‘Under the Dome’ 3.03 Recap: “We’re Still Trapped Inside This Hell Bubble”

Yes, it’s now officially confirmed. The morons of Chester’s Mill are indeed still trapped ‘Under the Dome’. Upon this revelation, annoying Norrie breaks down in tears of horror and disappointment. I feel ya, girl. I really do.

I think the writers of this show are just toying with the audience now. They titled last Thursday’s episode ‘Redux’, as if to say, “Yup, we’re doing this shit again.” Realizing how derivative all that “alternate reality” nonsense was, they also have dorky Joe outright name-check ‘The Matrix’, whereupon that’s what the alternate reality is called for the rest of the episode.

By the way, the actor playing Joe has clearly had a growth spurt between seasons, and Norrie looks visibly older as well. This was easy enough to overlook when we thought the story jumped forward a year. However, if the new season is meant to take place just minutes after the Season 2 finale, are we just supposed to ignore it?

The gist of the episode is that everybody’s super-depressed about being back under the dome. Most of them think that their lives were better in the Matrix and wish they’d never been pulled out of it. Stupid Julia…

Norrie wishes she could be in that college sorority. She’s also cheating on Joe with Hunter and is acting like a raging bitch about it. Junior whines that he can’t be his own man if he’s stuck with his father again, and almost turns suicidal about it. Barbie has conflicted feelings about Julia (whom he’s really only known for three weeks) and Eva (whom he believed he was in a relationship with for a year).

Oh yes, Eva and Christine are in the town now, and that needs to be explained. Christine cooks up a story about how they were hiking in the woods and got sucked up in the butterfly goo three weeks ago, before the dome appeared. However, we learn that the two of them were actually anthropologists searching for the alien egg. They found it and Christine, being a terrible scientist, picked it up with her bare hands, causing the two of them to get zapped. Eva is confused about everything that’s happening and appears to be pretty innocent. Christine, on the other hand, mind-melded with the butterfly consciousness and is now completely evil through and through.

Christine returns to the caves and bosses Melanie around, delivering lots of pseudo-science mumbo-jumbo about how their plans are all ruined thanks to Melanie’s incompetence. (She literally gives a “You had one job…” speech.) Christine demands that Melanie must make things right by killing Julia. I support this plan.

Christine then returns to town and convinces Junior that he’ll feel much better about things if he burns down his father’s house.

Meanwhile, Big Jim stalks Eva out to the woods, where she digs up a camera that has incriminating video evidence about who she and Christine really are. She hides it in her motel room, but Jim steals it about 30 seconds later and watches the video. Now he knows their secret.

Barbie and Julia have no luck searching for Melanie in the caves. As Julia climbs out of the cave first, she gets grabbed. Barbie tries to climb up after her, but the ladder falls down on top of him. Of course, it’s Melanie. She and Julia catfight again. Melanie gets the upper hand and strangles Julia, until Christine rushes in and stabs Melanie to death. The bitch set Melanie up so that she could gain Julia and Barbie’s trust. How diabolical.

Julia spots Big Jim and that magic dog that seems to know about everything going on getting into a boat at the lake. Jim whines that all the people in town have changed since coming out of the cocoons, so he’s going to go live by himself on an island.

As the episode ends, Christine casts some sort of spell that draws all the people who’d been cocooned (including Barbie) toward her to stare up at the moon.

So now it’s up to Julia to save everybody. I assume this means that the show can’t kill her off anytime soon. Great…

5 comments

  1. Big Jim Berman

    Oh, now I read this!
    Man, you could have saved me, well 3 hours.
    Under the dome, is quickly becoming Heroes.
    I enjoyed season one, with the exception of the epileptic seizers and the pedantic murmuring about pink stars…
    I almost expected the Lucky Charms Leprechaun to jump out and demand royalties.
    And the Barbie/Julia/Ava love triangle is… well annoying at best.
    So, you had an imaginary girlfriend, and now you are confused upon waking.
    And this would be weird if it weren’t for the fact that in 3 weeks, your ACTUAL girlfriend has fell in love with you, found out you killed her husband, hated you forgiven you, suspected you and NOW can’t live without you!
    In 3 weeks, you have hated your father, reconciled with your father found out about a heretofore unknown sister and loved her, to lose her while simultaneously discovering she is a homicidal maniac.
    And what does Barbie do??
    He buries said sister, next to the father she killed in pretty much the same damn spot she killed him in all the while bemoaning their deaths!
    Joe, although taller, still looks 12 so who can blame his blossoming girlfriend for falling for a man who well, looks like a man… sort of.
    Junior whines, Big Jim whines, Julia whines, hell everyone whines!
    However, we have all invested waaay too much in this “Cosmic Dome, Pink Star, Butterfly Filled although now they are dead, Goo Filled Cocoon, everybody is sooo whiny I do believe I might kill myself” series called Under the Dome to tune out now.
    And it appears as if the outside world has simply forgotten about the dome, and life has gone back to normal in the world.
    But wait, that is for Season 4…

  2. Peter

    Excellent write-up Josh. Like everyone else, I can’t possibly believe I am still watching this show, yet so far I am. It is entertaining at this point just for seeing what crazy new thing they will do, and how ridiculously stupid the characters can act. Putting into words the crazy nonsense that goes on in the show actually makes it 10 times funnier – I hope you keep up the summaries.

  3. Brian Ben

    Liked the book until the deus ex machina ending. Haven’t liked the series at all. Quit watching last year, but I never miss your review. Too funny!

  4. Secret Squirrel

    I’ve had quite a bit of good fun having some nice suspended disbelief for this show. It’s the longest mini-series ever if feels. And this whole time it’s been some predicable, corny, mindless fun, so I’ve allowed myself to each the last 2 seasons’s kooky antics, but during this episode, I looked over at my wife during the moon gazing and verbally said “This show is STUPID!” Thank you for validating my opinion with your insightful and hilarious comments. It feels like the Heroes season 1 to season 2 antics all over again. #UnderTheStupidDome

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