This is super abridged because I couldn’t/didn’t want to concentrate on the live tweet with the injustice that is Ferguson, MO right now. It took over my twitter, which is good, since Boston news ain’t covering shit.
Man (“top scientist”) gets circles in his head and gets all crazy over Molly’s baby/fetus that’s incubating in a fish tank and murders someone and destroys thousands of dollars worth of equipment..
Ethan is having dreams even though John didn’t invent that yet.
Julie flirts with a babe at the gym (who checks out her stellar bionic legs). She was part of the team that designed her new friend’s bionic joints. And this is the kind of thing that I like, that she’s a woman of science but can use it to flirt -not with her married coworker.
Molly goes off to the office to nose around. She asks Sam for another session, there’s a security breach. The male astronaut (the other one affected by the spores) is the one who caused it. Molly listens in and hears the dirt that Alan has on Sam.
Odin, Julie’s crush sees Ethan at the lab. Odin comes in to get his joints checked. Ethan creeped out Molly by breaking all of the pencils to draws those circles. Julie brags about the work she did designing Ethan, and Odin agrees.
Meanwhile, John, Krieger and Molly have a meeting of the minds about “the circles” Krieger thinks it’s a distress signal. Krieger then separates and gets flogged by ISEA’s head of security.
Sparks’s daughter was impregnated by aliens and died on another ship. She ejected herself into space. Molly somehow concludes from this that the baby is still alive. That makes no sense.
And there will be 2 hours of this next week. ohhh boy.
There are things I enjoy about this show, but the pacing is weirdly slow especially in the past couple episodes. And I wish we would get to the part where things start to make sense… like whose fucking baby is this? And what does it have to do with Sparks’s daughter.
Molly has all manner of crazy dreams involving her, Marcus and “their baby” one ends with an accident, the other ends with a crying baby and a dead Marcus. But Molly was not super pregnant and enjoying morning OJ. Molly is found by John knocked out in the woods. Ethan is intact (which John verifies before tending to his unconscious pregnant wife).
Molly is taken to the hospital where they tell her that she was never pregnant. There is no fetus. There are no pregnancy hormones. They tell her it was a hysterical pregnancy …they tell John it was a con.
Molly wants to see Sam. Sam knew. she did a scan. But she pretends not to remember any of it. The scan, the baby, that she called Molly and told her to run. At John’s workspace, Ethan is not waking up. Julie makes interloping and irrational comments written to sound as if she is under the impression that she is the robot in a coma’s mother. John questions Molly ever being pregnant. Yup. That’s right. Then John tries to wake up Ethan too early to see if Ethan knows what happened to Molly.
But Molly gets a bright idea: when she was at her father’s house a dog bit her and her blood is on a towel. She tests it (the blood on a towel thats been dry for greater than 16 hours) and finds her DNA mixed with someTHING else’s (that can’t be right). The DNA has tentacles. And then John is disappointed that the baby is not his (when a moment ago he didn’t even believe that there was a baby).
Molly goes back to work and some filter that a tech nerd invented sees why all the worms in her sample died. When Molly applies this filter to the footage when Marcus was on board a crazy web of spores is revealed.
Well, that’s weird.
This show is creepy and atmospheric. But the characters are largely unsympathetic. I like Molly. And that’s about it. John doesn’t even know what to be mad about. Julie flirts with John too much, while simultaneously being ambivalent to his life falling apart. Molly’s bosses are cut out “secretive bad guys in suits.” Marcus is creepy. The other astronaut guy is probably dead. Sam sold her out. I don’t know what’s up with Ethan and birds but it’s fucking weird.
Barbie meets up with Rachel, appartently Rachel is willing to talk. He tells her about Melanie. And that she died in the 80s. And that she found the mini-dome. And that Sam was there and knew Melanie.
Sam returns home to see his place wrecked up. By Junior, who is still there. Junior is looking for his mom’s journal. Lyle betrayed him Junior confesses that he got an email from his mom and that she’s alive.
The townsfolk are divide those against Jim, and Jim’s supporters (Julia’s new enemies). I’m noting that a vehement Julia opposer is an “angry black man” archetype. Speaking of UtD’s use of tokenism, Carolyn appears on screen for about 20 seconds ..and volunteers her services to represent Big Jim.
Julia says that the trial will be fair and impartial… but her gpood intentions don’t mean much where the crowd quickly wants to play judge, jury, and executioner on their own. Phil shoots down a man running at Jim, Rebecca tries vainly to tend to the man. They pronounce him dead. To Julia, Rebecca confesses that Barbie wasn’t involved as Jim had implied. Julia tells Phil to fork over the badge, Barbie backs her up and he accuses them of being drunk on power.
Dome kids bring Melanie to touch the dome. But nothing happens.
Junior finds some pages of the journal and surmises that the theory was that the “4 hands” (he, Norrie, Joe and Angie) have to die. He freaks that he could be the next target and heads out to warn the others. So now, Sam knows that he knows.
Rebecca and JIm, back in their neighboring cells and Rebecca asks if he’d ever seen a man die before. He has. And he says so. Rebecca confesses that she didn’t have it in her to inflict suffering like that. A drunken Phil shows up and is going to free Big Jim, but he says that he’d have no where to hide and public opinion would mean his head. They decide to “win the crowd over.”
Dome kids brouhaha: Norrie tells Melanie what an immature and vapid twat she thinks Melanie is. Joe chases after the fragile and crying Melanie… and they kiss. A pissed off Norrie catches them and starts a shoving match. Norrie falls in a bush and scrapes her arm… this somehow gives Joe an idea.
Back across town where Barbie and Julia are handing out supplies: Barbie opens a package when there is an explosion. More supplies KO’d, Big Jim’s plan? Definitely. Julia tries to calm the crowd, Phil shows up to antagonize the situation. He says the generator wires were frayed and that it was Julia’s negligence and incompetence. Barbie comforts her …and then they make out. Last ep she thought that Barbie was an up and coming mass murderer, after him being a love interest -he did murder her husband- then she tries to make him Sheriff…. waffler.
At some point that I forgot to mention, Sam was getting Junior drunk so that he could kill him. But he has a change of heart when a drunken and sleepy Junior says “you’re the only family I’ve got”
Carolyn catches Phil looking in on the place where he moved the food so it wouldn’t explode. He takes her hostage and Barbie saves her after shooting Phil through the shoulder. He should recover quickly. Julia is fully healed -she was shot that same way only 5 or 6 days ago!
Julia meets with a woman, Andrea, who was handing out food, turns out her husband was a survivalist. Basement filled, cabinets overflowing. Enough food to last everyone a while. Andrea hosts a big meal at the diner, Julia lets Jim out of jail. The power of FORGIVENESS. Julia is such a twit. Jim tells someone to “enjoy the food” like he had any damn thing to do with it.
Rebecca says to Jim that they should “give Julia a chance” which sounds ominous. Alien girl gives Rebecca blood samples from the Dome kids. Barbie decides he’ll be the Sheriff. Norrie tells Joe to get bent after he says that he loves her and Junior and Sam find a tunnel inside Angie’s locker (that makes no sense).
More woes for the WoC- Rebecca is still under Big Jim’s thumb, Carolyn is finally awake on screen for over a minute and she’s a damn hostage, This show also glorifies “purity” and “goodness” in ways I can’t fully articulate yet. Any woman employing logic or science is regarded as nuts while those who are trusting to the point of naivete and immaturity are glorified (Melanie and Julia in particular).
These characters have no personalities. They make decisions seemingly at random. With the possible exception of Barbie (who is a straight white male action hero… and there’s no way that he’s not some wish fulfilment stand in).
Julia is probably the worst judge of character on earth. Aside from that, a couple episodes ago she was going to kill Big Jim only to immediately change her mind and save him, she decides to put him on trial then says “fuck the trial -let’s forgive!” She was briefly looking like a love triangle would be in her future… but that’s fallen by the wayside after she goes right back to trusting the man that she thought was capable of mass murder YESTERDAY. Junior and Sam: they’re going after Lyle, but Lyle can bring Sam’s transgressions to light. Sam definitely killed Angie. He probably killed Melanie, only to take care of her and be nice to her when she turns up again. Big Jim won back the favor of the town through dubious tactics after trying to repent and contemplating suicide a couple of episodes ago. He’s quick to throw Rebecca under the bus but then acts as if he needs her in the grander scheme of things. Rebecca has witnessed Jim’s deceit but still goes along with his plan, plotting against Julia who saved her life (after trying to fight her and lock her in jail) and then she gets up and leaves to help the Dome kids with their science project. And Joe doesn’t mention Angie ever and makes out with the alien. Norrie understandably pissed (and erratic behavior is very teenage) but then she let’s Joe take a blood sample to help Melanie?!? What?!?! Fuck all this.
this is Mike Vogel playing guitar on set between takes while filming this episode.
There are many things that are supercool about Abby Sciuto. It’s easy to harp on about her aesthetic, her taste in music, her ability to use unconventional methods to make sure that justice is served! She might not have the action chick flair of Ziva David or Kate Todd…
..but Abby fights crime. As a lab geek, it would be easy to have her sidelined, cast aside and there to drop cookies for the agents and portray her as nothing more than a quirky Caf-Pow addict.
But Abby gets storylines all her own. Memorably, in the episode “Cover Story,” back when McGee was secretly an author and based a character after Abby which made her the target of a Thom E Gemcity superfan’s wrath. She and McGee had a brief fling around that time as well, but it didn’t ruin their friendship. In season 2, Abby goes undercover to catch a Black Widow and a serial rapist. Or when gets herself in a tight spot, abducted on her way to testify and defend her evidence, a task for which she vainly attempts to turn down her eye catching style, the men are about to run to her rescue but when they find reach her, she tasers the hell out of her would be attacker and saves her own self.
In the season 3 episode “Bloodbath,” she has a stalker ex-boyfriend, things turn deadly when she has fake evidence left in her lab that triggered a dangerous chemical reaction: She told McGee to drop to the floor and explained what had happened while they crawled across the lab, McGee flips her onto her back and risks his health to drag her out. She does some soul searching in Gibbs’s basement, wondering if it’s all her fault, if she brought this on herself. He lets her find her own answers and a drunken Abby says that it’s not her fault and that he’s a creep. The character is very vulnerable and this terrifying situation is shown without victim blaming and turned out to be a touching and remarkable episode. Abby is embarrassed to tell everyone what she has going on, she questions herself… but in the end, with support, she overcomes the situation. It was wonderfully written and acted, conveying perfectly that partner abuse can affect anyone and how those relationships can influence the victim’s mentality.
Back in season 1, Abby’s fear of autopsy alerts everyone to an emergency after a terrorist infiltrates Ducky’s lab and demands all evidence returned… but this also gets Kate into a dangerous situation when she pretends to be Abby and Gerald shot for playing along with the scheme. (In the end, Abby conquers her fear and sleeps in the morgue.)
In season 5, she saves a military dog who is accused of murder. The dog also took a bite out of McGee -who shot him. Abby defies McGee and Director Shepherd to clear the canine’s name.
And you could be thinking that these plots make Abby seem like a kid sister, and to an extent that isn’t inaccurate. Abby is a very relatable character, what makes that so is that she isn’t perfect, she has struggles. She has family issues (like when she finds out she has a brother she hadn’t known) and abusive exes, she takes loss (of both Kate and Jenny) hard. She hides out at Gibbs’s house on occasion and one time at McGee’s. She let’s personal problems (like when she had body image issues after a little person she was dating said he liked smaller girls) interfere with work persona.
Basically she’s an actual human being.
And if you take a look around at the people you know, you will probably find that some of your favorites are a little much. A little immature, quirky… but cool, compassionate and always waiting with a comforting hug… mine are anyway.
And besides, it’s not always Abby that needs saving.
In season 7 she’s called to Mexico to teach a seminar on forensics in cold cases. Day one she deals with catty co-eds, but soon she’s got more trouble as a cartel leader, Paloma Reynosa, gives her a bullet. The one that killed her father. The case that she’s set to work is that of Gibbs’s deceased wife and daughter. Their killer was Paloma;s father, Pedro. And the bullet that that killed Pedro? Abby finds out that the bullet striations matched Gibbs’s SIG Sauer.
And Abby’s faith is shattered and she’s mad. She’s mad that she’s in a situation where she has to compromise her ethics. Gibbs never confesses. He never says one way or another whether he planned and executed the execution of his family’s killer. But Abby, true to herself, true to her sense of right and wrong, good and evil, decides that Gibbs doesn’t get a pass. Not because he’s saved people. Not because he’s her friend. She submits the report, which Vance then “loses”. And it was there that Abby’s character was proven.
She’s also a total babe. Not just when she’s playing dress up. Her *unconventional* style gets her plenty of attention as well, aside from the hookup with McGee, she uses her swagger to make connections that gain her access to NASA equipment.
And the babely actress, Pauley Perrette:
Brings some of herself into the character as well. On the season 1 DVD, talking about her childhood, it’s said that she grew up near a junkyard and would see all the wrecked cars come in. She would analyze where the damage was and what might have happened to the cars. Young Abby appears in flashbacks in the season 10 episode “Hit and Run” where she is shown investigating “her first case.”
Pauley Perrette also makes music as the front woman of “Stop Making Friends”and her vocals have appeared on NCIS soundtracks.
Perrette has also been well known for her involvement with the NO H8 campaign. NO H8 was started in response to the ban of same sex marriage in California in 2008, it’s a silent protest that uses social media, education and outreach to give a public voice to those struggling with bullying, discrimination and inequality.
Pauley helped design this dress and wore it to the People’s Choice awards in 2011. She likened this to wearing her heart on her sleeve.
All of this leaves me to wonder if it’s life imitating art or art imitating life that Perrette is as caring and cool as Abby.
Recently the actress suffered a serious allergic reaction to hair dye which inspired me to go back to henna over chemical dyes. The future of Abby’s raven locks may be in jeopardy and the star is weighing her options.
Abby’s character development has taken her from “kid sister” to “best man”, from quirky goth lab tech to indispensible team member, she’s panicked and gotten it together to help her friends, she’s questioned the morality of those in her life and she is cautious about who to trust but once you are in her heart, that’s where you stay. Abby deals with things very humanly, she’s a very well written character. Remember how she famously disliked Ziva at first? This wasn’t because of the “women hate each other” trope, this was because she was still grieving and she could only think of Ziva as Kate’s replacement and she wasn’t ready. And everyone loves Gibbs (and the ass-kicking Ziva David) but it’s Abby who saves the team from mediocrity.
John comforts Molly with science after her miscarriage. He had already been working on an android and decides that they should raise the program. Molly, in her grief, volunteered to go into space. Molly is remembering all this while she lays in bed.
John wakes up and proposes that they throw Molly a birthday celebration since she missed her birthday in space.
Ethan is nervous about orientation. Molly is going for an invigorated run, her health monitors encourage her to slow down, she sees a spaceship blast off. Orientation doesn’t go so hot, There are angry villagers there who call Ethan “a toaster.”
Molly tries to see Harman but he’s not there, he’s drawn weird circle patterns (like the one that appeared on Molly’s stomach) on the wall. Sam is disappointed that Molly still hasn’t told John about the pregnancy. She says some version of, “the timing isn’t right.”
At the party Sam takes Molly’s blood (which is weird). Molly’s dress is fantastic.
Then Molly collapses and sees herself in space with Marcus. A bit later, John’s lab tech tries to flirt and insert herself into their family structure, but John pays no mind. Marcus’s brother arrives at the party, and Molly has a misunderstanding when he says that he sees Marcus everywhere.
The power goes out. John finds something moving in a box and finds it’s a chicken that Ethan caught earlier. Ethan doesn’t understand what things need food or water. John says, “no more birds and no more secrets.” That prompts Ethan to say that “mom says secrets are okay if you don’t want someone to worry.” John confronts Molly. Then she confesses.
Sparks said that the ISE implanted something in her without her consent. Which is gross and weird.
As the party wraps up Molly looks for Tim (Marcus’s brother) to say goodbye. Her husband keeps saying that he is not there. She remembers him next to her in a group photo, which is on a screen… but there’s a empty space next to her. SO YOU ARE TELLING ME: THAT NO ONE STOOD NEXT TO HALLE AT HER OWN DAMN BIRTHDAY PARTY?! John tries to calm her but she says she’s losing it, she insists she saw Tim there, saw him talking to other people. The secrets all come out and she manically recounts her hallucinations. She goes off with Sparks because Sam will be there and something bad is happening and she trusts Sam.
Sam tries to go to her office but is held up by security, she sneaks around and shee’s that they are taking her files. Knowing they can’t be trusted she tries to call Molly, she gets John, expresses concern and then texts Molly to get out of the car.
Molly goes for might over cunning. I thought she would fake morning sickness for sure. Anyway, Molly grabs the wheel, the car swerves and she gets out and runs as we see weird circles protruding on her torso. John is behind them and picks her up.
This show is getting serious. So much craziness, and what could ISE be up to? Halle Berry is just so phenomenal. Her/Molly’s meltdown after discovering the truth about Tim was astonishingly painful to watch. She has no idea who to trust and those she trusts are in danger… with still no clue as to why. And the plot doesn’t center around Ethan. And for Molly the baby she is carrying isn’t even the main focus., she wants to know why she has been betrayed, not gushing over possibilities.
Which is good, because it’s majorly sick that they implanted something in her against her will and caused her to have abnormal brain scans and jeopardized her physical and mental well being as well as her family life and career ENTIRELY.
Is Harlan real?
I hate that Julie is being written as a romantic rival for Molly. I enjoy that John entertains none of it (and that he is supportive of Molly even when dealing with insane situations). Julie being flirty toward John and catty towards Molly her behavior makes it seem as though she is infringing on thei parenting and inserting herself into their family situation. But rather Ethan is her life’s work, too. Not just John’s.It would be nice if she was portrayed as John’s colleague and not a potential hook up.
Molly is still adjusting to Earth-life. She gets spooked by sneakers in the dryer, Her husband is going out of his way for her, making coffee, planning a fancy meal, picking up a gift for a birthday party for her son’s friend.
Yasimoto’s money has provided Humanix with a new and glamorous office.
Mr. Woods pitches again to the woman he argued with at the meeting. She still thinks that sharing “humanity” with androids will ruin personal connections. She doesn’t understand why Yasimoto is funding him.
Molly starts having pain/contractions and an expressionless Marcus (her former flame astronaut friend who passed and who came to her on the ship) tells her “it’s ok.” She collapses and Ethan finds her on the floor with crop circles appearing under her shirt.
Molly’s doctor Sam comes to see her at the museum. She has abnormalities in her brain scans. She tells Sam that Harmon is alive, that he didn’t kill himself. Their brain scans were similar. Molly thinks she has hysterical pregnancy and demands an ultrasound to be sure.
Ethan runs off from the museum group and sees and evolution exhibit, he is puzzled by what species he is. Molly finds him and they vow to keep each other’s secrets. Ethan won’t tell John that Molly fell down and Molly won’t tell that Ethan ran off.
Harman is stalking them in the museum and we see a flashback to his pass over the solar flare where he sees his dead mother, Molly returns to work and tries to access Harman’s security footage. She can only view the experiment cameras, She sees him barricading a door but can’t see from what. She removes her “monitoring tether” (a chip which tracks her health and location) and Harman is waiting to pick her up.
Harman and Molly share their stories about seeing someone dead. Molly confronts her employer, the employer tells Yasimoto and Yasimoto says “Then they are already here” and says that it will be harder to hide or dismiss now that Molly is pregnant.
Molly forgot dinner with her husband who has no idea about the world of trouble she is in and is understandably pissed off. Ethan ominously draws a family in a spaceship being saved from extinction.
So much weird stuff is happening but it works well because everything is tied back into each other. But if it’s aliens how are they able to decide which person to disguise as? If the motivation was to impregnate Molly, why did Harman see his mom and not a romantic figure? Why do they only duplicate dead people? So many questions.
Live tweeting the new episode tonight! @Skeletongrrl <–follow me
I’m a little wary of this show. Mostly because the overall premise is that a woman gets impregnated without consenting.
But there are things I immediately like. Halle Berry on primetime network, interracial marriage on prime time network, a mother with a high profile job, a black mother with a high profile STEM job on prime time network.
Halle Berry’s character, Molly has just returned from space. 13 months alone. When she returns home she’s feeling ill while getting ready for her son’s party. She assumes that she’s just readjusting to earth. Her son’s party goes well, but the child pushes another and his father scolds him (no “boys will be boys” attitude? nice!). Molly’s female friends ask her how her family manages so well, her being away for so long, missing her family, her family doing family things without a matriarch and she is nonplussed. As the father tucks in the child in we see that he is an android.
The son was created, designed and programmed by the father.
Molly wakes up and looks through old news articles, photos of her and Marcus. A former romantic partner who passed away.
Her friend and doctor, Sam calls her in. Molly’s tests have returned. She’s pregnant. Not only was she alone in space, but she wasn’t able to conceive with her husband. This is what lead her husband to “create”/program Ethan.
Molly flashes back to an issue on the spaceship when they passed by a solar flare. She lost power and saw Marcus on the ship.13 hours missing from the log, when she meets with the panel she says she accidentally deleted the security footage instead of copying it. They don’t believe her, because she doesn’t make mistakes like that.
Ethan’s father presents his research to Yasimoto Corp, but Humantix is denied funding after he wiles out on a woman for saying his son is not equal to her daughter because Ethan doesn’t have a “soul.” He replies that Ethan has what all children have, synapses, shared experiences. Life.
Molly’s bosses contact Yasimoto and tell him that funding was denied, so Yasimoto reaches out and backs Humantix as a private citizen to get closer to the family.
Molly takes Ethan to the park for icecream, after getting a balloon with a note, Molly tells Ethan that it is time to go. He drops his icecream and lashes out and runs off, Molly chases him and finds him with a dead bird. Ethan says it was like that when he got there.
Molly is creeped out. She relays such to her husband so says Ethan is just adjusting to her return and ends with a hostile “that kid is the closest we will come to having a child!” Which, since Molly is hiding a pregnancy is not true at all.
They make up the next day. Tensions are high and no one said anything that wasn’t true. Molly is scheduled to see a psychiatrist, a previous astronaut committed suicide and now the psych evals are required. She has more flashbacks. She hallucinated Marcus coming to her on the spacecraft, she freaked out and deleted the tapes, on the footage Marcus wasn’t visible, but you could see her reaching out to him.
Then, back at home, the astronaut wo supposedly had killed himself shows up in her yard, he tells her that he is not a hallucination (so he knows about the hallucinations) and tells her not to trust anyone as her husband calls her in for dinner.
So there is a lot going on. How would a hallucination cause her to become pregnant? How would her employers have impregnate her? If that was the goal, why would they send a man first? Is her son really a creep, or did he just find a dead bird?
Great first episode for something that seemed convoluted.
I enjoyed the next level future science: the synthetic soul (to steal the term from “Almost Human”), private sector space travel. And the it was coupled with societal standards that may never match society’s progress with science no matter how much we know: gender roles (Molly’s friends asking her how she manages to have her career) and the concept of intangible humanity that keeps us separate from other creature (and in this case:robots).
And that’s just a fabulous haircut that Halle has.
Rebecca and Jim (now on his way back to the darkside) are deciding who of the townsfolk are not work the resources. I repeat. This is less than 3 weeks in. Everyone’s just hysterical because they can’t check facebook.
Melanie gets a name. Norrie acts more civilized towards her now that she might be a person, Norrie teases Barbie when he shows up in last night’s outfit. The kids tell Barbie about the emails they received. They head back to where they got the signal so that Barbie can try to contact the outside world (unlike Norrie; who checked twitter).
Junior breaks out Lyle, but cuffs him.
Barbie is not impressed that Melanie knows the combo to Angie’s locker or that she thinks she went there in 1988.
All of this seems kind of moot since Rebecca is jumping over the hypothetical need to “thin the herd” and is planning to infect the town with swine flu.
Barbie and the kids go through microfiche, Junior presses Lyle for info about his mom. Why he went to her funeral, how she knew about the pink stars. Lyle says she thought the dome would follow her and spare Junior.
All of this pales in comparison with the fact that Rebecca is about to poison the town to see who survives.
Even Big Jim thinks that she’s nuts but she’s so damn type A that I don’t think he can handle it. Why is the science woman so crazy and Julia who quickly falls for the woo woo is seen as pure and good? Religion good, science bad? Well, there have been bad religious freaks; the Rev and Lyle. (Lyle who is helping Junior sort through what Junior’s mom said would happen next.
The kids and Barbie go to the spot where they had previously found the mini dome. Melanie flashes back to the 80s (where she kisses Sam, who obviously know who she was, then) they had found a “meteorite,” Melanie had picked up the mini dome egg and some one pushed her, she got knocked out. And died.
Rebecca projects that everyone in town will be starving to death in 2 weeks and resorting to cannibalism, which seems swift… but whatever.
Barbie finds the meteorite and Melanie’s story is validated.
Big Jim is really going to kill all these fuckers.
But Julia and Sam stop him. Then he calls the a slut and a drunk (respectively).
But he doesn’t even have the virus, Rebecca does.
Julia and Sam run off in pursuit and Lyle gets the drop on Junior and escapes. Honestly that pair up was the insane leading the crazy, so it’s probably for the best.
Rebecca’s plan is to poison the Holy Water, but she reconsiders (maybe seeing baby Alice, maybe that the virus mutated) Julia jumps Rebecca from behind, Rebecca responds to her like she’s a bothersome dog… which was pretty funny. Sam and Julia lock away Big Jim and Rebecca saying that they will let the town decide their fate.
Dome kids and Barbie find Junior knocked out cold and speculate that Lyle killed Angie and maybe Melanie. Barbie shows up at Julia’s to warn her but Julia says “not tonight” and slams the door on him. Barbie sees Sam and retreats. Sam tries to kiss Julia bet she pushes him away. Smart move since we see scratches on his shoulder consistent with marks that a dying Angie would have left.
Julia’s “I thought I knew you!” attitude towards Barbie (who killed her husband) is dumb. I’m glad that she took some space over starting a romance with Sam. A rare moment where I liked Julia.
Joe ditching Norrie to hold hands with Melanie is terrible. Norrie reminds me a lot of myself. Maybe not, maybe just as more of a “real teenager.” She doesn’t know how to express what she’s going through, she’s had to grow up too fast, she wants to be a good friend but doesn’t know what to say. Someone with a sweet disposition and kind words looks more appealing then the more caustic teen. But I like Norrie, I like that she’s trying to make friends with Barbie rather than seeing him as a random adult who helps them and I like that she’s purposefully distrustful.
I don’t get Rebecca. I wish she’d find a happy medium because they could use someone more practical than Julia to help out. Julia is living in a dream world. And staying with a murderer. I bet Barbie saves her and they hook up again.
Episode 1- This one is written by the man himself, Stephen King. And there are so many preposterous things that occur. We lose and gain characters. But we begin our episode with Dale Barbara at the gallows as Julia drops the egg in the lake. Suddenly most of the gathered crowd collapses as a bright light shines across the dome and a mysterious girl appears in the lake. And from there on we have a typical UtD chain of nonsensical and frustrating events.
Julia jumps in the lake to save the drowning girl. She’s shot in the shoulder, so it seems unlikely that she’d be a strong swimmer at that particular moment. A man runs out of a house and helps Julia do CPR, then he asks her if she can walk. Umm.. she’s shot in the upper body and playing life guard. That made no sense.Junior poises himself to be a hero and refuses to hang Barbie. Linda threatens to shoot Big Jim, which is good since she’s the law and Jim is framing a man and publicly executing him. Very reasonable.
The four go investigate at “the dome” (which is making a perimeter around the whole town… it’s not one spot) where Linda dies saving Barbie. Anyone other than Junior, Big Jim or Barbie would have been reasonable. Her oath was to protect and serve, but another woman being cannon fodder, being a reason for male characters to have a change of heart. BooooBarbie and Big Jim tussle and he runs off to steal a car from local Science teacher Rebecca Pine, another WoC who will probably have a short life span given this show’s track record of repeatedly victimizing women.
Julia and Junior’s uncle Sam tend to the alien who escapes and Angie, Joe and Norrie save Carolyn from flying kitchen accessories while Big Jim hallucinates Dodee telling him off again. Shortly after, Angie and Junior resolve to kill Big Jim. But then they collapse during a magnetic wave. Ms Pine creates a way to offset the magnetic charge. Barbie and Julia reunite and make out around an ocean of collapsed townsfolk. Big Jim finds Junior collapsed and freaks out, then he hallucinates Linda while Junior has a coma dream about his mom. Stricken with fear and concern for his son, Big Jim decides to hang himself but he can’t pull the lever. Julia says that she’ll do it but immediately has a change of heart. So he stomps on the trapdoor and Julia with lightning fast reflexes has a knife open in her hand and cuts the rope.
Julia and Rebecca immediately quibble over whether magic or science stopped the dome’s nefarious magnetism. Because women can never be friends on TV.
Big Jim tells Phil that Barbie didn’t kill Dodee, then he invites Carolyn, Norrie, Joe and Angie to stay at his house. Yeah, that’s a safe place for Angie in particular… Norrie is prepared to tell him to fuck off but Carolyn says to keep your enemies closer. Angie still wants Jim dead. Good for her. Sam, Junior’s Uncle shows up at the diner, Big Jim is not pleased. Angie closes up the diner alone, she’s taking out rubbish when she sees that alien girl that Julia saved go into the school. Angie follows her but the other girl runs off. Angie sees that her locker is open and the gets an axe to the back.Welp, 2 deaths + 2 replacements + another straight white male added to the main cast. Fuck. Add to that the waffling that the characters do about killing Big Jim… dude’s crazy and a murderer. And now Junior being on board and Angie commending Junior for having her back after keeping her chained up (“to protect her”) last season… oh fuck that. Abuser turned hero is the worst trope.
Episode 2-
Ms Pine wants to reopen the school, Big Jim sets Junior off to check out the school where he finds dead Angie. At the diner Rebecca Pine tells Jim that butterflies are munching their crops. And Barbie and Jim speculate about who would do this. Phil is there and still suspicious of Barbie. They find a bloody shoeprint. Jim thinks it’s Junior, Junior thinks it’s Big Jim. Norrie and Joe are off in the woods oblivious when they find the mysterious girl from the lake. They pass by the school and Joe whose stages of grief are acceptance and anger. Barbie and Julia are discussing the new girl when they see a fire. Rebecca is burning the crops. Joe is upset and Norrie tries to comfort him to little avail. Norrie expresses the same suspicion that Barbie has about the girl from the lake. Because women on this show all hate each other on sight. Rebecca says that she burned the wheat to stop the caterpillars from infesting other crops.Big Jim decides that “this is a test for him”
Barbie’s like: Big Jim’s like, “This plague was sent as a test for me, Barbie.”
Julia goes to talk to Sam to find out is he’s holding anything back about the new girl and he finds out what’s happened to Angie, Julia finds out that Sam is Big Jim’s brother in law. Sam comes to examine Angie’s body for evidence and Junior reveals that he got blackout drunk because the vision of his mom threw him off guard. But he doesn’t think he would have hurt Angie. Barbie and Jim decide to rain pesticides on the remaining crops and they quibble over who will fly the plane and get the credit. Should they let Barbie- the former military pilot!? tough choice. Joe and Norrie bring weird girl’s shoe to Phil and it’s a match, Julia is pissed that they’re holding her… ummm… it seems reasonable. Less reasonable is hung over and emotional Junior switching gears from looking for something damning on Big Jim to wanting to kill the new girl in the span of 30 seconds.
Barbie damages the wing of the plane on the dome, he thinks he’ll run out of gas but Big Jim had a spare tank. Julia and Sam “clear” the girl from the woods when they find a man sized handprint on Angie. Umm… two people working together is a thing. And Julia and Sam go to free her while Joe points a gun at her. Julia and Barbie recap their day’s event and Julia goes on and on about Rebecca and how she’s too Team Big Jim and that Rebecca “doesn’t know everything about the dome.” Newsflash: no one does, at least she’s doing things that will help Chester’s Mill residents. But the fact that Rebecca was in Barbie’s proximity makes Julia see her as a threat… when she was with Sam all day and Barbie didn’t tee off like a 15 year old… makes female characters look dumb as hell. Angie’s funeral is the following day –it’s majorly inappropriate that Big Jim gives the Eulogy, mind you. She wanted him dead, he’d threatened her before. Really any other person was a better choice. Right before, Joe has a melt down while he’s looking for her bracelet, Barbie consoles him and then Junior finds that he has the bracelet and heads to Sam’s to confess that he thinks he did it.
Episode 3
Barbie and Julia are sheltering the young alien girl and Barbie catches her going through his things. She asks him where he is from and he asks her where she is from. Julia accuses him of interrogating her. Oookay.
Big Jim goes to get a haircut and some cologne from Dwight Yoakam. who is a religious nut bag… but that comes later.
Ms Pine decides to get all the teenagers together to help build a windmill. Joe still has the specifications on his school tablet. Norrie and the new alien aren’t exempt from this task. Julia tries to get new girl out of it, but the mystery girl says she would like to help. Norrie is not amused. And this time I don’t blame her. She didn’t get to be sheltered, she’s been through a lot with losing her mom and was never into the school thing. Now she’s being forced into educational activities and the chipper goody two shoes that she thinks may have killed HER FRIEND ANGIE (even though they don’t allow Norrie any time to grieve).
They head off to the school to get the tablet, Junior is already there after talking to Sam about his blackout and Sam says that his mom used to go into fugue states but that sometimes if she tried to retrace her steps she would start to remember.
It starts raining what looks like blood but is really a chemical/algae rain that burns people’s skin. That might be worse than blood. Lyle (Dwight Yoakam) and Rebecca face off over religion and science.
The school has wifi again somehow and they have gotten messages from the outside. Including a message to Joe from his dad: his parents miss him, “now he’s the man of the house, take care of Angie” WTFF? Joe is the YOUNGER brother. Angie had lived on her own and is an adult. What kind of patriarchal BS… *sigh* Joe starts crying, worried what he’ll tell his parents, worried that they’ll all die in the dome… and he’s comforted by the new girl. Norrie hates it. She gives Junior her tablet and stomps off. Junior has a message that says “I can help you James” (which is how so many emails in my spam box begin), and he finds a video by his mother. She confesses that she’s alive and tells him that Lyle has answers.
Then alien girl knows Angie’s locker combo… turns out she had the same locker in 1988! There’s no way schools keep records of that for that long. There’s no way that the combos weren’t changed. It’s so fucking pointless.
Meanwhile Rebecca and Big Jim head out to treat the water and stop the red rain. Suddenly a figure blocks the road and Jim crashes to avoid him, the disoriented Jim is tossed from the car and Rebecca is abducted by Lyle. Jim radios for help. Rebecca gets tortured. Barbie, Junior and Julia bust in to save Rebecca (except Junior who is looking for answers from Lyle). Lyle like Julia because she believes in the higherpower of the dome instead of science and she nearly talks him into letting Rebecca go. Rebecca doesn’t wait, she douses Lyle with the acid rain. Julia exclaims “Why did you do that?” Let me answer… she’s been caused pain and forced to fear for her life at Lyle’s hands all day. It’s obvious.
Anyway, Rebecca fixes the water. Lyle goes to jail, Junior lets him out. And Rebecca goes back to the crazy talk about “thinning the herd.” Maybe in time it would be necessary, the acid rain killed some pigs, butterflies destroyed some plants but it’s been less than 3 weeks. And a bunch of people have already died anyway. Julia gets to be self righteous and outraged. Rebecca gives no fucks.
Mario Kart 8, work and training for a 5k has eaten my blogging life. I didn’t pick up my comics yet this week, so I figured I’d tell you what’s on my mind.
Penny Dreadful, which I have been loving is renewed for season 2! After 4 episodes! FINALLY a show that I like doesn’t get axed with plotlines hanging around everywhere!
Fred Williamson, AKA “the Hammer” ex-football player and total badass has a new movie called The Last Hit Man. Written, directed and starring Williamson, with Franco Nero and Gary Busey. I got to meet Fred Williamson at TerrorCon over the weekend. I attended his Q&A where he said he turns down 4 or 5 movies every week (every WEEK) because the black characters are written as spoofs or goons or idiots who die in the first 5 minutes. Kudos to him for being uncompromising and making it work on his own terms, but shame on Hollywood for presenting the choice as “don’t work” or “degrade yourself”. It’s a damn shame.
He’s also in his 70s and will still kick your ass.
Under the Dome is back on June 30th, Stephen King himself releases/reads the intro to snowball some hype. We have to wait until July 9th for Extant- Halle Berry fronts this scifi CBS show… about a woman impregnated by aliens after a trip to space. +3 for diversity, +1 for Spielberg, +2 for women in science… but impregnated by aliens? yeesh. Apocalypse/saviour baby plots are not my fave. Raped by aliens is not good.
TRUEBLOOD’s final season kicks off in a couple weeks. Rumor mill says there will be a same sex hook-up (“from non-gay characters”) in ep2. Honestly, I can’t imagine this will be handled in a mature fashion most of the gay characters have been bogged down with tropes on tropes. Every one is still hoping that Alexander Skarsgard is involved. Honestly, I think his little brother is cuter. Which is why I’m counting the days til July 11th when Bill Skarsgard returns as Roman on Netflix original series “Hemlock Grove”.
Official season 2 trailer, anyone?
Absolutely no one anywhere can wait for the new open world Zelda. But we have to. 2015.
timewantsaskeleton 