Under the Dome has carefully, expertly painted itself into a corner with everything involving Zenith, Aktaion Energy, and Pauline Rennie. This can be a risky but rewarding stortytelling tactic, because most often the best way to resolve a crazy problem is with an even crazier solution. But Under the Dome tries something quite novel: it says fuck it, torpedoes any audience goodwill it had fostered at any point, and basically says “No, we were kidding, this is actually the story we wanted to tell.”
Needless to say, this doesn’t work, like, at all. “The Fall” is hands-down (see what I did there?) the worst episode that UTD has ever done, and that includes this season’s wretched “Reconciliation.” It’s worse than frustrating, it’s infuriating, and if I weren’t such a completist I’d give up on the show right now (I wish I had Margaux’s ability to walk away from an abusive relationship with a TV show; she flat-out bailed on The Strain cause it sucked, and I admire her for it). I’m not kidding, I am genuinely upset and angry at this shit. Goddamnit. Let’s talk about it, I guess, because life is meaningless, love is nothing more than a chemical reaction, and I need to tempt natural selection by not only watching Under the Dome but by writing about the fuckin thing too.
Everyone is all over the place. That should come as no surprise, because grudges are established and forgotten in Chester’s Mill faster than they are anywhere else. But “The Fall” is a particularly schizophrenic episode. It begins with Jim reading Pauline the riot act for abandoning him and Junior, and literally ten minutes later he’s saying that he can change, and he wants them to be a family again! What. The. Fuck. Nothing Pauline does makes any sense. The rationale behind all of her actions – indeed, behind everyone’s actions – boils down to “because I said so” and “because I don’t wanna.” The viewer can see Sherry Stringfield get worse at acting with every scene she’s in; it’s like watching a star go nova.
But it wouldn’t be an episode of UTD without a stupid revelation. This one comes courtesy of Barbie, as he explains his vision of last week to Melanie. Remember, Melanie was visiting with a young Barbie, and I made a joke about her hitting on him? Well, it’s even stupider than that, and as I was repeating Pleasedon’tbesiblings, pleasedon’tbesiblings, Barbie said “You’re my sister,” and I died a little inside. There is no narrative reason for this, and I hate it so much, you guys. This fucking show keeps introducing characters in season two and insisting that they’re incredibly important, and as a result the narrative falls flat on its goddamn face every time, like Bambi learning how to walk from that stupid goddamn rabbit.
Anyway, the biggest thing to happen in “The Fall” is Jim forcing Joe and Norrie at gunpoint to throw the egg over the cliff. (Joe gets in the one good line of the night, after Norrie asks where Melanie is: “Out doing Jane Fonda workouts, or whatever people did in the ’80s.”) Jim wants to prove his worth to Aktaion, which is dumb, but everyone has a stupid reason for wanting the egg to stay or go. Melanie thinks she needs to protect it, Julia thinks the dome is protecting them even though they’re running out of food and medical supplies, and Joe says that if the egg is the dome’s power source, throwing it over the edge might kill them all.
Um, why? FUCKING WHY, JOE? That means nothing! It means less than nothing! Holy shit this is a bad episode. The only good thing to come out of it was the death of Phil Bushey (when I saw Nicholas Strong listed in the credits, I audibly groaned). Phil dies like he lived: like a fucking dumbass, jumping into a chasm that has a bottom now. He gets impaled like a Mortal Kombat fatality, which is exactly what we should do to showrunner Jack Bender if he keeps putting this hogshit on TV.
“The Fall” didn’t make me hate Under the Dome; it didn’t make me hate CBS; it didn’t make me hate TV – it made me wish that television had never been invented.
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