Under the Dome: White Redheads Can’t Jump

I hate to say it. But life outside of the dome is more exciting than inside of it. Last week’s twist—that Barbie, Sam, and Lyle had all escaped—has given season 2 some new life.

Let’s look at it this way. They’re not doing much of anything in Chester’s Mill. In this week’s episode “Awakenings,” Joe and Norris started a video blog inside the dome. (Yeah. That happened). Meanwhile, outside of it, Barbie roughed up a tech nerd and broke into his dad’s computer to find a bunch of pictures of him and Julia (not doing it, thankfully).

Under the Dome s02e08b

 

The episode started with Barbie pleading with his father to send an email to Julia. The message:

“Julia, I love you. We’ll see each other soon. All it takes is a leap of faith.”

He wanted her to jump off the cliff.

Since Joe is the only one checking his email under the dome, Barbie urged his father to send it to Joe’s “scarecrowjoe” account on the chance that Joe and Norrie might find it. As Norrie was about to film Joe doing some kind of pratfall worthy of “Tosh.0,” Joe spotted the return of the high school Wi-Fi signal and that he had received a message. Instead of responding, Joe ran to the diner to tell Julia and Melanie, risking the loss of the signal.

Once Joe and Norrie got to the Sweetbriar Rose, audiences discovered that the message had been tweaked slightly, reading: “Julia, I love you. We’ll see each other soon. All it takes is a leap of faith. So bring the egg and take it with you.”

You Can’t Take It With You

Thinking that Julia might get the message that he wanted her to jump off the cliff, Barbie waited at the playground for Julia, although he ended up looking like a pedophile, especially when a little kid asked him what he was doing and he said, “Waiting for a friend.”

Spotting a security camera at the playground, Barbie eyed it suspiciously. Behind the camera, at another facility, was a cute nerd who, after spotting Barbie at the playground, and said, “Gotcha.”

So after Julia failed to materialize at the playground, Barbie walked around town, and probably hit a Starbucks or Sbarro while he was out, since we all know UTD food is pretty limited to the Sweetbriar Rose and well. . .possibly people. As Barbie toured the town, nerd boy from security tailed him. Poorly. When he discovered his stalker, Barbie threw him against a brick wall and demanded answers. Here, Nerd Boy advised Barbie to steer clear of the playground, as “There are eyes everywhere in this city.”

Nerd Boy seemed familiar with Barbie and his situation, knowing that he was trying to reach someone inside the dome and that the message had been received. So Barbie and the nerd teamed up to break into Barbie’s father’s computer, with Barbie doing the break-in and Nerd Boy advising him over the phone. Once inside his father’s computer, B man discovered that his dad had tweaked the original email message to Julia and double-crossed him. Nerd Boy asked Barbie to search for “houndsfordiana.com” and stall his father while he hacked into this info.

Later, when Barbie and his father Don were walking around Aktaion Energy, Don admitted that he hadn’t been completely honest with Barbie. He had sent the email through his company—not through the military. And when Don took Barbie back to email another message to Julia, Barbie discovered that Nerd Boy—who was actually named Hunter—worked for his father and was the one doing the emailing.

Message in a Bottle. . .over a Cliff

After they couldn’t get an email sent back to Barbie, Julia decided to send a message into the cliff, like a message in a bottle, only wrapped to one of Big Jim’s promotional paperweights. But right when Julia was about to do this, they got the signal back. Barbie had sent her another message, providing Julia with all the wrong details of their first kiss, which tipped off Julia that it was him—her “stray.” He wanted to meet her in the “wrong” location he had given her in the description.

Even though the kids wanted to go with her, Julia wanted to go alone (probably because she was going to get embarrassing and kiss the dome when she saw Barbie). The three teens were pretty impressed with Barbie’s smooth operator emailing skills, even if it was in code. Joe revealed some serious man love for Barbie when he grew jealous of Julia getting to see him: “I met him before anyone.” Then, Joe made a reference to The Notebook, and Norrie rolled her eyes when Melanie asked what that movie was. Gawd. She’s missed so many Nicholas Sparks’ film adaptations since she died in 1989.

En route to the meeting place, Julia got pulled over by Big Jim, who was suspicious of her destination, especially when she told him she was going to Joe’s house, which had been destroyed. Big Jim let her go, despite his reservations, and Julia headed to the clearing by the dome that Barbie had described in his message.

Under the Truck

Later, as Hunter walked to his car in a dim parking garage, Barbie roughed him up yet again, and blackmailed the hapless sack into taking him to the dome. Otherwise, Barbie was going to tell Aktaion that Hunter’s been breaking through their firewall.

Hunter took Barbie to the dome, although we were not treated with any kind of road trip banter. Instead, Barbie walked into the government base, presented himself as Michael Bryant, and got in lickety split. However, he couldn’t get on the army truck, so he had to hide under it and ride in that way. With this gimmick, Barbie made it all the way to the dome before taking off into the woods to meet Julia at their special clearing.

Zenith

Even though she abandoned her son in what seems like more than a decade earlier, Pauline was suddenly feeling maternal and wanted to get Junior out of the Dome. But first, she and Sam had to help Lyle, who was still uttering nonsense in a psychiatric hospital. So Pauline and Sam broke into a medical office in order to get the medication to treat Lyle, and once they gave it to him, he was back to his old, slightly less horrible self. When Lyle came to, he said he remembered having a dream where he was falling. Then, he showed Sam and Pauline the postcards he had collected of Pauline’s drawings, and they tried to put them in order of occurrence.

Who wants to kill Big Jim?

Back in Chester’s Mill, Big Jim still thought the dome had a plan for him (I told you nothing new was going on here). And then we learned maybe the Grim Reaper had one, when Rebecca called Big Jim to Sweetbriar Rose to show him that someone had cut the windmill down, after it saved them all from choking to death a few days ago. Soon, BJ, Rebecca, and Junior were called to a fire. A car was torched, by a billboard with Big Jim’s face on it. Was this a message to the big man?

Rebecca and Junior made a list of people who would want to hurt Big Jim, and let’s just say it had A LOT of Chester’s Mill civilians. The list of haters appeared endless. But since Rebecca and Junior had nothing else to do, they decided to start talking to some lead suspects, including the pig farmer who spit verbal excrement at BJ. But even though the pig farmer was pretty hateful, Junior still didn’t think it was him, so he called his father to speculate, but Big Jim was hit over the head by Phil the cop during the conversation.

Yep, Phil was the one behind all of the Big Jim hate. While Big Jim was chained to a jail cell, Phil cited his reasons for destroying the windmill, which included taking a bullet for Big Jim and almost dying, which were two pretty viable excuses to wanting to ruin someone. Then, Junior and Rebecca showed up, and Junior attempted to rough up Phil, but in the end, BJ would be the one to put Phil back in his prison cell.

“We’re never getting out of here alive,” said Phil, crying in his cell.

As he exited the jail, Big Jim saw a helicopter flying over the dome and figured out that something was up with Julia.

Deep into the evening, Julia waited by her Prius. Eventually Barbie came running toward his woman, attempting to remake “Not Penny’s Boat” by writing a message on the dome. He wanted to tell Julia, “Don’t Jump,” but he ended up writing a short novel the first time. Before he could get his second draft to Julia, the government seized him, as Julia screamed at the military men not to hurt him.

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