‘Under the Dome’ 3.09 Recap: “Every Time I Think This Can’t Get Any Worse, It Does”

At this point, I feel like the writers of ‘Under the Dome’ must be deliberately trolling people like me who continue to hate-watch their stupid show. How else can you explain the existence of such extremely meta dialogue like the quote I’ve selected for the headline to this week’s recap?

What fresh nonsense is happening in Domesville in this go-round? Well, let’s see…

Brainwashed Barbie leads a raid on the former Aktaion compound on Bird Island, fully planning to straight-up murder Julia, Big Jim, Hunter, Joe and Norrie. (What a loss that would be, right?) Unfortunately, he finds the house empty. Our little band of resistance fighters have moved their HQ to a funeral parlor in town, where Norrie cries about her dead mom and everybody else studies the sketch stolen from Christine’s office. Nobody can make heads-or-tails of it.

Meanwhile, Christine is both pissy and in pain. She hasn’t fully healed from getting stabbed in the gut after all. However, she puts that out of mind for a minute when Eva comes into her office and a magic crystal Christine pulls out of her pocket starts strobing. Christine announces that, hooray, Eva is pregnant! It’s a girl! It’s going to be a new queen!

When Eva questions how Christine could tell any of that considering that she and Barbie just had sex for the first time about an hour ago, Christine informs her that she’s going to have a special alien butterfly baby. Those things gestate super quickly. It’ll be ready to pop out by this time tomorrow. Once explained, Eva is totally cool with that.

At the funeral parlor, Hunter finally cracks the encryption on Christine’s stolen voice recorder. He discovers that what she’s been recording are messages to the future baby Queen. Because they’ve had no luck figuring out Christine’s sketch, Jim sends Joe and Norrie to the library to look for books on “Deciphering Alien Scribbles.” I’m pretty sure that’ll be in the How-To section. Jim then tells Hunter that he thinks trying to snap the townspeople out of Christine’s brainwashing spell is useless, and he’d rather just murder everybody. Oh Jim, what a card you are!

Julia has a revelation! The reason they haven’t been able to deprogram any of the butterfly culties just by appealing to their emotions is that breaking the spell requires a combination of both emotion and physical pain – like how Hunter got scared after he broke his back. Hmmm… except that Norrie’s mommy snapped out of her spell and pushed Norrie to safety before she got hit with a giant fireball, not after. I don’t recall Sam being in any physical pain after his girlfriend died either. Whatever. Just add that to the pile of giant plot holes in this show.

Barbie remembers that he still has that walkie-talkie Julia gave to him. Julia’s end squawks to life. Barbie says that he’s come to his senses and wants to meet her. Julia agrees. On Barbie’s end of the conversation, Eva seductively licks his ears and they both cackle with glee about what a moron Julia is.

Julia meets with Barbie. It goes something like this:

Barbie: “Julia, I love you so much. I’m so sorry I’ve acted like such a dick lately. I just want to run up and embrace you in my arms.”

Julia: “Oh, Barbie. I’m so glad you’re back. Come hug me tightly, my dearest.”

Barbie: “It’s so nice to put my hands all over you again. Don’t mind this one as it slips down your back and reaches for your gun in your waistband there.”

Julia: “You asshole. I knew it!”

JULIA STABS BARBIE IN THE NECK WITH A SYRINGE.

Barbie: “You fucking bitch! I’ll tear your fucking throat out, you stupid whore! I’ll…. oh no… nyaaaaaaang…”

Barbie passes out. Jim, who was watching the whole thing and covering Julia’s back, steps out from the woods and helps her haul Barbie away.

With its power supply failing, the dome is calcifying just as Christine feared. She notices a very small patch of dome that has turned dark. This has somehow resulted in a bunch of nearby sheep dying, though the correlation between these two events is never explained.

Christine doubles over in pain again. Junior asks what he can do. Christine tells him that she needs to have sex right now to get her oxytocin levels up. So, he screws the old lady with the disgusting infected purple wound on her stomach. If that turns out to be his fetish, I’m totally repulsed. Hell, I’m repulsed either way.

Afterwards, Christine feels better. Nevertheless, she tells Junior that, because she’s so old, she’s going to die soon. She encourages him to find another mate. In fact, find lots of mates, at least a dozen, and have a big orgy with them all at once. That will make her happy.

At the library, Joe comes up with a theory that Christine’s sketch has something to do with sound waves being able to shatter the dome. He and Norrie find a book with the title, I shit you not, ‘The Truth Hertz: A Fun Guide to Sound’. Just then, somebody spots them! It seems that going to the library right in the middle of town where all the Pod People are gathered wasn’t such a hot idea. Joe and Norrie try to flee but run into Sam. He claims that he’s fine and wants to help them. They all hop in a car and the kids bring him to the funeral parlor. Later, Sam reveals that he’s actually evil now after all and kidnaps Joe.

Jim and Julia torture Barbie with a car battery, hoping that the pain plus emotion will bring him around. It doesn’t work. Barbie remains defiant and laughs in their faces. He tells Julia that he never loved her, that she was just a stupid floozie he had fun banging for a while. He also asks a very insightful question: “Who hooks up with the guy who kills her husband?” Good point there, Barbie. Even so, Julia doesn’t believe him. She knows that Barbie is her true love.

Eventually, after Big Jim leaves and Julia gets distracted, Barbie slips out of his bonds. He and Julia have a big fight. She runs off into the woods and he chases after her.

Big Jim sneaks into Town Hall to kill Eva, because that’s the sort of thing he likes to do. Unfortunately, he doesn’t count on Eva being super strong and super fast, owing to being pregnant with an alien baby. They have a very screamy fight until Jim finally runs away.

Christine worries about Eva’s safety and shepherds her to a barn, where she has recruited a very culty ground of young girls in white robes to be vestal virgin midwives. Junior is pissed, because he planned to bang one of the girls (named Charlotte), but now Christine is using her for something else instead.

Big Jim returns to the funeral home. Norrie tells him that Sam is evil and Joe is missing. Suddenly, the place is surrounded by Pod People sent there by Sam.

Julia and Barbie have a standoff in the woods. Barbie dares her to shoot him. Of course she can’t do it. He gets her gun, but Julia kisses him and, naturally, the magic power of her love breaks the evil spell on him, just like a fairy tale. The real Barbie is back.

Oy. How many more episodes of this do I need to watch?

8 comments

  1. NJScorpio

    I’m mainly watching because I want to see Junior snap out of it, by way of Big Jim. That should be an interesting scene.

    What bugged me about Stupid Julia this episode was…
    1)When they are electrocuting Barbie, and she seems to take issue with Big Jim beating up Barbie…”Oh no, don’t hit him with your gun…let’s just electrocute him.”
    2) Even when she is right, that she can somehow convince Barbie to come back to her, she comes off SO annoying doing it. Most of her lines are, “Barbie, I’m right, listen to me, I know you are in there, I’m right!” The only bit that made sense, and sounded at all smart, was that the pod people want who he WAS and Julia loves who he wants to be (and in the real world, does that EVER work out?).

    Also…that map, that Joe assumes is showing sound waves…to me, they look more like DNA strands than sound waves…but what do I know.

    • Peter

      It looks like DNA rather than radio waves to me also. Or some kind of double helix I guess. Not how radio waves are usually represented. Maybe it will turn out to be DNA, and that will be a big ah-ha moment for Joe and Norrie.

  2. Bill

    Hey Josh. Isn’t it time to retire this show from your weekly reviews? You clearly don’t like it. Spare yourself the agony and find a more deserving entry to critique. You’ll feel like a new man.

    P.S. Agree with everything you say about it. So much promise at the start. So little payback since then.

  3. Vanessa

    Is this for real?

    I stopped watching after the first episode of season 3. Reading your recap, I’m glad I’m not missing anything. If anything, this recap is way better than watching the show. And I don’t have to feel embarrassed for the actors now.

  4. Rick Frame

    I really hate that stupid narration by Big Jim at the start of each show.. “Rage… blah blah blah.. fear..” just stupid… they shoulda just stuck to the source material and called it good… The novel is a blast actually

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *