honestly. How much more can the character of James Rennie get away with before the rest of this idiot populace finally starts to catch on?? Does he have to peel and eat a baby on Main Street or what?

 

Next up: rescues that go from point A to somewhere over there and then back to point A.

Edited September 10, 2014 by Snookums

[Snookums]

Annnd I'm back! I booted my husband out of the living room ON PURPOSE to get this damn thing written. I'm sure I've written more words, pound for pound, than the screenwriters have at this point.

 

Okay, so Big Jim just kicked his poor tattered soul around the shit pile one more time with Dodie's murder, so where are we?

 

Oh, goodie, still here with his slaughtering ass! He's paging Linda, asking where she is. Linda and Phil are out "sweeping the southwest quadrant," which is handy plotwise because Phil is right there to hear Jim's announcement that the radio station's ablaze! What unbelievable luck, Plot! You are just the luckiest son of a bitching plot around! You must have entire rabbits for feet!

 

Phil reacts as you'd expect to this news (terribly badly) and immediately asks after Dodie. When Linda relays the message Jim calmly says he doesn't know, it's a mess, and the fire volunteers are gathering but she needs to get down there. That amazing aurora borealis effect is God bounding lighting bolt after lightning bolt off the Dome in an effort to fry Big Jim Rennie crispy, but alas, evil continues to smirk and chortle through its lower teeth without a blink. 

 

Linda, proving that sometimes she can think like a cop, asks if it could be arson and once again Jim's all no idea! Also, all those shell casings and bullets you find in the wreckage, including one that's most probably still lodged in Dodie's corpse? No idea on that either. Nope. 

 

Phil, taking over the "leap to wrong yet understandable conclusion" duties from Linda, immediately says it's Barbie, that they've been broadcasting info about him from the station night and day. Linda jumps upon this and radios Jim that she's on it, promising that if she spots Barbie she'll call him. Big Jim Rennie is so terribly efficient in his wicked deeds that I could almost admire him and Phil and Linda swing into their latest commandeered vehicle and speed off. 

 

Cut to Ben tripping out over Baby Dome and Disco Egg, asking if the Quartet really thinks this is "the engine." Nah, we don't, that's why we're desperately trying to hide it from Big Jim and his thug minions. Joe says it could be the way out and Ben transforms himself, monarch-butterfly-like, into Pothead Skater Cliche with his next line; "it's awesome, like a lava lamp!" Well, I'd say it's better then a lava lamp, because the color blobs don't glob irretrievably at the bottom after two weeks, nor does it spill disgusting smelly oil across your carpet when you accidentally knock it off the desk. Ben is just enjoying the trip, though, man, and reaches out to touch it.

 

Norrie and Joe stop him just in time, warning him that the last person who touched it got hurt. Oh, children, you have no idea. Hurt doesn't begin to cover it. Norrie flings the quilt over it and Joe tells Ben that all he's got to do is keep it covered and his parents away from it (okay, so Ben's folks are indeed under the Dome with him. Wonder where they are? Collecting garbage? Kicking in doors? Having a nice meal at the Least Plausible Diner In The World?) and keep an eye on it. Soooo, any particular reason why it's got to be in Ben's room? Not the basement or attic or something? This is better then the barn, at least but still, it's not like the thing is easy to miss, quilt shroud or not.

 

Joe and Norrie head out and Ben asks where they'll be. You know, in case Baby Dome starts fussing or wants two juice boxes. Joe says they've got to head home, as he's got to stop Angie from doing something stupid. Dude you are like seven years too late on that, at least. They thank Ben for his Dome-sitting duties and head off. Ben stares at the collage on his wall made up of the most generic, least dynamic skateboarding posters ever printed, then turns back to the Dome, which sits plotting quietly.

 

Cut to slumbering Julia. Even in a Goddamn COMA this woman's hair is flawless. Her various deep wounds aren't bleeding, there's no signs of infection or dehydration, her color is divine.That is it, Julia Shumway was fathered by a saraph. No wonder the Dome's grooving on her so hard. Junior stands over her, thinking whatever the hell thoughts scurry and scamper through the tedious obstacle course that is his brain when voila! Behind him is Angie, looking quite fetching in her little candy striper apron! I hope she doesn't get any closer to Julia in those "slept in a barn three nights running" jeans, though. Even angelic bloodlines couldn't fight off those bacteria. 

 

Angie saunters up, says a friendly "hey!" and it works like a charm; Junior Rennie's desire to please his monster of a father is second only to his twisted obsessive desire to please his high school girlfriend. He turns to her immediately and asks what she's doing. "Helping out, like I used to," chirps Ang from the dark, deserted hallway. The implausiblity of this statement doesn't bother Junior a whit. Angie continues to pour oil on trouble waters, asking if he's okay after what they saw yesterday. Junior's all sure I'm okay, and Angie asks why he ran off, then. Well, Angie, you all saw a vision of James Rennie bleeding and you guys holding bloody knives, so what do you think? Junior is still under her siren song, though, and doesn't get snarky. He just tells her he had to protect his dad, to stop anyone who might hurt him. If there was the slightest scrap of justice under the Dome Junior would have to transform into a combination Hydra/octopus to accomplish that.

 

Angie agrees and presses harder, asking "Do you trust your dad?" When Junior gets all huffy she points out he didn't always, that he used to call him a fraud. That is the absolute mildest term for James Rennie, to say the least. Junior does his "thinking is hard" shuffle and then just looks at her with a shrug. He's used to thinking whatever will give him the most moments of peace in a row when it comes to his dad.

 

Angie continues, asking about his apparent guarding of Julia and Junior snaps that hey, Barbie SHOT her yesterday (and he does indeed have plenty of his own reasons, paranoid or otherwise, to dislike and distrust Barbie). Angie keeps pushing, pointing out that the only word they have on this is from Jim, and what is Junior supposed to do when she wakes up? Call his dad, perchance?

 

The cognitive dissonance is too much for Junior and even Angie's web of enchantment can't hold him; he backs into Julia's room and tells Angie to leave him alone. Angie switches tactics, apologizing and saying that her head's a mess, she doesn't know what anything means, I just need someone to talk to... Junior tries to hold out, asking  "Someone? Or me?", but Angie's big doe eyes and pleading "You" break him like a stale pretzel. She turns it up, asking if they can go somewhere private--"I feel like she can hear everything I say." Junior protests that he said he'd watch her and Ang swings out the big guns. "Just for a minute...please?" she purrs, taking his hand (hey, she's got those friendship bracelets! I use to have those in seventh grade! They're still a thing! Anyway!) and finally murmuring "I need you."

 

DING DING DING. Everybody's got a weak spot and Angie has just deliberately run her seemingly adoring fingers over Junior's. He nods and follows her off, down the hall, looking hypnotized. I'd almost feel bad for him if he wasn't such a tool most of the time. Barbie, who has undoubtedly been shifting from foot to foot and jumping at every noise this whole time, swings into action at once. Wheeling a gurney down the hall, he skids to Julia's bedside. 

 

Cut to the smoking remains of the radio station and an extra telling Linda that they found "her body" --Dodie's, I presume-- in the station, that there was nothing they could do. The music is sad as the camera circles to show Linda trying to comfort a distraught Phil, sitting on the curb of a--suburban street?? The hell? Every other shot of the radio station indicated it was on the edge of town, and now it's plonk in the middle of a residential road? WHO THE FUCK ZONED THIS TOWN?

 

Okay, sorry about that outburst, let's concentrate on Phil sobbing over Dodie's blanket covered body, asking why "he" (Barbie) would do this, Dodie never hurt anyone. Linda says she doesn't know but Barbie won't get away with it. Phil's face hardens as once again everything set rolling by Big Jim Rennie backs up all the lies he's told. Phil is now irrevocably set against the man he thinks killed his dear friend and Jim didn't even plan it that way! Shit. This shit is starting to piss me off.

 

Angie, unaware of the latest frame job going down, leads Junior to a nice private spot: the middle of a hallway. What? Yeah, the place is pretty quiet but still, seduction/allurement/distraction/macking goes down better as a tactic in a supply closet or something. There'd be plenty of room since this damn place is OUT OF EVERYTHING.

 

But no, let's just stand here under the glaring florescent lights for this scene of deceit and lies! Angie gives him the doe eyes again and starts the "don't know how much more of this I can take" tape, while Junior strokes her cheek and assures her she's not alone. Ang does a pretty good job of not flinching, but quickly pulls Junior into an embrace lest her face betray her. They snuggle for a bit as Junior gasses on about how good it feels to hold her and Angie grits her teeth as she agrees, mentally calculating how long before she can pretend to have to go deliver non existent flowers and head out to hotwire the ambulance. She pulls back and they start to smooch. Man, Angie should get a Purple Heart for this crap. 

 

Junior deepens the kiss into an all out makeout session, but then he stiffens and draws back. "You taste like cigarettes," says the master detective who spent fifteen hours looking for his father yesterday. Too bad that Miss Marple stuff only clicks in when it's Angie. Angie, much slower on the draw, only blinks and tries to look innocent, but it's too late--Junior glances down the hall, back at her, and you can hear the gears sluggishly grinding up as he pieces together why Angie's being so sweet...

 

Angie chases after him as Junior runs down the hall to Julia's empty room. He turns to her and the look on his face sends Angie pelting the hell away from him...

 

To her family barn! Well, that's where the show just yanked us to, anyway. Carolyn is standing before the barn, hand on hip and no fucks to give as Jim and a group of his minions try to diplomatically threaten her into opening the barn for their inspection. Carolyn snaps out a lecture on what they need in lieu of a search warrant: "Permission from the owner, clear visibility of the inside, a suspect under arrest..."

 

"Or exigent circumstances!" snaps Big Jim, who's not gonna get lectured on procedure trampling by some leaf peeper, thank you very much. Carolyn continues to throw all the shade there is as he foams that he considers a murderer on the loose extremely exigent. Carolyn has never been more from L.A. as she husks out that she just calls it one more day in this damn hellhole. 

 

One more snark exchange about requesting Jim to leave/request respectfully declined and Jim orders his troops forward. This pack of assholes has clearly been waiting all day for this and leaps to do his bidding. They grab her arms and haul her aside over her loud and vociferous protests, as Big Jim saunters towards the barn door, but he's prevented from heading on in by the (very) timely arrival of Norrie and Joe, who take one look at this shit and fling themselves into the fray, Norrie shrieking that they are not going to touch her mother! They get some licks in, too. If those guards were chickens it would be Friccasee Night at the diner.

 

Of course two tiny teenagers aren't going to overpower five grown men and things quickly get wrapped up into Carolyn telling Norrie to stop before she gets hurt as Jim smirks that he wonders what they're so bent out of shape about him seeing as he swings open the barn doors to reveal a whole bunch of nothing. Well, there's straw and tools and several powerful odors, but clearly not who he was pretending to look for or the thing he was really after. Jim's face shows he doesn't like to be baffled.

 

"What the hell?" Jim bellows, and immediately charges his prisoners, demanding to know "where is it?" "Where is what?" ask exactly none of his asshole thugs as Jim says he knows all about the Egg and Joe and Norrie chuck serious face his way. He orders the kids taken to the station and this group of morons just does so! Not a word, not a query, not even a glance among them about how Jim Rennie clearly has an agenda that he's using them to enforce without informing them as to what it is. Carolyn hollers and thrashes, promising Norrie that she'll fix this, she'll get her out as Jim tries to smirk and plot at the same time. I think he needs whiskey girlfriend for that--thugs just aren't the same.

 

Okay, that's it for this one and high ho ambulance away! into the next post!

Edited September 15, 2014 by Snookums

[bmoore4026]

Snookums' recaps reminds me of so much of what this show has dropped, big and little.

 

I had completely forgotten that Big Jim has a bunch of toughs working under him.  And now, they're gone.

 

How can you be a big, scary villain if you don't have minions?  I mean, he could still have used his men in the second season to create situations that would make him look better in comparison to Julia.

 

But then, I remind myself that this is Under the Dome: The Summer show that don't just doesn't care.

Edited September 17, 2014 by bmoore4026

[Snookums]

Big Jim lost his minion wolf pack? What the hell, man? I really respected your organization skills, Jim! How the hell do misplace an entire troupe of moronic mouthbreathing neckbeard no-lines-no-SAG-card-for-you-hahaha nitwits who cheerfully haul teenagers to jail cells on your sayso? How is he getting anything done?

 

Well, anyway. I am finishing up this damn thing, no matter how long this post gets, because by GOD I am wrapping up the next episode and this damn season and getting it the hell out of my life come what may, you hear me? The Following's starting up in October and so is Sleepy Hollow and I have The Fall with Gillian Anderson in my queue and I just cannot spend this much time on this fucking Dome. If I'm going to trickle my precious and finite existence away, away, away on watching TV I need some variety.

 

o-KAY. Here we GO. 

 

So, Jim just got totes faced by an empty barn, kids hauled off, Back From The Twilight Zone Carolyn is all yelly, but we've gotta wait on that because...

 

BAM! Angie is hauling hell for leather out the clinic doors screaming for Barbie! Who is just now getting Julia loaded onto the ambulance but that's going to have to wait until he takes down the enraged Junior who's chasing right after Ang! Only for once he's not telling her how much she needs him if she's just accept it because he's too busy bellowing "BARBIE'S AT THE CLINIC!" into his radio! Shit, now I'm going to have to put up with griefstricken Phil and "Don't confuse me" Linda in this crapfest, aren't I? 

 

Well, Junior can't tell me because Barbie ran right over there and tackled him flat! The fight that ensues is not as lopsided as in the past--somebody finally figured out that Junior is in his twenties, over six feet and in good shape, plus the character is feeling even more betrayed and angry then he usually does. He gets some good punches in, but he's not going to win against a trained soldier/desperate man. If I were in a meaner mood I'd point out that Barbie is barely healed from his Max-sponsored beatdown but fuck it. Maybe the Dome sent him a vision of Julia to kiss his booboos and make him better.

 

Anyhoodle, Barbie finally wraps the fight up by coldcocking Junior with his gun, and a good thing too, because Linda radios in with the helpful info that she's thirty seconds away. Wow, so the radio station was like, a block away from the clinic. This fucking zoning is like one of those Playskool town sets that is being assembled by a blind lunatic who's high on moonshine. 

 

To be fair to Linda, she didn't know she was informing her quarry of her position but Barbie takes what he can get. He grabs the radio off Junior (who can now lie outside and add sunburn to the massive concussion he just got) and races into the ambulance with it. He pauses to check on snowy, ethereal, stunning Julia, still so far away from him in the strange shadow world of unconsciousness, then takes her face in his hands and whispers "I love you", kissing her perfectly glossed lips to seal his words. Julia continues her Sleeping Beauty impersonation as Angie yells at him that they've gotta go, starting the ambulance. More then thirty seconds have passed at this point. I'm just saying.

 

OH, I JUST ADORE THAT ANGIE HAS HER  SEATBELT ON! That's such a darling little family trait! She's gonna need it, too, because the plan just changed! Barbie races to her window, tosses the radio in with her, and yells some garbled stuff about driving fast stay hidden bargle blargle blah, I couldn't make it out but basically they're splitting up. Angie doesn't get it any more then I do and shrieks at him to tell her what's going on but (OMG this bit's hilarious) Barbie just keeps yelling GO GO GO and basically it looks like he physically pushes the ambulance into driving away! Man, no wonder the Army wants him so badly; Dale Barbra has the proportionate strength of a leaf cutter ant on bath salts! Shit!

 

Angie, still freaking the fuck out and who can blame her, peels off down the street and hopefully to find a better place to stash Julia then Ben's bedroom. Barbie stands in the middle of the street, at a loss for what the hell to do next. It's been WAY MORE then thirty seconds now. Just, obnoxiously more. Like when you're watching a movie and the actors are underwater for like ten minutes without scuba gear or anything. 

 

Oh, wait, my bad, here's Linda! In a... cop car? What? I guess she got another one from the police garage but what happened to the civilian vehicle she commandeered? I guess the writers want her to make an Entrance. And she does so, skidding to a stop in time honored TV Cop fashion, then leaping out with her gun at the ready. So does PHIL AND WHAT THE HELL IS HE DOING HERE? He's a fucking CIVILIAN and Barbie, as Big Jim Rennie has been at such pains to remind us, is armed and dangerous! Plus his fucking shoulder is barely healed! He should be in such pain he can't even function let alone assist at apprehending a dangerous criminal. Well, I'm sure the writers have a perfectly good and not at all infuriating reason for this. 

 

Barbie, clearly giving himself up for Julia's greater good, luckily does not prove Linda to be the WORST cop ever and does not gun down Phil or take him hostage. Instead he raises his hands, lays down, surrenders. Linda takes his gun as Phil (who, remember, thinks he just lost his dearest friend to this guy WHICH IS ANOTHER REASON HE SHOULD NOT BE HERE) circles him, his face a storm. Linda cuffs Barbie and Phil takes that as his cue to kick Barbie right in the face!  Phil has a second career right now proving my point!

 

Linda tackles him away at once, which she would not have had to do had she not brought a grieving and angry civilian along on a manhunt, then radios to Big Jim that she's got Barbie as said Barbie lies on the pavement and bleeds. Man, I used to torture my Barbies a lot but I never dislocated their jaws. 

 

All this shit apparently has gone down in less then ten seconds because when we cut to Jim hearing the news the Poltroon Posse is still herding the kids into the cars! Like, they aren't even at the cars yet, they're still walking towards them. I guess another of Big Jim Rennie's secrets is that he's a Time Lord. An asshole Time Lord that even The Master won't take calls from anymore. At the news that Angie McCallister took off with Julia (wait, how does Linda know that? She didn't ask Barbie or anybody else and all Junior radioed was that Barbie had Julia) he merely husks out "Don't worry, we'll get her too." Sigh. He probably will. He probably is going to get, like, the equivalent of a pony for Christmas or some crap, too. Goddammit. Despite my bitching, though, he looks worried.

 

Blackout then fade to the cells, where the kids have been tucked without apparent roughing up or molestation. It really says something when that's what you've got to be grateful for on a show. Joe, heading to the bars to grasp them in time-honored fashion, calls out for Norrie (she's in the cell next to him.) He begs her to talk to him, and Norrie, staring down at her boot in very significant manner, says Angie was right, that they should have killed Big Jim "when they had the chance." Well, that's debatable in itself but you guys haven't had a chance as far as has been shown, so don't borrow trouble, Norrie. 

 

Joe is still unclear on why the hell the Dome wants them to do that anyway, and Norrie makes a pretty good case about Jim's power hungry rampage. Joe whimpers that that doesn't mean they should kill him and Norrie sourly asks what he thinks is going to happen when Jim gets hold of Barbie. "Your monarch won't be crowned, Joe. More like the monarch gets his head chopped off." She goes on with that quote about evil flourishing if good people do nothing, but I am still very very iffy on the whole "ask a bunch of teenagers to commit murder on a unknowable force's say-so." Even setting aside the ethical problems of murder there's the whole pitting children against a wiley and ruthless adult man. 

 

This philosophical symposium ends with Joe looking scared and ill while Norrie whips back to her cot, just in time for the Man of the Hour to strut in, salmon shirt ablaze and mood all kinds of things except good: Big James Rennie. He's clearly trying to be intimidating from the get-go, mixed with the "good cop" routine, telling Joe he's a good kid, not like his sister. When Joe rears back at that, he, in true Jim fashion, doubles down--says Angie threw in her chips with a wanted man and she may be past help, but you, kid, you can fix this. Just tell nice Uncle Jim where the Egg is and we can just forget all this! You can go home! You and your little friend over there. 

 

He keeps pushing, using Joe's deepest fear--that he's just a kid, that he's not ready for all this, that it's all been a mistake and wouldn't it feel good to hand over power to the adults, the ones who are supposed to be in charge? But Jim's biggest stick is also his biggest tripping point and once again he pushes too far. He turns the threat dial up again, saying that keeping the Egg hidden is impeding a lawful investigation, and that's too much for Norrie, who snorts a laugh and breaks his flow. He's also too dumb to ignore her and takes the bait, switching over to Norrie and asking if she's got something to say. Norrie has been waiting all damn week to break out her LA Brat powers and does so with glee; "So why do they call you Big Jim? You're just some loser trying to scare kids." She doesn't call him Tiny Dick because that would be highly inappropriate but that's what she means, all right.

 

James Rennie, grown man and Dictator of Chester's Mill, falls for this crap immediately and tries to double down on his intimidation technique, reaching for the cell keys while doing the "sorry, didn't hear that, what?" routine. It panics Joe, the poor little snuggleboo, but this is clearly what Norrie's planning on. "You. Don't. Scare. Me." she flats out, unmoving on her cot as Jim moves in on her. 

 

Jim chuckled and whips out the "okay, you know how this goes" threat, along with the "easy way and hard way" cliche. My eyerolling at this is cut short as he openly threatens a child's life, smirking as he does so. Yes, Big Jim Rennie. I wonder what his next election campaign motto will be. Maybe a picture of him holding a gun to a puppy's head.

 

Norrie, who's been waiting her chance, takes it and lurches up, slashing out with the knife she had in her boot! YES! GO NORRIE! Get all Women's Prison B Movie up in this bitch! She cuts him too! A bad slash across the arm and I experience a moment of dazzling joy where I picture Big Jim Rennie trying to obtain stitches or topical ointment or anything besides graveyard dirt at the clinic. Tee hee hee. No, no, shhhh...let me have this.

 

Okay, FINE. Back to it, then. Joe's yelling, Jim's furious, and he slams Norrie up against the wall--but he lets her go, taking the knife and chucking her back on the cot. He locks her in again, saying he tried to give them a chance but if they want to burn with Barbie, fine. He's so altruistic. Norrie and Joe sag back, crashing from adrenaline and trying to picture actually stabbing this guy to death.

 

Cut to random woods, where Angie is listening to the police radio (SEE. See, I TOLD you that whole "announce our movements over an open channel" thing was bullshit, show! Why don't you ever listen? Why?) Angie gets filled in on the whole Barbie's caught and somehow everybody knows she has Julia in the ambulance. Angie glances back in hopes of help, but nope, all Julia needs is the glass coffin and an apple with a bite out of it. Angie's on her own. 

 

Then a seemingly idiotic part of the broadcast--Linda's announcement that the ambulance was driving away from the clinic--penetrates. Angie pauses, thinks...and puts the vehicle in gear. 

 

Cut to the jail and Linda walking Barbie past Joe and Norrie. I guess Jim needs more time to gather the doufi crowds and read the proclamation aloud or whatever medieval bullshit routine he's got planned. Linda tosses him in a cell but instead uncuffing him she leaves his hands behind his back and hooks them to a--chain? attached to the wall? Is that standard equipment in small town jail cells? Because that's seriously creepy.

 

Barbie tries to get Linda to listen to him but she's got her "I am a steely professional" thing going on, refusing to answer when he asks if this is necessary, if Jim told her to do it.  Undaunted, he keeps trying: "All these things I'm accused of? I would never hurt Julia, you've got to know that."  "Yeah?" queries Linda. "What about her husband?" MAN, Peter Shumway may have sucked at life on the earthly plane but he's a mover and a shaker in the ethereal realm; he's only been dead two weeks and has officially been promoted to Dale Barbra's personal King Charles's Head!

 

Barbie sighs, knowing that the whole "suicide by gambling debt enforcer" is going to be a hard sell, to say the least. He tries his puppy eyes but Linda's not buying. "That's what I thought," she says, walking away. It's hard to keep track of these things but I think Linda's also supposed to be feeling betrayed here--she trusted Barbie and he helped her with a lot of shit over the past two weeks and now he's apparently just gone off on a mad murder spree. Of course if she put two damn seconds of thought into it it might occur to her that maybe that help was the real deal and she should be questioning Big Jim's version of events--wait, I'm talking about Linda. Linda, the woman who's devoted her professional life to searching for fatherly mentors. Sorry, Barbs, but you appear to be screwed. 

 

OKAY. This one is really long so I'm posting it as is and the NEXT ONE IS THE LAST ONE I SWEAR. Upon the glowing disco egg, I do pledge my troth!

Edited September 23, 2014 by Snookums

[Snookums]

Last ten minutes of the show is about to be recapped do or die so strap in, my honeys!

 

OKAY. Linda just left Barbie stewing in his various collection of wounds and worries. So let's cut to--oh boy!--more Jim Rennie! This guy has a new career unfolding in front of him as a supervillain: EveryWhere Asshole. He's wont to appear, day or night, wherever he can do the most damage for utterly selfish reasons! 

 

In this case, he's coming out of an office? I think Linda's? But he's quite obviously buttoning his new shirt since his last one has a giant hole slashed in the sleeve (my heart is yours, Norrie, you impish little doer of the Dome's decrees!) so I don't see how that could be but he's also asking a proudly indignant Carolyn if she's there to report a crime, so...what the hell's going on? Oh my GOD DOES BIG JIM RENNIE KEEP SHIRTS IN LINDA'S OFFICE? Because that would mean ohhhhh GOD NO ptooey ptooey spit spit spit the taste of this horror will not leave my mouth! I am going with there's a shortcut from his own office through Linda's or something. THAT IS THE STORY AND I AM CLINGING TO IT LIKE A BARNACLE. A barnacle who needs one tiny corner of the world not sullied by such a horror.

 

Anyway, Carolyn is ready for the long haul, saying she's not leaving until Norrie and Joe are released. "Asshole,"  she clearly adds with her eyes only. Jim says it's a public building and she can sit there 'til her butt goes numb for all he cares, slamming the door of Linda's office behind him (he just went into Linda's office so he didn't just come out of it oh thankyouJesusthankyou) and asking what the word is so far?

 

Linda says they're still looking for Angie and Julia  and no luck so far but they've got an APB out. Out with who? Did she send a bunch of homing pigeons to transport messages for the thug squads? Jim fakes concern for Julia's condition for a nanosecond before returning to his only area of interest: "Julia come out of her coma yet?" he queries with a fake casualness so transparent it could be used to replace the window glass in Julia's former hospital room. "No clue," says Linda, and why the hell would she know that? Linda? Wanna ask yourself that, and why the hell's he's so obsessed with Julia's return to consciousness? Maybe apply a little deductive reasoning,  there, law enforcement professional? No? Imagine my surprise. It's not hard, just picture NOTHING. 

 

Jim sticks his lower teeth out in thought, then decides to go with the bird in hand and asks after Barbie. At the news that he's locked up downstairs he relaxes a bit, and when Linda asks "Now what?" (Now what is now you QUIT ASKING THIS GUY WHO'S NOT A DAMN POLICE OFFICER WHAT TO DO, LINDA) he says "let him sweat." Yeah, okay. It's not an inconceivable strategy but honestly, considering the shit Barbie's been through, not only under the Dome but in general, all this is really going to do is give him a chance to get info from Joe and Norrie and plot his next move in peace.

 

Cut to Ben! Hey, Ben? Your folks home yet? Well, no matter, it's not like they seem to have matter or material substance anyway. That's a thing around here. Ben is happily in his Zen zone putting a new wheel on his board when Baby Dome, awakening from its nap, signals its need for Sugar Smax and cartoons by letting out really really irritating mechanical whine/shriek. It sounds like what you'd get if you built a little robot bat and then pinched it super hard. Ben reacts with a full body wince, understandably, and looks over at the quilt shrouded responsibility currently throwing a fit in the corner of his room. He approaches it cautiously and glances beneath the blanket, where from the looks of things Disco Egg is warming up for its biggest show ever. Ben can't take the metallo-vibes and proceeds to throw every blanket and jacket in the room over the thing to try to muffle it. See, child care isn't as easy as people think.

 

Speaking of care of children, let's go to the latest terrible example! A be-armbanded thug is unlocking Norrie's cell and grabbing her arm, hauling her and Joe out! Right past Barbie, who lunges against that WTF? chain in a helpless effort to do something. Norrie bellows not to tell them anything and Joe reassures them that the two of them will be okay, but let's face it, that's like seeing a little fuzzy bunny in a tiny helmet and parachute perched on the edge of the Chrysler building saying everything's hunky-dory. 

 

"Where are you taking them?" Barbie demands of Big Jim, and Jim once again (after the kids are presumably out of earshot) does his insufferably smug smirk and shrug routine. He's going to do whatever the hell he wants, naturally, and tells Barbie "Let's just call it an undisclosed location." Ha ha! Rendition jokes! To a veteran from Iraq! That is hysterical!

 

Barbie and Jim exchange cliches for a bit: "I swear if you hurt those kids" "You're in no position to make threats" blah blah blah, and then Jim settles back to explain his latest pageant idea--that Barbie's going to be on the Homecoming float confessing to the charges in public. Barbie declines the honor. Well, he doesn't have to don that tiara, but when they catch Angie they'll just hang all the trouble on her and Joe and Norrie since they are the ones hiding Baby Dome. (Barbie doesn't know about Baby Dome, right? God, this shit is so tedious.) Oh, and there's also poor helpless Julia--pretty easy to tip her over the brink should things fail to go Jim's way. And even if she doesn't die the frame job on her for Peter's murder should be an easy sell. So, we got a deal?
 

Barbie, ready as ever to fling himself on grenades for people he barely knows, says let the kids go and leave Angie and Julia alone and fine, asshole, I'll do it. Jim smirks that he's shake on it but ha ha ha. Nyah. He heads out all Big Jim strut and Barbie calls out sullenly as to how he knows Jim will keep his word? "You don't," smirks Jim, and once again shoots himself in the foot because he just told Barbie that he's going to eliminate three teenagers and Barbie's beloved. He's such an idiot when he runs out of smart!

 

Upstairs, Norrie and Joe are released to a wildly relieved Carolyn (and this was clearly Jim's plan all along--he knows he can't keep two kids locked up forever without blowback). And for other reasons. As they head out the door, Norrie stage whispering that they've got to "make sure it's safe", Jim heads over to Linda and tells her to put a tail on them. When Linda asks why he says they're hiding something. See? Most of the time Jim really is smart! A completely morally bankrupt mass killer with the heart of Dracula with a toothache but smart!  He tells Linda that they may know the location of something that "could be our way out." That gets Linda's attention, by golly. She heads out to tail the kids personally. Try to remember not to use a cop car, Linda, it's going to be a giveaway. 

 

Jim stares after her for a sec, then swings out into the hallway to find Junior. Who's just, standing there. What, how, why? Linda scooped him up and just set him down there and he's been waiting around for Jim to pop out that particular door? Oh, and even better: he's got his radio. Remember? The one Barbie grabbed off of him and flung into the ambulance with Angie? Continuity is for squares!

 

Jim snaps out his inquiry as to what happened at Just Cross Your Fingers Clinic, and Junior starts to sulkily reel off one of the hundreds of rote apologies he's clearly had to make for disappointing his father in this or that (God, every time these two interact you can just see the whole of their terrible, screwed up relationship) but Jim's got bigger things on his mind and tells Junior he gets a second chance--get out there and find your little girlfriend. Oh, he adds, and make sure you bring Julia back here to me, got it?

 

Jim starts down the hall, only to realize that Junior isn't leaping to do his bidding. He turns with an exasperated sigh and asks what the problem is? "What's so important about finding Julia? Barbie's locked up, he can't hurt her anymore." Not a bad question, at all. Jim is so startled by this show of thought and competence that he accidentally uses his C grade material--what about Barbie's network of traitors? They could be waiting to pull the trigger! Um, say what? So Barbie's gone from Lone Wolf stalker to bin Laden, here?

 

Junior, to his credit, doesn't buy this line of crap for a second. He stands up, walks slowly over to Jim, and you realize that this kid is a foot taller and pound for pound probably a lot stronger then the abusive dad who taught him all the wrong lessons about physical violence. "I love you, Dad," Junior says quietly. "But don't lie to me. That would be very bad. For both of us." Eeep. The music sting agrees with me.

 

Jim sees it too and does a quick back and fill. "He confessed, Son," he says, putting a hand on Junior's shoulder. "To everything and soon he'll stand in front of the town and confess to them too." Okay? Well, no--that really has nothing to do with that idiocy you just tried to sell Junior on or your implicit threat, nor did you really say you weren't lying. And Junior's face says so. He doesn't say a word and turns to head out, but he clearly isn't happy in the least. 

 

And Jim being Jim, he just cannot not push it too far, again. Seeing Junior in this mood of barely held back rebellion, he decides this is the best time possible to ask oh, by the way, no biggie, but was Julia conscious the last time Junior saw her? Hmmm? Asking for a friend. Jim might as well just put on a signboard saying TELL ME THE SECOND JULIA WAKES UP BECAUSE SHE'S GOING TO POSSIBLY RAT ME OUT WITHOUT KNOWING IT AND I'D PREFER THAT NOT HAPPEN SO I'M PLANNING TO TOTALLY KILL HER.

 

Junior, still silent, shakes his head no, and watches his father stroll away down the hall. Many emotions are fighting over which part of his face to occupy. 

 

Cut to Carolyn and the two Musketeers pulling up in front of Ben's place! Ben's skater mellowness has clearly taken a severe shaking, as he's sitting out front on the curb on the verge of crying or screaming. Around the corner, Linda parks IN A COP CAR FOR GOD'S SAKE, LINDA WHAT DID I JUST SAY? and watches. 

 

"What's wrong?" asks Joe, and Ben informs them that look, he tried but your Baby Dome has special needs. "Show us, " demands Norrie as the charge into the house, Carolyn on their heels and Linda probably donning a clown outfit or getting ready to set off an airhorn because she's not noticeable enough yet.

 

Cut away again! Into some darkened room, with Angie with her ear to the door. A cry of bewildered pain sends her scurrying to Julia's side. She's still tucked on to the gurney but she's waking up! Yay! Really really improbable but yay! "It's Angie," she informs the confused and panting with pain Julia, raising the gurney to a sitting position as Julia looks at her newly acquired bandages and then around for explanations and a hairbrush. Hey, perfection doesn't just happen, people. That gauze, by the way, is barely stained with blood, and the sheets, the blankets, and Julia are pristine as the new fallen snow. Which really should only be if she lost enough blood to be dead. Again, my seraph theory is supported.

 

Anyway. Julia gasps out the important info that she was shot, and when Angie asks if she remembers who did it confirms Big Jim's worst fears by  saying it was a woman she'd never seen before, and where are we? Angie replies that they're in the clinic storage room; "really stupid but I figured it was the last place they'd look." That's actually--really smart. There's nowhere else Angie could stash Julia or an entire ambulance without drawing all sorts of attention, and all the guards would be on the Barbie manhunt since there's no reason for them to hang around the clinic anymore. Good for you, Angie! 

 

When Julia asks the reason for all this back and forthing with her critically injured unconscious self, Angie explains Big Jim's been telling everybody that Barbie shot her and he obvs wouldn't be to keen on Jules contradicting him. That gets Julia pulling herself upwards in indignancy, demanding Barbie's location.

 

No place good, unfortunately. The doufi have been assembled outside Town Hall and are milling around, gossiping, like they haven't all been placing bets of precious food on each other's ability to beat another person down or participating in flagrantly unethical search and seizures in each other's homes. La dee dah, just another day under the Dome. Big Jim emerges, leading a still handcuffed Barbie by the arm, and starts in on his speechifying. GOOOOOODDAMMIT. I'm sorry, I can't take another one of these things. Just take it as read that it's filled with Big Jim's usual balance of praise, pull-togetherness, and presentation of scapegoat of the moment, okay?

 

The show agrees with me for once and cuts to something far more pleasant to listen to: Baby Dome's metallic tantrum. Ben runs to his room, leading the others and yells "cover your ears!" as he pulls off the quilts and blankets. Disco Egg is pulsating a bright and angry red as the electro-wail pierces every ear present. It's very clearly very unhappy. 

 

Cut to Junior getting out of his own cop car and reaching FOR HIS RADIO (nope, not dropping this. This is just fucking lazy on the part of the showrunners. One ten second shot of him grabbing another radio and I would not be in this mood) as he walks down the street. Where is he going?

 

Well, he just dropped the radio in the street (leaving it in the car? Not an option, Mr. Drama?), so it's clear that he's approaching the Dome on his own for guidance. Even Junior can only take so much lying to his face and he's pretty alone, here. He puts his hand on the Dome wall, then the other, closes his eyes...

 

Cut to Angie helping Julia lie back, asking her what she thinks they'll do to him? Julia answers "They're going to kill him..."

 

Cut to Big Jim Rennie's super punchable puss gassing on about the charges brought against Dale Barbra, and asking him how he pleads. He turns to Barbie, waiting for him to fulfill his end of their agreement. And Barbie...

 

Cut to Carolyn and the kids staring dumbfaced at Baby Dome and Disco Egg, only to be interrupted by Linda's call of "What is that?" as she walks in the room, approaching it slowly as the chrysalis begins to shiver ...

 

Cut to Big Jim snarlyapping into Barbie's ear, "I asked you a question, Mr. Barbra. How do you plead?"  The crowd, with Phil up front, wait for an answer. And Barbie, who's made up his mind about who he's going to trust with Julia's welfare, quite naturally turns to him and says clearly, "NOT GUILTY." And the horse you rode in on, asshole.

 

Done. DONE DONE DONE with this one and only one left to go! Phew, I feel like I've been trapped under something. Something unknowable and mysterious and inscrutable...you know what I mean...it's on the tip of my tongue...

 

One more episode to go, folks! Join me as everything hits the fan, gathers itself together, builds another, bigger fan, and hits that!

Edited September 18, 2014 by Snookums

[bmoore4026]

I have to admit, that "Not Guilty" line was pretty awesome.

[JBody]

Snookums, I know The Following is your true love (well, I don't know know, just assuming) but I really hope you can find it in your heart to recap season 2. My sanity depends on it. No biggie.

[Snookums]

No pressure at all. :)

[Icedtea]

I've been binge-watching UTD for the last couple days, and these recaps have helped keep me sane.  I have lost track of how many times I've yelled "REMEMBER HOW HE HELD SOMEONE IN A BUNKER?!".

 

I've found beer helps.

[Snookums]

Well, it's time, my darlings. Time for the season 1 finale of Under The Dome. I know this show has yanked my chain this way and that, but I am going to give it this one last chance. I am positively absolutely positive that it is going to come through in the clutch for me and pack me in an ambulance, circle the block and hide me in the Storage Closet Of Non-Enraging Wrap Ups. Here we go!

 

Okay, wrapup of the season in general and last week's THE HELL? train crash, and we're here. Here at the finale of everything. And the finale is a beginning. 

 

The monarch butterfly, probably sick beyond death of that house party its neighbor Disco Egg is throwing, is wriggling and twitching, desperately trying to hatch and go over there with some firm yet indignant yet polite words to get DE to turn it down a bit. House music. Cripes. In my day, music had a melody, you know? GET OFF MY LAWN. 

 

Anyway, hatching insect is hatching as the the group plus Linda (wearing her trademark puzzled look) stand by, smiling as the fragile creature emerges into pretty unique circumstances for a social insect that is probably expecting to head down to Mexico for the winter and not be the arcane symbol for a bunch of messed up alien jerkwads. Everybody looks pretty happy, though, and Norrie even greets it with a "Hey, bud, we've been waitin' on ya." 

 

"It's really happening," grins Joe, that adorable huge footed puppy, and that snaps Linda to, asking "What's happening?" Really, you could replace all of Linda's dialogue with those two words and her character's function wouldn't suffer a bit. Carolyn throws her some side eye to cover the fact that she doesn't really have the slightest idea what's going down, seeing as she only recorporialized a couple of days ago, and Linda, as is her wont, leaps forward to take charge of bizarre and potentially dangerous situation with absolutely no idea of why she should do so. Oh, Linda, never change.

 

"Back away!" she tells everybody, all coplike, and when they try to tell her to take her own advice on that score (Baby Dome DO NOT LIKE STRANGE TOUCHIES) she gears up even more, demanding how long the kids have known about this (which really isn't a bad question, admittedly). The kids do the "glance 'you gonna...?' 'No, you gonna...' " thing they do when they aren't going to say anything and an exasperated Linda turns to Carolyn as the only adult in the room and asks how long she's known about this shit. Carolyn's all, since I rematerialized but Linda, don't do anything stupid, we think it's the source. "The source of what?" Linda demands. THE SOURCE OF EASTER EGGS, YOU NITWIT. What do you think? Do you even go here?
 

"The Dome," says Joe, his passion for restating the patently obvious surging forward and out his mouth. Norrie takes the baton and says they can sort of talk to it and relates the whole Monarch will be crowned thing. Linda sings another chorus of her favorite tune, "What Does That Mean?" and Joe admits they're all still trying to weed through the intro as far as meaning is concerned. "But that's a monarch butterfly," Joe says, "And we think it may be important so we've gotta get it out of there before it hurts itself." Okay, good luck with that. The butterfly is fluttering about trying to figure out what the hell it's doing in this thing and does it get per diem or what?

 

Carolyn says she knows how it sounds, but she believes them. Everybody looks concerned and the music transfers us over to

 

A VERY put out Big Jim Rennie hauling a hangdoggedly defiant Barbie away from the crowd (who are probably all mingling around waiting for balloons or something). "NOT GUILTY?" Rennie bellows, dragging Barbie around like a kid who just got caught shoplifting Klondike Bars. "You think this is some some sorta game?" He punches Barbs in the tummy to express his disappointment in B's not going along with his little framejob/wholesale murder scheme. Barbie bends double but it's more for effect than anything that little love tap could have done. "The important thing is, Julia's still out there," he informs Jim. "And she knows the truth."  This is, of course, precisely what Jim's worried about but he bluffs, saying he already told people the truth and nobody can change that now. "We'll see," says Barbie, tearing the paper with his lines on it directly from the Cliche' O Matic 3000 Machine chittering away in the corner with his teeth since he's still handcuffed. Jim says he entered his plea and now he gets his justice. That doesn't sound very comforting.

 

Cut to Junior seeking some comfort of his own. He's positively snuggling up to the Dome, resting his forehead and both hands on it, waiting for some clarity. Oh, dear, maybe he should have packed a lunch or something, this could take a while. "Tell me," he mouths silently, then looks up and screams the same demand, adding "why do you want me to kill my father?" Darling, you don't need the Dome to fill you in on that. Pretty much any random person you stop on the street would be happy to provide a comprehensive list at this point.

 

Over to Julia attempting to get up and save Barbie's life but that damn bullet wound is impeding her progress. Conversation back and forth with Angie about how she's got to tell people the truth/that's why you're going to get killed the minute you step outside, wrapping up with Julia's "I've gotta try." It was nice of the writers to wheel the Cliche' O Matic 3000 in here for her, what with her weakened condition. 

 

Julia tells Angie that she doesn't have to help but she can't stand in her way. Angie considers her options, realizes that helping Julia is the path that will probably contain the least Junior Rennie, and promptly reaches over to help Jules to her feet. (Did I mention Julia looks absolutely radiant and is wearing a white tank? I did? Seriously all she needs is the feathery wings at this point.) Angie reaches for the radio. That Barbie took off Junior. Remember that? BECAUSE THE SCRIPTWRITERS DID NOT (Okay I promise that's the last spasm over this but GOD.)

 

Cut to Ben's bedroom and Linda doing her take charge of events even though I have not the slightest clue what's going on routine. "You don't know anything about this," she's saying. "It could be radioactive." Well, we know it likes to do laser shows and shock people, that's not nothing. Norrie points out that the big Dome isn't glowy/mutate-y and of course that drives Linda further into her "ME IN CHARGE" corner. "Well, this doesn't belong to you, " she informs the hand-selected by Baby Dome guardian quartet. "As of now this is police property." Heh heh, okay, yeah, sure. Just go ahead and try to pick it up, Ms. Take Charge. 

 

In the meantime, the butterfly has been winging around its globular prison and bumping into it, and is leaving black, raggedy inky splotches everywhere its wings touch. I'm just guessing here but based on the duo Domes' track record this isn't good. "What the hell?" asks Norrie, noticing? What the hell indeed?

 

Oh, this the hell! The hell of yet another conversation between Jim and Barbie, oh boy. Barbs is back in his cell saying "you didn't think I was just gonna roll over, did you?"  and YES, I'm pretty sure that's what Jim thought you agreed on, Barbie. I mean, I don't blame you at all, not a bit, but c'mon. You are really overworking Cliche' O Matic 3000 here. Smoke's coming out of it! 

 

Neither actor demonstrates the slightest concern for Cliche O Matic, however, as their entire conversation could have been lifted verbatim from Screenwriting For The Criminally Lazy. "Nothing worthwhile is easy," "At least this way I can take you down with me," "I could end this right now," "You can, but you won't, there's no audience here," good Lord. You could have these poor guys read these lines in any order and it would make no more or less sense. They both try, they are pros, but it's Miss Havisham mutton dressed as lamb as far as this dialogue's concerned.

 

The butterfly agrees with me! It's flailing away inside Baby Dome, blotching the entire thing as it tries to block out the previous scene. Joe's Superpower of State The Obvious rises to Super Sayian heights as he says "Every time it hits the Dome it makes a spot!" Joe tried volunteer reading to little kids at the library but they kept complaining that he was over explaining the Dick and Jane books. "Oh, my God," says Norrie for no real reason as the butterfly sinks exhausted to the dirt floor of Baby Dome. Cut to Ben (remember Ben? Because this show only does sporadically) as he turns to the mysteriously darkening window--say, do you think this might have something to do with what's happening here? I'd ask Cliche' O Matic 3000 but it's giving off sparks. 

 

Hilarious and weird cut of Ben turning to the window, then turning around the other way, like Prince in Purple Rain, as he moves to check out the odd failing of the light. "Guys?" he asks. "Is it just me or is it getting crazy dark outside?" (I think this is where Norrie's OMG line should have gone, frankly.)

 

Cut to MORE BARBIE AND JIM OH THRILLS as they continue their race to see who can make Cliche' O Matic 3000 collapse into a melted, twisted heap the fastest. "See, it's not about killing me," Barbie is droning, as the sky darkens behind him outside the cell windows (DRAMATIC FORESHADOWING!) "It's about how the entire town knows that you are judge, jury and executioner," and Big Jim either just clued in about the rapidly encroaching darkness, abruptly can't take one more second of this wretched conversation or has quick onset diarrhea, but he suddenly bolts off, leaving Barbie to suddenly notice the light change and jump nimbly atop his bunk to look outside. 

 

Jim heads outside to groups of freaking out people who are all seeing the same thing--big inky blots spreading across the surface of the Dome, blocking all sunlight as they do so. Uh, oh, better go organize a posse, Jim!  The streetlamps and other outdoor lights explode on with dramatic TA-DAHS as the music informs us that Shit Just Got Real, Again. 

 

Cut to Junior noting the latest wacky phenomenon and assuming, naturally, that it's all about him. "What are you trying to tell me?" he bellows, bending down to the ground as the ink cover slams into place, completely obliterating the outside world. Yes, Junior, this is all about you. (And on a more serious note, this is King's overriding theme surfacing again--that people in a group are going to view a threat or otherwise overwhelming event through their own personal lens. Junior is one of the Dome Quartet, after all, and it was his father that was shown to them with bloody knives for emphasis. Of course he's going to assume the Dome is trying to give him a personal message.)

 

Cut to a quick but fairly neat shot of the Dome, ebony black against farmland that looks a LOT more Kansas then Maine, frankly, and then to title card! Six minutes nine seconds. Wrapped the setup a deal quicker than usual. 

 

Back in on Ben and the others looking through his window into the murk midnight, with Carolyn observing that there's no moon or stars. Good thing there's enough propane lying around to power all the streetlamps and such, then. Joe turns their attention to Baby Dome, now also solid black, and says that the Dome's trying to communicate again. Dome, honestly, you know that definition of insanity? The one about trying the same thing over and over while expecting a different result? THIS IS THAT. You need to invest in an Etch a Sketch or a pad of paper and crayons or hey! one of those Microsoft Tablets the show's been pimping but FIND ANOTHER WAY TO DO THIS CRAP. 

 

"Maybe it's a warning," says Norrie, and Joe winds up, saying that they've got to get the butterfly out of there before it's too late and it dies. Norrie points out that they need the others and that snaps Linda for some reason. She says she's heard enough and leaps on her radio, ignoring Carolyn's pleas to listen to the kids as she announces that "we've found another Dome." There is no way, no way this could possibly be a terrible, terrible idea. 

 

Cut to Julia and Angie listening in to the announcement as they limp down the clinic hall (Where's Curly Haired Nurse, by the way?) and Julia shakes her head, saying they're in trouble. Well yes, but that was true before this. 

 

Cut to Junior picking up his radio (okay, the show is just fucking rubbing my face in its incompetency at this point) and radioing in to Linda about the whole Dome be Black thing and Linda's "I know Junior, just get your ass over here" makes me like her again. 

 

Cut to Linda quickly ruining things between us by keeping her channel open as she announces that she's "impounding this thing until we see what happens" and Big Jim lunging for his own walkie talkie and asking if she's found it? I can't hear her reply but I assume it's positive as Junior leaps into his cop car and announces he's on his way too. Yay, this will be nothing but good times, it will!

 

Part two coming up! Things can only get better.

Edited September 24, 2014 by Snookums

[Snookums]

Part two! Baby Dome shows why it's so hard to find daycare for it!

 

Zoom out of blackened Baby Dome, which is emitting its electronic wailing again. This should reduce that poor butterfly to shreds, thanks, Baby! All the actors are covering their ears as Linda cries "MAKE IT STOP!" Well, you impounded it so you make it stop, Ms. Take Charge. Norrie says they don't know how but Joe says they kind of do. Oh, yeah, says Norrie. That time we touched it. And it showed me my dead mom. Yay, let's do that!

 

They move in but Linda, who one nanosecond ago was telling them to shut that damn kid up demolition derby spins herself around and is all "NO, I told you this is police property now!" God. DAMMIT. LINDA. You are reaaaaallllly pushing my buttons here. I feel sorry for the actress having to do this crap but it does not mitigate my rage at the character's turn on a dime back and forthing. "If anybody touches it it's gonna be me," she says and I am completely and totally cool with that at this point. My Goodwill cup is drained and I am totally down with Linda being shock-thrown against a wall. I am making popcorn in anticipation of this event. I am updating my Facebook status to "Gleefully Vengeful." This is what this show has done to me.

 

Linda takes off her RADIO (DAMMIT SHOW KNOCK IT OFF) and sets it on the bed, having enough self-preservation left for that, at least, and approaches Baby Dome. Nobody, delightfully, tries to stop her stupid ass self as she lays a hand upon it, Baby Dome glows blue and shocks that idiot right back against the wall!  Ha HAH! Nelson laugh! I enjoyed that completely! This show is turning me into a sociopath! I don't care! 

 

WHOMP goes Linda, landing hard on the floor and knocked the fuck out (TEE HEE HEE) as we cut to Angie and Julia still creeping down the hall. It would be faster just to wheel her on the gurney but hey, take your time, you guys. They need it, as they are arguing over where to go--Julia is focused on saving Barbie's hide while Angie is panicking about Baby Dome and what will happen if the wrong hands (i.e., Big Jim Rennie's pudgy and grasping talons) get hold of it. Julia wins the argument, pointing out that the clock's ticking faster on Barbie and asks if Angie's with her or not? Angie hesitates, but agrees. Now to take twenty five minutes to cross the parking lot. No rush. 

 

Cut to Carolyn checking a quite knocked out Linda's pulse. "She'll be fine," she says and that's a bit of leap but hey, Linda, you brought this on yourself. Just lie there and think about what you did and then you can have an oatmeal raisin cookie before cartoons come on. "It was the only way," says Joe and that's another line that needed to either be lengthened to a sense making point or cut entirely. Norrie agrees and ignores him, asking "now what?"

 

Now What is MORE JUNIOR I AM SO VERY VERY HAPPY ABOUT THIS TURN OF EVENTS. He bursts into the room, sees collapsed Linda and to his credit lunges to check on her, asking "what did you guys do?" Well, we aren't leaping to conclusions just because we're standing around the body of a downed police officer, Mr. Snotty Britches. Joe fills Junior in on Linda's ill fated Dome caressing as Junior gives us a close up of Linda's fried hand. Joe and Norrie try to corral Junior to his Dome Duties, saying that the monarch is dying and they need Angie, but given Angie's little Kiss'n Betray act earlier this doesn't exactly rally him to the cause. "Screw Angie!" he snarls, and a long scene ensues as everybody figures out everybody else's misinformation laborings-under, like a French farce but extremely tiresome instead of delightful. Norrie wraps it up with "Things are happening, Junior, things bigger then us! It's not always about you!" and you'll all have to excuse me because I need to troll the internet for a unicorn to gift her with.

 

Ben bursts in! Remember Ben? The show suddenly did! "Guys!" he exclaims. "Big Jim is almost here! " I presume he got this information from a little forest spirit creature shaped like a fox or something because how the hell else would he know that? But that's not important right now, we need to see what Junior will do. Will he help them, or be Big Jim Rennie's son? Hesitation but we know that Junior's a stand up psycho. "Let's go," he says, approaching the blackened Baby Dome without taking off his radio but we cut away before it can explode and sever his head. Damn. 

 

Cut to Angie and Julia entering the police station. Isn't that in Town Hall? Weren't a bunch of panicked people running around out there a second ago? Guess not, as Angie says "Everybody must be out dealing with the blackout" as she SWITCHES ON THE LIGHT. Way to give away your position, there, Angiecakes. But hell, they got all the way here with no problem just like the kids got Baby Dome to Ben's earlier, so I guess the Select have an Invisibility Shield or something when the plot needs them to get from point A to Police Station. "Darkness has a bright side," says Julia, moving painfully along under the glaring fluorescent lights signaling to all and sundry that somebody's inside as Angie runs to fetch the keys. Shouldn't Linda have the keys? Let's ask Plot. Plot says no. Moving on.

 

Barbie, sitting in a Rodin's The Thinker With Handcuffs pose, looks up at the clank of the opening door, clearly wearily anticipating another go round with Jim Rennie. Nope, surprise! It's Julia, alive and well! That's really improbable but here she is! "My God," breathes Barbie, "How are you even standing?" GOOD QUESTION. And Julia gives, really, the only possible answer: "I don't know but something out there wanted me back on my feet." So much so they materialized six, eight pints of O negative into her veins, apparently. Moving on. They gaze into each others' eyes and move in for a big ol' smoochfest. Hang on, I gotta unplug the Cliche' O Matic. It keeps whimpering.

 

Angie comes in and saves the situation by unlocking the cell door with a "that's enough, lovebirds." Yeah, make out with your husband's quasi-murderer/quasi-murder victim's wife on your own time. Angie unlocks the door and sends a shiver through the cooling hulk of the Cliche' O Matic with her line "It's go time."

 

Cut to Big Jim Rennie running into Ben's house calling for Linda. ZZZZZZ I'M SLEEPING CAN'T HEAR YOU ZZZZZ, says Linda. No, she doesn't, she's rolling herself up and telling Jim that the kids must have taking off with it, it may be a generator, blah blah blabitty blah. "Jim, we have to find it," she says, "it's our best shot at getting out of here." Jim takes a quick sec to ponder how to get away with shooting Linda and burning Ben's house down but regretfully concludes there's no time. 

 

Cut to a car? I guess Carolyn's? filled with grim faces as they drive through the night, with quilt covered Baby Dome TIED ATOP THE ROOF. Ohhhhh, my God, seriously? Seriously? You would attract less attention riding a giraffe through town! But hey, Invisibility Shield or whatever. What's important is getting Angie so the Quartet can do their thing. Joe gloomily points out that they don't even know where she is. "I know how to find her," says Junior with set countenance. "She's got a police radio. She stole one." (NOT EVEN. NOT EVEN TOUCHING THIS SHOW. YOU CAN'T MAKE ME.) Joe says we can send her a message! and Norrie points out that the "entire" (heh) police force would be able to hear it; "what would we even say?" Something along the lines of " the eagle pauses at midnight," presumably. 

 

Cut to Barbie, hands still cuffed, walking into the police station and running promptly into PHIL! SERIOUSLY. Why the hell is he here??? Why, for the following fight scene, of course! Why not? Why the fuck not at this point?

 

"Oh, hell no," says Phil, echoing my exact words at this entire setup and approaches Barbie but Barbie's got a bit of payback coming and kicks him square in the chest! Phil flies backwards as if he's just shaken hands with Baby Dome as Barbie doles out another helping to some random guy in a tee shirt who tries to pull a gun but gets kicked off camera for his trouble. WHY ARE THESE GUYS HERE? WHY? No answers are forthcoming as Barbie literally hands Phil his ass with both hands behind his back, with a closeup on his dropped dog tags (say, think that's gonna be important later?) and finishes with Grey Tee Shirt guy taking control of his own SAG card-getting destiny by getting up and holding his pistol to Barbie's head. But that only lasts a tick before CLANG and he's down and out from Angie's whomp to his head with a fire extinguisher! That scene was great, guys! You know what made it so great? Barbie being in handcuffs for absolutely no reason since any reasonable human being would have taken them off downstairs, plus Phil and Tee Shirt Rando walking on in for no reason at all! Oh, Plot, I'm sorry I ever doubted you!

 

Okay, that's two in a row, so signing off for now. Coming up, things suddenly make perfect sense! (No they don't!) 

Edited September 24, 2014 by Snookums