Please, please let them eat each other.
All season long, I have hinted that CBS’ “Under the Dome” was going in the direction of the Donner Party, and in the most recent episode “Black Ice,” they once again got dangerously, teasingly close, with a deep freeze hitting the dome and jeopardizing the food supply and, you know, everyone’s lives.
“The dome walls are rotating,” said Joe, after pressing his hand against a frozen dome before it started to move (although it would have been more humorous if it would have been his tongue).
“Under the Dome” is kind of like “Sharknado” on a weekly basis. The shit that happens on this show is un-freaking-believable and you sound like an idiot when you describe it to non-viewers.
For example, last week, Big Jim dropped a magical egg off a cliff, which threw a tangent into the secret passageway out of the dome, inhibiting everyone’s ability to escape.
BJ assumed he’d only dropped the egg, but he mostly dropped the ball. There was no way his marriage was going to survive this, even if it had survived his wife faking her own death (the marriage actually seemed stronger when she wasn’t alive).
“Now we’re all stuck here because of how much you love me!” said Pauline, who was naturally pretty pissed that Big Jim had destroyed any chance of them getting out, just because he thought giving the egg to the government would bring down the dome.
Sleeping Beauty
Melanie, despite being one of the saddest characters on the show (since you know, she died), is also the most fortunate because she’s aged 25 years and doesn’t look a day over 18. Junior recognized this fortune early on, and has kind of become her new boyfriend, which makes for a weird triangle between him and his uncle.
Aside from her good looks, she’s still pretty sharp for a dead girl, with the ability to recognize her friends she hasn’t seen in 25 years, like Pauline.
“I’d know you anywhere,” said Pauline. “My best friend.” How sweet—wait for it. “Who left me for dead.” Yikes. She did make a good point.
It’s funny. For how much Pauline harped on returning to the dome to rescue Junior, she spent more time hanging around Melanie in this episode.
BJ and the Bore
While Pauline ignored her son, Big Jim tried to reconnect with Junior at the high school, when Junior wasn’t hanging around the hottest, most near-dead, 43-year-old in town. But Junior threw him for a loop when he revealed that he’d known his mother was alive for like a whole week now.
Then, Melanie started to have convulsions, drawing Junior out of the conversation and back at his woman’s side. And somehow—SOMEHOW—Junior arrived at this conclusion: the life of Melanie was connected to the life of the egg, and the government must have been messing with it at the moment.
Really? How did he get there? Especially when Junior hasn’t been the brightest crayon in the box. (Speaking of stupid crayons, Hunter, the nerdy outsider who wormed his way into the dome, got frost bite. )
All in all, it was not a good day for Big Jim, as pretty much everyone had him at the top of their shit list, including Tom, the farmer who had previously remarked to Junior this little gem episodes ago: “You know, I used to admire your old man, but now I wouldn’t spit on him if he was on fire.” Poor Tom had a new reason to hate BJ. The deep freeze, caused by the egg being thrown off the cliff, killed his wife.
Later, when Big Jim wasn’t the target on everyone’s dartboard, he discovered a very-much alive Lyle, wading in the frozen lake. Yep, Lyle returned to the dome during the worst possible time/season. After being rescued, Lyle started spouting off biblical shit that made us all realize Big Jim should have left him in the water.
What’s Hunter’s Story?
So Hunter, the frost-bitten nerd who desperately wanted to get into the dome because “Game of Thrones” was in its off-season, was a double-crosser. Joe discovered he had a set of “signs,” similar to Big Jim’s homage to INXS’ “Mediate” from a couple of weeks ago. One of Hunter’s signs read: “When can I get out?” (Somebody just realized there’s new “Dr. Who” to be watched.) Joe made note that Hunter was not to be trusted, by trying out a new expression for the audience, somewhere between constipation and annoyed.
But Joe failed to tell Norrie, who started to build trust with Hunter when she confided that it was her fault they were all going to die because she was the one who accidentally handed over the egg to Big Jim. She also let Hunter in on the secret that only a few people can touch the dome, which intrigued our four-eyed friend.
“I’m sorry you got stuck in here,” said Norrie. “But it’s nice having you around.” After all, Chester’s Mill’s OKCupid got a little more variety.
Love in a Frozen Ambulance
“I’m getting tired of survival being the best case scenario,” said Barbie, the man who got out of the dome and desperately clawed his way back in.
En route in an ambulance to some location to fix something, Julia and Barbie hit black ice (yes, like the title of the episode) and ended up rolling the vehicle into a tree, with Julia having a huge metal rod lodged into her leg, which put her as an appetizer, if you’re keeping score of our human meals.
But Barbie couldn’t get the rod out of her leg without her bleeding out, so instead, they just cuddled.
“If I didn’t have a piece of metal in my leg, this might be romantic,” said Julia, while freezing to death. Worst remake of Titanic. Ever.
Although this dire scenario ended up mimicking another movie, when Barbie came up with the idea to let Julia start to freeze so that her blood flow would slow and he could get the metal rod out without killing her. Yep, you guessed it. The exact plot to Speed. Just imagine Barbie saying, “If her heartbeat goes below 60 beats per minute, everyone in the ambulance dies.” (Well, mostly just Julia.)
As Julia drifted to sleep, Barbie—errr “Doctor Barbie”—prepared to retrieve the rod by lulling her to sweet, frozen slumber with talk of the future.
“We’re gonna have love, kids. Anything that you want.” A house with a picket fence. A big-ass dome.
Eventually, Barbie pulled out the rod and carried Julia to the Sweetbriar Rose, where he attempted to bring her back to life by opening an oven and putting her head close to it (somewhere, Sylvia Plath is pissed). And what do you know, she opened her eyes, just as the sun came out and the temperature started to rise.
Domal Warming
“Something’s changed,” said Rebecca, as sunlight peaked through windows and people’s feeling of limbs started to return.
And with that, Hunter’s job here was done, like Clarence at the end of It’s A Wonderful Life. Fanboy packed up his shit and headed for the hills, with Joe and Norrie in hot—well, lukewarm—pursuit.
Just as things started to thaw, so did Pauline’s heart. Back at the high school, she cornered Big Jim, pressing him as to why he saved Lyle.
“I did it for you,” he said. “Everything I’ve done. I’ve done for my family.”
Eventually, Norrie and Joe caught up to Hunter, who was playing the sign game with the same government official Big Jim had contacted. After a confrontation, Hunter revealed that he didn’t want to report back to the government, but he was forced to do it. Then, Hunter, Norrie, and Joe touched the dome, and it started to contract, compressing everything within the dome.
What did you think of “Black Ice”? Is Hunter to be trusted? Will Pauline and Big Jim’s marriage survive? And was all of Chester’s Mill’s winterwear stored outside of the dome?