After a couple weeks of teasing it in ads, ‘Under the Dome’ has finally delivered a crazy new episode that could be considered a major game-changer… that is, if anyone actually cared about the narrative on this show, which I can’t imagine many people do at this point. I have the feeling that the writers had that R.E.M. song “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” on a repeat loop as they wrote this one.

So, it’s the apocalypse, suddenly and without warning. Episode ‘Ejecta’ opens with characters looking up and witnessing the dome and the outside world being bombarded with pink meteors. Why are they pink? Silly question. Obviously, it’s to legitimize all that “Pink stars are falling” nonsense from previous seasons, as if this were the intended purpose all along.

Chester’s Mill is perfectly fine, safe and secure under the dome. (Julia was right. It really is there to protect the town – just not to protect the people in the town like she thought it was.) However, everything beyond the bubble is in flames. Although the characters have no way of knowing if this is a localized incident or if it’s happening all around the world, Eva declares it an Extinction Level Event.

Questions: If we’re supposed to believe that this is happening all over the Earth, how does that work given that the planet is round? Are we supposed to believe that these meteors are converging on us from every direction at once? What kind of meteor shower does that? If that’s the case, how would Earth’s astronomers and scientists not notice an enormous pink sphere of space rocks coming at us from literally everywhere in the sky? Unless these meteors travel at a multitude of the speed of light, we should have seen them years, if not decades or even centuries in advance.

Anyway, moving on… Barbie wants to let refugees into the dome. While he and Eva are surveying the devastation from a fire tower in town, Eva contrives to lose the key and accidentally lock them in. All the death and destruction apparently gets Eva turned on, so she tries to seduce Barbie. He almost falls for it, until he finds the key in her clothes and realizes what she’s doing. He leaves the tower to go to the Aktaion camp on Bird Island, reasoning that Aktaion had some way of communicating with the outside world, which he could use to inform outsiders about the entrance in the root cellar of his old house.

Meanwhile, Joe and Norrie have brought Hunter to the diner to hide out from the Pod People in town. Whiny Hunter just wants to die and tries to yell for help. They lock him in the deep freezer. Don’t worry, I’m sure the building has no electricity so he’ll be fine in there. Eventually, Sam shows up looking to join their little band of rebels. Joe of course still hates Sam for murdering his sister about a week ago, but agrees to it anyway since they seem to be the only clear-headed people left.

Unexpectedly, Hunter snaps out of his daze for a minute and acts like a normal person. Unfortunately, he turns evil again when other members of the Kinship get close, so 90-pound, spaghetti-armed Norrie has to punch him unconscious. Sam tells them to hide while he distracts the Kinship.

Hunter comes back around later, and Joe and Norrie realize that strong emotions are the key to breaking Christine’s spell. Hunter kept turning evil anytime he was on painkillers, but when the drugs wore off and the pain started, he’d get scared and return to his normal self. Likewise, Norrie and Joe broke the spell because they were so angry, and Sam was sad about his dead girlfriend. This could be the information they need to save the town!

Over at the Aktaion base on Bird Island, Julia tries to contact the outside world while Jim looks for his missing dog. Neither has much success. Jim finds a bunch of leftover Aktaion guns and a bottle of booze. Feeling fatalistic, he and Julia decide to get drunk as they watch a giant wall of flame approach the dome.

Junior finds Sam in town. Acting like he doesn’t know that Sam is responsible, he tells Sam that Christine was stabbed and that he needs his help to save her (because Sam was an EMT). Sam plays along and agrees to go with Junior to the caves. On the way, Junior babbles something about the “Great Destruction” on the Butterfly Alien homeworld. Apparently, this same thing happened on their planet, which is why the Butterfly Aliens fled to Earth.

Does that mean that the meteors followed the Butterfly Aliens here? Are the meteors sentient? Are they a weapon being used by enemies of the Butterfly Aliens?

When they get to the caves, Sam is puzzled by Christine’s cocoon. Junior attacks him, and they wrestle while Christine’s arms break free of the cocoon.

At the edge of the dome, Barbie sees people frantically banging on the barrier, wanting to be let in. He tries to signal to them, but realizes it’s a futile endeavor. Eva tells him to let it go, and Barbie falls back under Christine’s evil spell. He and Eva turn their backs and walk away holding hands as the victims outside the dome are engulfed in flames.

Thinking they may be the last normal people left on Earth, Julia and Jim share a moment and I swear act like they might kiss or something when they’re rudely interrupted by Joe, Norrie and Hunter. (Must have been fun getting Hunter’s wheelchair over to Bird Island on a dinghy.) They tell Julia all about the power of emotion and pledge to start a Resistance movement to take back the town.

As they’re distracted, the Aktaion radio in the house springs to life and a female voice on the other end (which sounds pretty nonchalant considering that she’s stuck in an apocalypse) asks to “Please confirm” contact.

To all that, I can only shrug my shoulders and say, “Huh…”

I suppose it’s pretty ballsy of the writers to destroy the entire world except for Chester’s Mill. That certainly raises the stakes for the show a bit. On the other hand, the tone of this episode is weirdly melancholy rather than suspenseful or frightening. It’s almost lackadaisical. Attempts to play around with a non-linear chronology by jumping between flashbacks and flash-forwards don’t really amount to anything other than some momentary confusion.

To be honest, I think there’s literally nothing the writers could do to get me interested in this show again, try as they might. Even destroying the world barely makes a difference. It’s something, though. I’ll give it that.